Our newest family member will be arriving on October 13. No, it's not a new baby!!! Her name is Jessica and she will be joining our family for a year from Sweden. Jessica will be acting as our Au Pair primarily caring for Nathan and Gillian while Cris and I are at work; and also providing companionship and friendship to Frances and Erin. Jessica speaks four languages, her native Swedish, German, French, and English. She is extremely athletic and active which means Nathan should be very happy with outside activities. Frances is excited to have someone to help her with her French homework and to help her practice speaking the language, not to mention having a person closer to her own age in the household. Erin is thrilled that Jessica will be living with us. And Gillian, well, we're going to have to see how she does. She's very easy going for the most part, but it usually takes her a little while to warm up to new people, so I'm expecting her to be a little more clingy than usual for a few days. Cris and I are feeling some relief that we've found a person (outside of the typical daycare setting) who seems to be really well rounded, responsible, and capable. Nathan made me cut out paper hearts for 20 minutes the night before last. He has been fascinated with the school scissors but his little hands are still clumsy in the motor department. I was trying to show him how to position the scissors in his right hand with his thumb and forefinger and I used an example of cutting out a paper heart....well that was the wrong thing to do because for the next 20 minutes he brought me page after page of paper and insisted that I cut out small hearts, medium hearts, and big hearts. Now we have about 30 plain paper hearts that I'm not sure what to do with. Nathan has gathered them all into his own personal envelope, so perhaps I can entice him to decorate them and put them on the walls in Jessica's room.
We have to shuffle the house a little bit to make room for Jessica. My office is currently in her bedroom, so I'm now in the process of moving my office into the larger rec room which probably should have been the office in the first place.
Erin got a part in the school musical. The musical title is Once On This Island, Jr. , and she got a part in the ensemble Island Chorus. So lots of singing and some dancing. Erin has a full week of rehearsals this week, then I understand through the producer that the groups will be broken down and the rehearsals will be scheduled 2 or 3 per week going forward. She's excited, and is working really hard to learn the songs. We are supposed to be getting a CD with all the lyrics and the music shortly so that Erin can also practice at home and listen to music over and over again to learn the words to the songs. This is how Erin learns best, by listening to the music and memorizing what she hears when it comes to the songs. The dancing will be a little trickier as she needs to be able to visually follow someone to learn the steps. So its important during the time that she's learning the dance steps that her placement in the group be such that she can see people in front of her and to the sides of her. Once she learns the steps though, she will do fine.
The musical will be performed over 4 days. November 15, 16, 17, and 18. It's a kind of calypso, Caribbean themed musical, so the music is lively and festive.
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