Rolling With Life As It Comes

Sam dancing on the tabletops.

Hello all,

Sorry I have been silent for a few days. I did want to get on here and let everyone know that Samuel has actually started school. I know that may not sound so amazing to some, especially in the States. Yes, he is 5 and would be starting Kindergarden in the States. However, here in Sweden they don't start until they are 6. So I was preparing myself for this Fall. Let me start from the beginning. We finally put Sam in pre-school at age 5 so I could go to Swedish language classes. That was this last September. We had a few issues in the beginning with a substitute teacher that we quickly cleared up. Yet, small things kept coming up. Sam is a wonder of information! Of course you have to sift the information because he is 5 and doesn't understand motives and situations quite as they are, but it was still causing us concern. Most of that came from the fact that they had so many substitute teachers and Sam had no idea who his teachers were. So we started to look into other options. About two weeks ago Sam actually came home and said he really didn't want to go back. Don't worry he wasn't in danger, but the fact that we were already having reservations led us to the conclusion that I would have to quick Swedish class until a solution could be found. Andreas made some phone calls.....

Two Thursdays ago we received a call back from the private school Sam would attend in the Fall. They did not have any room in their pre-school, but had remembered Sam from our January 13th preview. They felt that he could handle being put in the Kindergarden class with the 6 year olds. I had some reservations about that because he has always gravitated to younger kids. We prayed, we talked with Sam and had a meeting with his teacher the day after the call. His teacher, who is Swedish, but Asien of decent (love that), put our fears to rest. Samuel thinks he is hot stuff going to school so young now. I would take him and stay for a while and then go early to pick him and watch him when he didn't know I was there. He did wonderfully. He also loves it. He has told everyone we know and total strangers that he is now going to Vittra (name of the school). The school has a montessori base and I really love the way they interact with the kids. The teacher has said that Sam is doing amazingly well.

So as his mom, I will of course still worry and be very diligent to watch how things are but I am quite happy with the results at this point. Praise God for his mercies. It was really hard to walk out of the school building the first day. Even when Sam was saying, "by mom". It took all my strength not to cry. My baby is growing faster than I could have ever imagined. I am truly blessed to have him and cherish these days. I know one of these days I will wake up and he will be 18. Until then, I will take a ton of pictures, embarass him sometimes (mother's perogative), and love him always.

To all of those families adopting from Nepal that have sent me your blog address, thank you. I love to know how you are all doing. Please send more addresses for me. Nina, I think you are in Costa Rica right now, but send me your address when you get back (I will still include you even though you are Norwegian ;))

Please don't forget to pray for Haiti. They actually pulled another girl out alive at 15 days after the quake. Amazing. There are still more orphans that need to come to their families in the US, please pray and write to the address in a post below. Also, there are many that are replacing the orphans that were able to come to their homes. Don't forget them though the news will.

Blessings to all. Don't forget to hug your kids today- no matter how old they are!

laurie