This happened today

There are many amazing things that happen in the international schools. Here is one.

Yep, that's my animal-crazy, environmentally-minded kid. And that is Jane Goodall.

I keep telling the kiddo that she's doing so much in her life that many people dream of doing (whether she wants to or not), but today she believed me.

Oh, Mama!

New Baby Year came at last! 

Pregnant mom and firstborn moved back to the US, we changed schools, and had a new baby overlayed with the foreign-service issue of technically living (and hubby physically residing) in a

How can my heart not burst?

place that is different than where we had the baby. In our case, we are extending this period by several months.

Here are some highlights:

• Reveled in living in a place that belongs to us – Home is where the House Is! - despite the lack of furniture and household goods, check (Nov 12)
• No. 1 daughter strong-armed into attending excellent local public school despite her fears, check (Nov 23)
• Thanksgiving with dear US-based friends but without hubby, check
• 40th birthday celebrated while being really, really pregnant, without hubby, check (Dec 5)
• Amazing baby girl born after 2 weeks of “pro-dromal” labor and one hour at the hospital, with hubby, check (Dec 30)
• Comings and goings of parents and hubby, most notably husband’s paternity being up and heading back to Nepal, ouch (Feb 22)
• A bunch of stuff I barely remember, such as getting up 3 to 5 times a night for one child or the other or both; feeding baby while watching it snow; cold bus stop waits with a screaming newborn; cold shopping trips with a precariously sleeping newborn; piano lessons with an amazingly good newborn; library visits while shushing the newborn; skyping to Nepal; cooking dinner with the baby in the sling and the girl sprawled on the kitchen floor doing homework; before school breakfasts with my girl at my own kitchen counter; laundry at 1am; and snuggles in sunbeams with both my girls. . .check
• A visit from a dear friend who folded the 3-load-tall mound of clothes in the borrowed papasan, alleluia and check (March 22)
• Mom arrives, and the house is picked up, eldest dear-one has company during feedings and baby bedtimes, dinner dishes are magically done, bathtubs are usably clean, la! Thanks Mom, glad you’ll be here a while. 

Never say "Never"

Two significant and vaguely inter-related events have taken life by the ankle shaken it all about. Both were pre-ordained by “I’ll never” statements I foolishly have made.

One: I’ll never homeschool my daughter. 
I actually really, really, like the idea of homeschooling. Molding the young mind, enticing her with topics and activities that she would love and wouldn’t be possible in a traditional school setting. But she and I working closely together on a daily basis? Ha! From our first homework assignment in Kindergarten (one of only two that year), where it took 30 minutes and many tears to count the number of Thursdays in February, I have had the strongest conviction that me teaching her is a Very Bad Idea. However, we have had a number of extremely frustrating educational experiences at the American school here, with the lack of actual education being so terrible and the parental scuttlebutt of next year’s teacher being so dour that we have actually discussed home schooling, for 3rd grade at least.

Two: I never want to be one of those moms with a tweenager and a baby.
Yep, I’m pregnant. After 6 years of trying to conceive and all the attendant misery, I get pregnant when I have a soon-to-be 8-year old and am staring my 40th birthday in the face. Despite the “never” statement, of course, we are absolutely thrilled. The future big sister was tearfully happy as well, and now that she has endured a number of pregnancy-related (mis)adventures (mostly, er, food-related) and had to put up with an exhausted mama, she is a little more wary. Still a good sport, however.

Currently we are on leave in the US. All the critical family members have now been told of the big news, and we are also getting a lot of practice explaining the coming school year thusly (God willing):

• Since we are, ahem, not too thrilled with the school anyway, we will start out the 3rd grade year homeschooling (aaah!). 
• Mid-November, daughter and I travel to the US, kicking our tenant out of OUR VERY OWN house. I will transfer to a midwife Ob-Gyn practice in Fairfax, have the baby there, and we will stay in the US until summer time. 
• Hopefully, the 3rd grader will attend our neighborhood school (if I can talk her into it, in a time of such major transition). We’ll stay till the end of the school year for her, and so that we can avoid a couple of trips back-and-forth to the US with the newborn (and the attendant springtime pollution that settles over Kathmandu). 
• Hubby will come to get us settled in November, come again for Christmas and baby’s birth (due first week of January), and come out a third time for US-based home leave in late May. 
• We all return to Nepal, baby in tow, in late June. 

Jambo

For the first time in her memory (and indeed, ever), our girl has gone back to school. She has never known the comfort of going back to a place that she knows and is comfortable, and where there are friends and teachers she missed over the break. The playground this morning was a chorus of little-kid hello's and hugs, with random teachers being nearly knocked over with kid-enthusiasm.

