Well, things seem to be stabilizing. I am doing much better, making friends and making plans. If you know me, you know I've always got a plan... I must be pretty out of sorts if I can't come up with something.
But how is the rest of the Monroe family doing? Here's the brief:
J and C are adjusting very well. We all hit a rough spot together at the beginning of the week, and we opened some friends' care packages from Pittsburgh and that helped (thanks, Maureen!). And they also have spent a lot of time with our neighbors, Dane and Lucas, which is just great. They met when Jonathan saw the dad and boys walking past our house on the way to the club house with a DVD player in his hand. It was like the Pied Piper - my boys were out the door before A and I found our shoes. The rest is history - we've seen their family every day since, and the boys have had a great time together. And you know from the Hallelujah post that the parents are the right kind too. On the belly front, C has liked the food; J has resisted but he can almost always steel himself and choke down enough to warrant dessert. Both boys declare unsolicited that they love Qatar - there's a pool and a tennis court and we live in a castle. Now that they have co-conspirators they have really found their groove.
A is coming along more slowly. And implying that she is coming along would be optimistic. She doesn't like the food, almost across the board. Her belly hurts, which I think is a combination of gas, stress, and manipulating Mom and Dad to get what she wants. We've got some medicine and that has helped but she's just out of sorts all the time, and she didn't start out as a low-maintenance child. She needs to find friends, but she really hasn't responded to the 3-year-old girls we have introduced her to so far. They're just not Tyler. I think we need to force her to socialize at first but that hardly seems fair to the other kids. I'll be looking for a preschool for her - she need to see the same kids on a regular basis. She also does better when she has Mom or Dad's full attention, which will happen much more once the boys go off to school.
Bob is happy as a clam. Really, his world hasn't changed so radically - he gets up, he goes to work in the morning, he teaches or prepares for class - his students speak English quite well and he's used to teaching ESL students in Pittsburgh, he comes home to the family at dinnertime. He's been happy to find a real feeling of openness and community in the office here. His big adjustment has been learning to recognize and talk with women in traditional dress - black head scarves and robes. It does take some practice, to remember that there's a regular personality behind the scarf or veil, you focus on the voice and eyes rather than other cues. So teaching here has been a great experience for him. And coming home for a swim with the kids before dinner is another big plus.
So that's the bunch of us. Distinctly more good than bad. And in a few weeks it's going to get better.
