The Usual Whirlwind

What do you get when you combine a growing family business, two rambunctious boys, an entry into homeschooling and the Christmas season? Well, the first thing you get is one very tired mom :) We need to get a bigger coffee pot!

Surprisingly, we have all weathered the holiday season without too much stress so far. The kids are having a blast playing with each other and thankfully we have help! What would I do without our wonderful babysitter and my hard-working assistant who does all the shipping? The kids helped carry out 88 packages to the mail truck this morning! It's by far a new record for Alphabet Garten. I'm pleased that I've been able to keep almost all the popular titles stocked for Christmas delivery. Now I just need to do some online shopping myself!

I think part of the reason we're still pretty relaxed (if you know me, this is VERY unusual for me!) is that we don't have a lot of outside committments. We have karate lessons and we have to meet our package pickup every morning but other than that, we can adjust our day as needed. I can't imagine having to get kids out the door and picked up on time on top of running the business. I'm so glad we're homeschooling and can take advantage of the flexibility that offers. Who would have thought that taking on the responsibility of homeschooling would actually reduce my stress?! A pretty cool side effect.

The kids are both really into German DVDs right now. Maybe it's because they know I'm a sucker for it and will pretty much let them watch one whenever they ask. But it seems to be paying off for Niklas, 5. He is almost exclusively a passive German speaker - he understands most of what he hears but rarely speaks any German. However, he's started to spontaneously speak German to his brother and when talking about a DVD! Hooray!!! I was beginning to think he'd really lost interest completely. And his accent is still excellent even if he is way behind in vocabularly for his age. I'm very pleased with this development.

- Sarah