My girl is over the moon with her new classroom (freshly built!) with its lovely view and smiling young teacher, as well as more than a half-dozen faces that were already dear to her. The picture here is of the all-school first day assembly - the high school band there on the tennis court as the "all-school" size has outgrown the auditorium.

And, how did I get this picture, you ask? It is true, I myself am there picking up my kid. After many difficult arrangements at the end of last term and a stint of 8-to-5 workdays including a few weekends, I did a great big head slap and decided to cut down my work hours. How hard was that?

Saving the world, one PowerPoint presentation at a time...

Exhibit A: I have always, always, been grateful for my job. I can't think of another job where I could have survived 9 months of morning sickness, several state-to-state moves, and one (so far) country-to-country move, and kept the same job, provided health insurance to our family through my husband's job-search slog, and worked with the same talented and wonderful people. Despite many things in life not going the way we would have planned, I see this job, being able to work from home and take my job wherever we go, as a true God-given blessing.

Exhibit B: I have always, always felt my job is worth doing. What I produce goes to train front-line public health workers and epidemiologists. I have received, on rare occasions, face-to-face praise the work of our Center and for projects that I gave my heart and soul to - expressions of how much our content has helped or how far our content has reached across the globe. Awesome.

The surprise: I'm the effective room mom for my kid's class. I didn't even know this until yesterday, when someone from the parent-teacher fellowship (our school's PTA) contacted me about teacher appreciation week. Now that I think about it, I'm the one who shows up, on occasion at least. I only have the one kid. I can build flexibility into my schedule and it's a 5 minute walk from my front door to the classroom. I don't do it often - after all I do work full time.

The other moms? Keeping in mind there are only 11 kids in the class...of the ones I've met, one is stay-at-home for now, has multiple kids, and is extensively involved in everything school already. Several others have save-the-world jobs. And here, I mean, really, seriously, they are out there saving the world. As in Save the Children, World Vision, and UN Somalia program.

Me? I work on PowerPoint about 80% of my day. I fuss about the best verb to use for learning objectives and capitalization for bullet points. I explain how to use epidemiology. I could almost do it in my sleep by now.

I think I'm going to step up the room mom effort.

Sports Day

Something about kids cheering for other kids just puts a smile on my face. Today was Rosslyn Academy's annual sports day - a first of its kind for our kindergartner, and us parents got to watch "teams" across the grades band together. Those Montessori schools we've been going to, prior to now, have a "big day out" at a historic organic farm, or plan major events where children line up in front of parents, sing lovely songs wearing photogenic outfits, and everyone sedately munches Whole Foods veggie platters and homemade ethnic snacks until the parents are kindly shuffled out the door.

Not so at Rosslyn! OK, our biggest school previously went only up to 4th grade and had less than 50 students. We have just experienced the entire middle and elementary schools out on the track - shouting their cheers (my vocal chords are shot -- Go Red Team!), lining up heats - Kindergarten through third grade - older kids on another field, girls then boys, siblings running all over, I would be shocked if my own kid heard a word of instruction that was directed at her (Kiddo! That person up there is talking to YOU! Pay attention!). Every few minutes a responsible adult turned around to ask, where is so-and-so?... and in short order an energetic youth was sent off on a scouting mission - always returning successful, I might add.
The littlest ones ran the 50m and 100m, and had the option to run the 400m. Well, one goes, they all go, so they all ran it, and I think shocked their PE coach out of her shoes. The school did not happen to mention in all the papers that went home that the parents should be sure to have their running shoes on: Between the starting line, the jumping and shouting, the finish line, and the zig-zag across the infield, it was quite a workout. When my kiddo saw me cheering for her toward the end of her very long lap, she swerved right off the track so she could collapse my feet. Oh ho! I swooped and grabbed her arm, dragged her back out there, and we finished together. In fact, a significant number of parents joined in the race with their flagging kiddos. How great is that?

The last "event" for our kids was play time in the pool. Perhaps a woman has not well and truly experienced motherhood until she goes into a 12 x 16 ft changing room with at least 60 girls, half of whom are dripping wet, all changing clothes, horsing around, being goofy, loud, or upset, all at the same time. I was speechless. The kiddo left her backpack in there, and I tried to send her in to bring it back out (how would we ever find it otherwise?), and she blurted "I can't go back in there!!!!" I see her point.

At any rate, hats off to the amazing staff at Rosslyn. The level of dedication, organization, patience, and pure good-heartedness that it took to carry that off was deeply impressive. Thank you.