First Day of School #2

Well, the first day of school (High School!!!) for Arianna was over two weeks ago, but I did get pictures of both girls:

This school year is off to a much better start than last year for Arianna.  She is attending an online high school through George Washington University.  It uses the same curriculum that she used last year (k12), so that made the transition to high school easy for her.  She had already taken one high school class last year (Spanish 2), so she was very familiar with the high school environment, in addition to having a lot of general experience with the online environment.

From my point of view, the GWU experience has been great.  She has a teacher for every subject area (she is taking 7 courses) and the classes meet live weekly.  There is additional interaction with the teachers during the week through the email system of k12 and also through Skype.  The kids also interact during the classes and then when they want to through Skype.  Arianna went to her first club meeting (newspaper) today and seemed to enjoy it.  

One of the neat things about the program is that it is brand new.  There was a pilot group of kids who started last semester, but this is the first group of kids who are going through a whole school year together.  There is a lot of energy among both the teachers and students.  It feels like we have finally gotten a program that might provide the right thing for Arianna - at least for now!

Pierced Ears

A while ago we gave Arianna earrings for Christmas and told her she could get her ears pierced.  Well, she decided that she wanted to have it done while we were in the US this summer.  The day before our flight back to Paraguay, we went to the mall - with two cousins and two aunts and she got it done!  Although it hurt a bit, she didn't flinch. For the first few days, she had a little soreness, but things went well.

By the end of the first week, there were signs of infection.  She was taking good care of the ears, so we weren't quite sure what was going on.  She used some antibacterial ointment, and things got a bit better.  But, then they really took a turn for the worse.  I won't go into details, but we finally went to see the doctor, who thought that she had an allergic reaction to the earring (we suspect the backs, because the posts were gold, but the backs weren't).  He said the earrings should come out and stay out for 10 days.  At first the doctor couldn't get the earring out and he thought that maybe they were special earrings that she would need to go to a jeweler to get them removed (we weren't agreeing with that idea, but they were hard to get off and no one wanted to hurt her).  It took quite a bit of tugging and a nurse to get the first earring out. After he was sure that it did come out, he got the second one off without too much effort.

So, when I got home I called the woman at Claire's who pierced her ears and explained what had happened.  I asked her how long it would be before the holes started to close up.  She said it would take 24 hours to 5 days.  Well, after all we had already gone through, both Arianna and I wanted to try to keep the holes, so I asked her what we could do.  She said use the old fashioned trick of string or straw.  We opted for string (strung through with a needle).  A couple of times the string came out (at first I told Arianna to just leave them loose without tying them - bad idea), and sometimes I thought the holes might be getting small, so she used the earrings a little.  After several weeks of string and occasional earring posts (no backs), plus good cleaning and cortisone cream, the ears are finally all better, and Arianna has actually gotten to change the earrings!

I don't think Abigail will be asking for pierced ears anytime soon....