Sibling Rivalry Love

I think it's safe to say...

the love between these two...

is completely mutual!

Happy Gotcha Day Little a

Who's special day is today??

Me!

This kid right here!

Andrik!

Happy First Gotcha Day Andrik, A.K.A. "Lowercase a" but not to be confused with his big brother "Capital A" and certainly not his little sister, "Cursive A".

Who had the bright idea to name all the children with A names?

First Day of School

When I decided to home school the boys I didn't have a newborn baby to care for and as the first day of school started approaching, I began to get a little nervous on how I was going to juggle a four year old and two year old in the classroom along with a two month old. But with the help of our new live-in maid, the first day of school was a great success!

A few months ago I spent several days interviewing women to be our live-in maid. Live-in help is VERY cheap here in UAE and many people have help in their home. Our house has a separate maid's quarters that is closed off from the rest of the house with it's own entrance through the garage so we can still maintain our privacy while the maid has her area of the house. After interviewing 5-6 women I gave up, not feeling 100% about any of the women I met and decided that having a live-in wasn't in the cards for us. In July, a couple days before I was leaving for the states, someone I know approached me asking if we were interested in a maid. I explained that I'd already met with several women and didn't find the right match and that I was very picky on who we'd have in the house and didn't want to interview anymore women since I was leaving in a couple days. She promised me I'd like this women and I reluctantly agreed to meet her and within two minutes of the women being in our house, Randy and I were looking at each other mouthing, "I really like this one!!" So despite the fact that I left two days later and Randy would have to deal with the business end of employing a maid on his own, we now had a wonderful maid that would start working for us as soon as we all returned the end of August. We didn't know then that we'd be coming back as a party of five instead of four, but it's funny how things work out! And as a bonus, our maid has two grown daughters and one just had a child the same time Atalie was born and she's been a bit sad that she can't be there for the grand baby, but she gets plenty of baby snuggle time now.

I had to tell you that long story so you'd understand that if I didn't have our fabulous maid to help me this morning, I don't know that home schooling would have gone as smoothly as it did. Atalie started off the morning with us but when she got hungry and fussy, my super maid took over and watched Atalie for the remainder of school. From here on out, Atalie will be with us as long as possible while our maid works around the house and when Atalie losses interest in beginning sounds and rhyming words, our maid will be there to help out.

Our classroom is a true multi-age classroom!

And also a multi-species classroom!

First day of school picture...barefoot! One of the perks to home schooling.

When I planned the lessons for this week I had some things for Andrik to work on separate from Artem since I figured he'd lose interest really fast. But Andrik shocked me today with how well he paid attention and how much he wanted to do the same work as Artem.

And when he did get a little fidgety or Artem needed some extra time with me, Andrik was happy to sit in the classroom chair and read some books. He thought he was so big when he got to read a book that didn't have hard pages.


So far so good on the home school decision. I know I'm going to have some challenging days ahead of me, so remind me of this one when things get tough, but for right now, I think this decision suits our family really well.