Today Tina got a phone call from Kai's preschool teacher, "Teacher Tammy". This isn't too uncommon, as she's called a few times to share things about Kai's experiences at school. There are only nine children in the class, so she is able to call all the families from time to time. Tammy is an old friend of Tina's and mine who we have known since our college days; she is probably the main reason we have Kai in the program. She is very candid with us, and also very supportive of Kai.

She called today to tell us about what Kai had shared in class. They are doing a unit on Thanksgiving (naturally), so today they talked about the things they are thankful for. When it was Kai's turn, he said he was thankful for his brother Ben, his mommy and daddy, and for Shen and Cameron. (Actually, she wasn't sure what the last name was he said, as he has a hard time pronouncing "Cameron" in a way that would be clear to someone who wasn't sure of what he was saying, and I think he probably was saying Cameron and Brittni.) Is there anything that could possibly be sweeter?

This is Kai's first school portrait. He looks so grown up I can hardly believe this is the same little boy we met in Baoding just over two years ago...

I haven't written on here about the changes we made a couple weeks ago with Kai and Shen's preschool arrangements. We have been active for years in our community's parent-cooperative preschool program. The program is facilitated by the local community college and we were instrumental in starting a new cooperative when Cameron was three years old. Later Tina took the job of teaching at the preschool and we had Kai in class with her four mornings a week last year. Knowing we would have Shen home this fall, Tina resigned her position as teacher, but we kept Kai enrolled in the Tuesday/Thursday program and Tina stayed with him and brought Shen as a "tag-a-long".

We then enrolled Kai in the public school's "developmental" preschool program on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. This seemed like a good arrangement at first, but as time went on we decided Kai really needed the consistency of being in only one program. While we love the co-op, we felt the public school program offered more specific help in the areas Kai really needs to work on. So now Kai goes there all five day (the program is only two hours a day) the consistency of this is really good for him and it means he is there on the day the speech therapist is there, who he really needs to spend time with. It also means that Shen is home with Tina, one on one, for a couple hours each day, and this is much more valuable for him right now than a group preschool setting.