parents meeting

we had a meeting at the day care place last night.  they talked about the kids schedules, and the learning philosophies, etc.  they did it mostly in czech, with some english and german parts.  for the czech, we were assigned a translator (one of lumi's teachers).  it was good to see how the program in the school has developed since it was just lumi there and the 'program' was just hanging out with her.

there was an exciting discussion about the lunches.  the price is going up, partially because they underestimated last year, and partially because the catering company is raising its prices.  they use a child-friendly company with mostly organic food, but the price per day will be 125 crowns.  this is about 6 US dollars.  not a small amount!  currently we only pay around 40 crowns per day, because the smaller kids get a half-portion (although they say lumi eats *all* of that so i think that may change soon).

however, there was also a fun icebreaker where they put a pile of toys in the center of the room and each parent had to pick the toy that they thought their kid would most want to play with, then tell who their kid was, etc.  we got off easy, because lumi adores dolls so we just picked the doll.  but anyway it became kind of a feel-good we-love-villa-luna discussion, because parents talked about how happy their kid was there.  and when it was our turn i spoke about how it's been challenging this first year living here in the czech republic where neither kimmo nor i speak the language and there are all these new things to figure out plus a new job, but no matter what was going on it was wonderful to know that lumi was happy and we are 100% comfortable with the people who take care of her.  and i got a little trembly!  her teachers were quite touched, i think.  lumi is a favorite anyway because she was the first kid enrolled at the daycare and she is very sweet-natured and open to being loved, and also i think the teachers feel this mothering instinct even toward kimmo and me because we're just bumbling along in prague.

the other good news is that we tried a babysitter for the first time in many months.  we had been a bit traumatized about how much lumi seemed to hate the babysitter we tried last december.  but this was great!  lumi cried a little when she realized we were leaving without her, but she seemed to really like her.