Week 7, Sunday

Well, I don't usually blog on a Sunday, but I forgot to blog last Friday.  Ciara had her first swimming lesson on Friday.  She was completely fine, no apprehension whatsoever.  I find that lately, Ciara is the most adventurous of all the kids.  She wants to be out all the time!  It's such a difference from last year.

I just want to mention something really neat that happened today.  Our next door neighbours have a daughter named Elena who is in grade 3 at the American School.  The daughter is extremely friendly and very bright, I think she speaks 5 languages.  For the past year, Ciara has shown no interest in Elena whatsoever.  Elena on the other hand always says hi to our children and is excited to see them.

This afternoon, out of the blue, Ciara says she is going over to the neighbour's house.  I wondered what neighbour?  Well, she was off to Elena's house.  Then 15 minutes later, Elena was over at our house.  Much to my horror, Ciara took Elena to her really messy room and proceeded to show her around the entire house.  I guess the tour of the house didn't scare her off because they were talking about having a sleepover next.

This was just a short encounter with the girl who lives next door, but again it shows the progress that Ciara has made in the last month.  A few months ago, she would never have said hi to Elena, she would have tried to avoid her.  Now she is already planning on inviting her to her birthday party (which we have not planned yet).  I am cautiously optimistic that Ciara will continue to be friendly and social when she starts school next week.

Finally, I just want to mention that Ciara and I finished another book on Friday.  It's called "Dogs don't Tell Jokes" by Louis Sachar.  Again, we both really enjoyed this book about a boy in grade 7 who tells jokes all the time.   We read this book, because during the summer we read "There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom" which was also written by Louis Sachar.  Ciara's grade 5 teacher last year gave her the book to read over the summer.  We enjoyed that book so much that we wanted to read another book by the same author.   So we highly recommend both books again for anyone grade 5 and up.