Warning !! Major blabberpost up ahead..avoid if allergic to tales of children or of motherhood!!!

Been a good weekend :-) On Thursday (Yes I am fully aware that it´s not officially a part of the weekend and now keep quiet!) there was the parents teachers night at the kids school. I of course started stressing and fretting well in advance as is appropriate (or at least normal) until we finally left the house at 6:50. It was immensely gratifying!! We started up by meeting up with Ragnars teacher, mrs. Jamieson, who (apart from having a weird aversion to actually looking Halldor in the eye or addressing anything to him) was very pleasant in as much as she gave us good news about Ragnars progress. That he was in fact, aquiring Engilish at a remarkable level, was well above average in maths and was to be awarded a diploma of sorts the following morning at assembly for good progress and behaviour.
Now for those of you who don´t know, this is the kid whom I was told by officials four years ago would never be like normal children and that I should probably look into the possibility of special schooling for him!! So from there he has progressed to here!! A capable, socially capable curious child who has managed to conform his disabilities into idiosyncrasies. He couldn´t make himself understood in Icelandic at age six and now at age eight he is rapidly learning English. His English reading now is on par with his Icelandic reading capabilities a year ago!!The only part of his disability that is still quite obvious is his lack of social skills in the peer group arena, and somehow...judging from my own experiences and his father I think that might not dispel that easily. But from what I heard from his other teachers his classmates take very good care of him and make sure to include him in their endeavours.

Elena as it turns out is showing off her capabilities here as at home ;-) as it was so quaintly put, she´s; highly intelligent, talented and capable....but tends to want to make her own pace, control her surroundings and ... well rule. That didn´t coma as any surprice to me :-) She´s very powerful and selfwilled and will not follow any rules unless they make sense to "her" ;-) I did however find to my surprice that she was learning to approach the other kids in a softer way (obviously after failing the commando way) and then my pride: that she´d just been moved from the elementary maths group to the advanced one, seeing as soon as the language stopped impeding her they realised she was far ahead of the other in math skills and that her drawings were quite astounding, a five year old drawing full people figures with all extremeties correctly counted out and displayed.

I shouldn´t have, or rather needn´t have worried, for some strange reason, in spite of me, the kids have turned out amazingly!! Ragnar a young man who loves reading his childrens encyclopædia, discusses religion at the dinner table and is the calm somewhat reserved type. And Elena who´s a powerful, strong individual who if she manages her cards correctly (or if I manage to hammer in a modicum of self restraint) will go far if she so wishes. Talented and beautiful both of them.