The next morning, we got ready and went over to the train
station to reserve seats for our train ride to Sweden (see previous post).
While at the station, we tried to get lunch at the food court and figured with
all the choices we could please everyone. Emerson decided he wouldn’t eat
anything except crackers and it dissolved into a huge fight that ended with me
dragging him kicking and screaming through the streets of Copenhagen back to
our hotel. Normally I would take that kind of Emerson catastrophe into the
bathroom for privacy until he cooled down, but once again, we were faced with
bathrooms that charge money to be let in.
This kind of meltdown is embarrassing enough when it happens
in our regular life, but it was infinitely worse in a crowded city where everybody
already talks several decibels lower than the average American (so a heck of a
lot quieter than our circus).
By the time I got him back to the hotel, I was shaking with
anger and sick to my stomach that this was how we were wasting our one precious
day in Copenhagen. In retrospect, this blowup was a long time in coming. He was
having an extraordinarily good period for several months and actually won
student of the month for his class in December. But as the principal was
announcing his name for the award, his teacher was giving him an X for bad
behavior. That was the beginning of a not so good period. Traveling, with all
the schedule changes and constant pressure to be quiet and well-behaved,
further turned him into a little devil who relished every opportunity to cause
trouble.
I’d like to say our little blowout was a turn for the
better, but honestly his behavior is about the same. But we vented just enough
steam for me to step back and realize that trying to make my kids into quiet
Scandinavian children was just not going to happen and I needed to reserve my
energy for days like this. Maybe the pressure of constantly being with my
husband and children for a month straight will improve my parenting in the end.
Or maybe we’ll strangle each other. Only time will tell…
Anywho, we salvaged the rest of the day by going to the
children’s museum inside the National Gallery. The kids got to be their crazy
selves with no restrictions for several hours, including abandoning the Viking
ship I thought was completely awesome so they could spend more time cooking in
the pretend ancient kitchen. I love that I never know what my children are going to do from one minute to the next.
As we tried to leave the building, we were blocked by
cameramen and photographers mobbing a couple who were coming in for a film
event in the Gallery. Somewhere on Danish television there is a video of these (unknown
to me) celebrities with Emerson in the background complaining about his sleeves
being bunched up.
When we finally escaped, we went to Nyhavn (a harbor from
the 1600s and the home of Hans Christian Andersen for 18 years) for dinner.
Luckily we found an empty (i.e. kid-friendly) café that served great smorrebrod
at a good price, so I finally got my wish:
We spent the rest of the night looking at the quaint houses and ornate buildings that would have looked straight out of a postcard if we
could have taken pictures in the daytime. I thought Michigan winters were dark
with cloudy skies and the sun setting around 5. But the skies here were just as
cloudy and the sun set around 3. So here’s Copenhagen at night:
It was a short stop and we only touched on a few of the
city’s highlights, but it was well worth it. Screaming kids and all.
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