The highlight of our week...Ayi came to visit for a day!! We had some VERY HAPPY kiddos! It's the first time since we have moved to our new city that Lauren has not had issues with having "accidents" in her panties...and she's been doing great even after Ayi went back. You could not pull these two away from Ayi. It meant a lot that she came to visit. She only gets two days of a month and she spent one of them traveling to see us (on top of that, she gets extremely car sick, so the bus ride was not fun for her)
We had so much fun showing her around to a few places and just getting to spend some time together. The kids couldn't wait to show her their new rooms!
Regan posing for a picture in her new zebra shirt :)
Lauren enjoyed playing tea set with her special baby. She made sure they each had the same things.
Katherine asked for homework this week. She was so excited to get to practice writing her letters. She did pretty good. I found some pencil grips a few months ago and bought them anticipating her wanting to write more. I wanted to correct her grip as soon as possible. I have tried in the past, but she got so frustrated. This way she always knows where her fingers go...they really were brilliant inventions for kids that needed them!
Katherine on a creative streak. The kids have been helping around the house more to get a little spending money. Katherine bought a can of play dough with her money. It's not exactly like the stuff you buy back home, but it's close enough. It has provided hours of entertainment this week.
I couldn't pass up the picture of Lauren helping with the laundry. She loves getting the clothes out and cleaning the filter.
I couldn't decide which shot I liked better, back or side, so I put them both in here :)
Another exciting thing....we now have HOT water in the kitchen!! YEAH! We were told when we rented this apartment that we had hot water in the kitchen, but we found out after moving in that we didn't. We asked about it and our landlord still said we had hot water. He came over and showed us...you turn the water on, fill a pot, boil it, then wash your dishes. So that's what we have been doing for the past several weeks until this week. They came and installed the water heater this week. Two happy parents!! (the kids could care less)
And poor Benjamin...we had our first trauma here. He was playing at a friends house when his friend accidentally hit a glass picture frame. It just happened to fly threw the air and hit him in the face just beside his eye. This is us on the way to the hospital. I was actually out with Katherine when it happened. Jonathan did so good. He managed to calm everyone down and he and our neighbor got the bleeding to stop and cleaned him up, changed his clothes, and cleaned up the house from him running home. My neighbor took us to the ER as soon as I got back.
I was very impressed with the hospital. They did a great job. I know know how to say "stitches" :) I guess everything is a learning opportunity. Hopefully, I never have to use my new vocab word. The cut was pretty deep so they had to sew him up in two layers....they stitched the inside, then they did the stitches to hold the skin together.
After it was over, he thought it was fun....but he was still numbed up and on motrin :) Today his eye is a little swollen and bruised. He did not want to go to Kung Fu class because he might get bumped. He and Regan have decided that they want to train for running in the Olympics...watch out Auntie Em! They said their first real race will be against you! :) They are running about 3 miles a day with their dad...not bad for just starting, huh?
I didn't want to end on Benjamin's cut, so here's a random picture of the bathroom in the little girls' kindergarten. I just think it's funny to contrast this with a bathroom in a U.S. kindergarten. The big trough on the right is the sink to wash your hands.
And finally, we saw a guy selling balloons on his bicycle. Katherine could hardly contain herself and spent the rest of her money. A "tu tu" is her favorite animal, so she just had to have the bunny balloon. :)
