Uganda for one year

I can't believe we have now lived in Africa for a whole year!

The school the girls attend is amazing in many ways. Swimming is part of the regular curriculum,but both girls shy away from any kind of swim team training or practice, much to my dismay. They love to swim for fun, but even though they have wonderful potential, they do not want to do any type of swim competition or training.

Sophie loves school. She has many friends and is very popular. Lots of her schoolmates vie for her attention. She said she loved dogs, and some little boys in her class started crawling around and barking. She's becoming a bit preoccupied with "crushes" and who likes who, but I think it's all normal developmental stuff. She professes to love math best, although she is not very quick at it. She started playing violin this year but loves recorder better.

Vivian claims to hate school. She has a hard time getting along with people. She is a very loving child and it seems that her issues come from being over sensitive. Many times she claims that "no one wants to play with her" and she doesn't have "any friends". If she perceives two girls ganging up on her, she says that "no one" likes her. Her teacher has only good things to say about her. She is a natural born leader and very very bright when it comes to her school work.

She's been having issues wetting her pants. This only happens at school. It doesn't happen at all at home so of course it is situational. She hasn't even wet her pull up at night. She claims that the bathrooms at school are dirty. Or that boys are trying to look at her. She likes her privacy so we will continue to work on the pant wetting issue. She is holding and holding it so long that by the end of the day, she just lets it go. It happened before break when she was getting ready for swim class, and the teacher said she was mortified and really embarrassed. They have given her permission to use the bathroom for the 3rd graders since it is cleaner. These problems never happen at home so that tells me there is a lot of stress going on at school.

We are just coming off of a long break - 3 weeks for Christmas holiday. I am sure it will not be easy for her to go back to school, but she is doing very well.

She tells me she loves me all the time, tells me she is sorry to have to say it, but she loves me a bit more than she loves Daddy. She wants to be with me all the time, never wants to be away from me. She loves to play the "Love Game" where we profess our love to each other. "I love you more than the stars love the sky" and "I love you more than the God loves the whole world!"
She always wants someone to play with, but no matter who we invite over for a playdate, she ends up unhappy.

If we invite a friend of Sophie's, she claims they leave her out.

If we invite a friend of hers, the friend inevitably ends up playing with Sophie because she is so easy to get along with. Vivian likes to dominate and tell everyone what they must play and gets very upset if everyone doesn't go along with what she wants to do.

She also loves to eat and peeled 6 bananas yesterday morning without asking permission and wanted to eat them all. She did eat them all, plus 2 hotdogs for lunch, plus 2 chicken burgers for dinner. She asks for candy constantly, as does Sophie.

Vivian does very well with her reading. Both girls lost a tooth on the same day, Tues Jan 3. Viv lost her first front tooth and Sophie lost an eye tooth on the bottom. Tooth fairy has been taking one extra night to get here while we are in Africa.