MOPS

Yesterday morning, Juliana and I attended our first MOPS get together. It was held at the International Baptist Church, so we had to take a cab. MOPS, for those of you who don't know already, stands for Mothers of Preschoolers and is apparently pretty well known in the States. I only found out about it here from a friend that joined and decided to give it a try. Seemed like a great opportunity for meeting other moms out here, for Juliana to spend time with other children and it provides an opportunity for fellowship as well.

Well, it was wonderful!! As soon as we got to IBC, I dropped Juliana off in the children's room and after a few brief moments of clinging to me, she ran off to check out all of the toys. I gave her a kiss and headed off to the other room to meet the women. It was a lot nicer than I had anticipated and a fairly large group of mothers in attendance. I was put into the "tilt a whirl" group...as explained, this year's theme is the roller coaster of parenting. So, the meeting started off with an ice breaker to get to know the women in our group and let everyone know how many children we had. Besides myself and one other women, each mother in this group had either 3 or 4 children, so I already felt like I had so much to learn from them!

After finishing up the ice breaker and hearing from one of the mentor moms give a short talk, we all sat together to listen to the panel of mentor moms answer questions about parenting. I really enjoyed the entire meeting and took lots of notes of course on all of their answers. One of the topics that came up was potty training, so they talked about all kinds of different tips and tricks that may or may not work with Juliana.

All around, I'm so glad we went and Juliana seemed to have a lot of fun playing with the other kids as well. When I went to pick her up, one of the women said, "Juliana is very busy!" She had a big smile on her face when she saw me, but didn't seem to want to give up the room full of new toys and play mates! The group is every first and third Tuesday of the month, so I signed us up for the rest of the term. It will be a nice, free, social outing for both Juliana and I to look forward to!