Quote of the Day

11.02.2006

A Happy Day

Today was the "trial" day at preschool and I am happy to say that we were indeed invited back. Juliana is invited back for the group we were in today, and Andy is invited back for an other day that has older kids. We all agree that he is a bit old for today's group. We are also looking into one-day-a-week kindergarten for him.

The preschool is FOUR minutes from our home at the local community Baptist church and meets on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for Juliana and Friday mornings for Andy. Juliana didn't actually make any friends, but she and two other little girls moved en masse from play station to play station today: sort of a side-by-side group play dynamic.

In other happy news, the children seem to have absorbed the relationship between being very quiet in the morning and having a jolly good-natured Mom. Yesterday I only heard one loud plonk and a loud SHHHHHHH; today I heard nothing. Their clock radio goes on at 8:00 and that is the cue for coming downstairs and making noise. In addition to me getting my much needed last hour of sleep, Juliana also gets a bit more, as Andy wakes up around 7 and had been in the habit of waking her up too.

In even more happy news, we found the Russian word for "obey" and were able to have a long conversation about children's jobs (obeying) and parent's jobs (earning money and buying grapes, according to Andy). Today my parents did the second half of pre-school trial and then brought the children home; they were happy to be able to report that the children obeyed. This has not always been the case. I am feeling hopeful again.

I found a useful website that has some good advice about sensible parenting, specifically about training in obedience and then most of the other training is done. While reading the website, I realized that has been my worry: if we can't instill obedience, there is no end to the troubles and anxieties ahead. When we get obedience in place, we can enjoy more and fret less.

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