Progress

Wednesday was a big day for us - we interviewed our new nanny and hired her on a trial basis for this week. She is younger than I would have liked, at 19, and less experienced, but the boys love her and she is eager and smart. She speaks a bit of English, probably a little less than I was led to believe, but she is interested in learning and she is also interested in teaching the boys Spanish. She has her first aid training and a diploma in Business Administration from a local college. She is working on her thesis in the mornings and helping me with the kids in the afternoons.

We also went on Wednesday to see a number of other preschools, since I didn't want to go with the first one I saw, necessarily. I'm glad we looked around, because we found one closer to the new house that I greatly preferred, and we hope to enrol Joffre there, starting classes on March 6. He'll go in the mornings, and then I'll have the nanny helping in the afternoons, so I think it will work out very well.

Yesterday we went on the wives' bus again - I'm kind of addicted to it, because it means a free ride to the far-flung markets where all the good cheap produce and things are, and because the ladies who frequent it are all grandmothers who miss their grandkids. Joffre adores them, and they him. Today he asked me if we could go in the Grandma Van and go shopping, because he loves shopping, he tells me.

Keen Communication Skills
Last night, Joffre was trying to tell his dad something in the bathroom. Apparently, when Aaron didn't understand, Joffre said, "you no understand. We go tell Mom, Mom understand." But I didn't, right away, because he kept talking about something that sounded like 'tawrl'. So he said, "remember, that day, we go in the car, with the girls, the ladies, and we walking, that other day, and we go one tawrl, another one tawrl, another one tawrl? That other day? Remember that? With the one two ladies?" This went on for a good 5-10 minutes. And, eventually, I did remember that the day before we had gone in the car with the woman from Aaron's company and the nanny, and we had gone to three schools. And when I got it, he said, "yeah, that what I trying to tell you today in the van with the grandmas, remember that?" Because he had been trying to tell them about visiting the schools, and none of us understood what he was saying. So we worked a bit on his pronunciation of schools, but mostly I was just amazed at how patiently he explained and elaborated until we got what he was talking about.

So, we have made great progress this week, on preschool, nanny, communication, and all kinds of things. Which, considering some of the problems we were having last Friday, and at the beginning of this week, makes me very very happy.