Ahhhhh!!!!!!!

Just when I thought decisions were getting made and things were starting to come together we're thrown a curve ball and start questioning our decisions.

Just some background. Before we found out for sure that Orin could start at CMIS in January, we were continuing to go through the application process with Grace. If he didn't get in we still wanted him to be able to go to Grace in the Spring. Two weeks ago he had a "developmental readiness assessment" where he was tested on his academic abilities at this point. The point of it was to make sure that Orin is ready for Kindergarten. They do it for every child. When it was over the test administrator talked to me for a few minutes (I would be getting the entire results later on) and let me know what she thought. Basically, she said he is developmentally advanced in almost every area. And then she basically said that his language skills were off the chart. Seriously, she was going on and on and seem genuinely shocked at how advanced it was. Now I knew that Orin read really well. But she didn't even test his reading. I hadn't mentioned it to her before hand so she didn't even realize it. (Other than the fact that he had to write out the word "EACH" and she was surprised when he said, "That says "each.")

So then she starts talking about what they could do about it all. Things like putting him in 1st grade instead of kindergarten. Not that we would want to do that. But you get the picture. At this point we were still hoping that he'd get into CMIS so we didn't really pay much attention since we didn't think he'd go there. From everything we'd read and all the people we had spoken to, Grace and CMIS were pretty much the same academically.

So anyway, we though "cool." It's always fun to hear that your kid is smart, right? But we knew these are both very small International Schools...they don't have tons of special programs...they are happy just to have enough teachers each school year!

But we did hope that either school would help out with his reading and give him other types of assignments besides learning letter sounds and simple words with the rest of the class.

So back to the present. We have felt very rushed with all of this school stuff. One of the reasons is because both schools are in totally different parts of the city and we would need to find a house by the school. So we can't find a house until we are sure of the school. We had talked to many people about the schools, did our research.

So we emailed Grace to tell them we had decided to send Orin to CMIS. When the principal wrote back she was kind and said she was sorry to hear that. She also said that she had been excited because they got a new gifted talented coordinator last year and had started a new special program for advanced kids...and she was hoping Orin could be in the program. WHAT? Why did no one tells us about this? Even the woman who administrated the test and was talking about 1st grade and stuff didn't mention it. This is HUGE thing. We thought that neither school had anything like this. Believe me, we had talked to a lot of people. Obviously not the right people. Even the school administrators don't really talk about it much because it's so new...unless they find a child who would be right for the program.

So, now what to do? We emailed CMIS to ask what the do regarding kids who are beyond the level of what is being taught. He sort of evaded the question. Orin gets his "test" done there in a couple of weeks. But we don't want to wait that long to find out more about their policies.

We like everything about CMIS. It's close to where Damien will be working, it's incredibly diverse, he'll be around kids from different religious backgrounds and won't be in a "Mini-America bubble." But if he really is advanced, we don't want him to loose out on that. We want him to be challenged and don't want him to be bored (which we always knew would be an issue in Kindergarten anyway since it's pretty much all about reading.) If Grace really does have a good "gifted" program, it would make a huge difference. Especially if CMIS isn't willing to do anything at all about it.

So we're frustrated. We still can't find a house because we don't know where to find one. We want to be close to whatever school he goes to. We're back to the unknown. We are worried that after going and talking to the Principal at Grace we still won't know what to do. So our prayer right now is that God would make the right decision perfectly clear. And that we are completely content with our circumstances as they are right now as we wait even longer to get settled.