Caroline

Caroline's settling in to the routine of going to school. I took her the other day, so I can say that it's a LOT different from school back home. For one thing, there's a lot of commotion in the morning - all the classes line up in the schoolyard. The kids have to put their lunchboxes in a certain place, then they line up to go into the classroom and have to put their bookbags, water bottles and gym (yes, GYM) bags in designated spots. Caroline's in the 'plum' group, so her stuff goes in the bins with the plums. Which sounds easy, except that the plums on the gym bag box look more like, well, I really don't know what. Burgundy colored eggs, I guess. Speaking of eggs, I keep forgetting to mention that they don't refrigerate eggs here. Really. Just one of the many small differences that seem to leap out at you when you live in a place.

Caroline's still a little shy at school, but she's made a bunch of friends. The other day she was quite pleased with herself when she told me that three girls were fighting over who would get to play with her. She's also started changing her pronunciation of a few things (tonight she said 'fahn' and 'dahnce') and using Briticisms like loo and bum. I'm sure she'll have an English accent by the end of the year. She has Michael saying loo and bum, too, which is kind of funny.

She and Michael have also started putting on shows for us, as shown here. This does NOT mean that they've stopped bickering over absolutely everything, just that they do occasionally play together, and it's actually pretty funny when they do. Michael, too, seems just a bit more grown up than he did before we left.

Caroline still says she misses Ryan and Kerri and the girls at school, and frequently asks why we had to move, which of course is a delicate question to answer since we didn't, in actual fact, HAVE to move. I've thought about telling her that mommy is wanted in three states, but that would require too much explanation. Hopefully she won't hate us when she's older. Not for this, anyway.