First Day of School
The Hub: (in the most urgent voice while still arising from the dead) Jen, wake up. It’s 6:35!
Me: (dazed and confused) What day is it?
The Hub: It’s the first day of school and we wanted to be ready by 6:45!
Shoot! Blankets go flying off the bed. Why in the WORLD did the kids oversleep of all mornings? Usually they are jumping in our bed and whispering as loud as the possibly can that they want to go to the kitchen. But nope. Last night was The Elder’s Girlfriend’s birthday party so they had way too much fun and were totally pooped out. (Despite all that The Younger still woke up dry! yippee skippee!)
So Yes, today was the first day of school at the Primary School. This has been the most hectic week. We met his Kindergarten Teacher on Wednesday and got it all straightened out. Yes, you read that right…Kindergarten. Confused? Well you should be. I just got un-confused today.
Let’s see…I’ll do a timeline…
- Early February 2008: Don’t know where The Elder will be next fall. Don’t know what school or what grade or what program, if any of that. I did know the ideal situation. Here is the letter I wrote to the School Board. Since I can’t import all my posts, I have to link you to my blogger post.
- Late February 2008: We have his follow-up with The Child Psych who tell us HIS opinion of what we should do about school, which is kinda opposite from the transition class mentioned in the previous bullet’s link. (You’ll have to scroll down to the Doc’s Results to get to what I’m talking about, but the quotables are hilarious so you might want to take a tangent and be entertained a bit.)
- April 2008: TWO months later, we catch word of some sort of (vague) news.
- May 2008: We find out that The Elder was accepted to be in a transition class! Yet we still do not know what kind of a program, nor which school he will be attending. He was approved for ESY and ABA support during the summer! (oh, which leads to another topic completely but I’ll get to that later)
- July 2008: Again, TWO months later, at The Kiddos birthday party. Rumor had it that all the kids in the classroom (7 of them in this HFA classroom) were going to be transferred to the special ed program at the school downtown, which was not an ideal situation. There was a lot of fear of regression and all the parents agreed that our kids had come such a long way in the past year. There was a lot of preparation among the parents to fight for the kids to be transferred to their zoned schools, which was good and bad. Good because it is where they would go to regualr school, but bad because we would be breaking up the band. Fortunately, The Elder’s Girlfriend lives in our subdivision and he can see her whenever he wants (she did not get placed in our zone because of her age).
Well, now that we know The Elder is staying in preschool, I can call The Kid Doc’s office to have his appointment changed to a regular well check-up. I did go ahead and get part of his shots taken care of. He just didn’t pee in a cup.
Before the end of the month (July 25th to be exact), I got an unofficial call from The Teacher leaking that The Elder would indeed be at our local, zoned school, and would indeed be in a CDC Preschool Classroom there. I was soooooooooooooooooooo excited. (No post to link to because I had gotten lost in cyberspace somewhere by this point.)
Keep in mind this whole time that we know that the first day of school is August 11th.
- August 4, 2008: I get a called from the County School System officially announcing that The Elder “will be at the Primary School in a CDC classroom with Kindergarteners and 1st Graders. He will have a new case manager, but they working out the rosters right now. It will be one of 3 people,” and she rattles off their names (except the guy’s name because she couldn’t remember it. nice.). “Someone should be calling you sometime this week with more details, but definitely before Friday.” Great! seeing that Monday is the first day of school, it would be helpful to know the details by Friday.
- August 7, 2008: I get a call from one of The Elder’s classmate’s mom. We are zoned to the same school so we were hoping to get in the same class together. Her message went sorta like this. “Hi, just wanted to check in with you to see if you liked the teachers. I didn’t see you at the meet and greet so I assume we didn’t get in the same classroom.” There were other details to but I got stuck on “meet and greet.” What meet and greet? Did I miss something here? And by the way, when is the new teacher gonna call me with the details that I obviously needed to be filled in on??
- August 8, 2008: I actually spend the whole morning (until about 1pm) sitting with a friend at the courthouse. And since cell phones are not permitted in the courtroom, I just left it in the car. On my way home, I check my messages and I get one from the school. Yay!…not so fast. The message went something like, “Hi, this is your son’s Kindergarten Teacher. I just wanted to make sure that next Friday would be good for his stagger day.” Wha-wha-what?!?!? Kindergarten? Stagger day? And who is this lady who is neither a guy, nor have either of the ladies names that the School System gave me for who might be his CDC Teacher. I was so confused. I left a message for The Teacher. I left a message for The S/L Friend I have who used to work at that school. She called me back. First, she said I lucked out because we got an awesome teacher. Second, it sounds like The Elder is going to Kindergarten, because where the special ed classes begin on Monday, the Kindergarten students stagger in the first 2 weeks so that it isn’t so overwhelming. (Geez, when I was in Kindergarten, we were dropped off at the curb by our parents and headed into the unknown).
I was afraid to call The K Teacher back because I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, while in the parking lot of Wal-Mart (we were buying underwear for The Younger because he woke up dry AND he pooped in the potty 2 days in a row!), I got a call back from The Teacher who confirmed that was indeed enrolled in Kindergarten but it was a MISTAKE. They looked at his age a because he was 5 years old they assumed that that was where he was being placed.
I’m so confused! And a tad bit stressed out. Ok a LOT stressed out.
- August 11, 2008: No school today like I had originally planned. No school this whole WEEK like I had originally planned. The AP was leaving on Tuesday for Florida for vacation and I was banking on The Elder being in school and only having The Younger during the days. I ended up having to cancel a few things, and move a LOT around, and down right drop the ball on other things and unfortunately I don’t know which balls I dropped to know which ones to go find. Hopefully I didn’t drop them and just passed the ball to The Hub or The Asst.
HOWEVER, I had a message on my voicemail from like 7:15am from the bus driver who was trying to find our house. Wha-wha-what??? What bus? We get bus service even though we are in our zone? And even if so…why was she coming today? Kindergarten doesn’t start until Friday, right? I think. I hope. Boy that would be bad if The Elder missed his very first day of school.
(Insert story about The Younger and School that totally ruined the rest of the day. Grrr it makes me angry just thinking about it! Details soon. It will make you livid when you read about it. I sent a text msg to The Super Doc who did her best to fit me in but I wouldn’t have had time even if she could have. I send her a lengthy email instead.)
- August 12, 2008: I had to meet with a client Tuesday morning so I wasn’t able to return any calls. I had like 3 messages from The K Teacher, 2 messages from The CDC Teacher, 1 message from The Special Ed Supervisor for the County, needed to call The Teacher, and needed to call The School Psych. I didn’t get home until around 1pm so I got on the phone right away. The Hub had to totally take up the slack in other departments of life during the day for me to just sit in a one spot in front of the computer and just try to comprehend everything that was going on around me. I was pretty useless. I was able to call everyone back and take copious notes and verify, with much repeating on my part, as many of the details I could nail down regarding my child’s school status…in the middle of the first week of school. I mean we didn’t even have a Kindergarten Physical specifically because he wasn’t going to Kindergarten. Well, so much for planning anything in advanced. (I was also able to make a few calls for The Younger and the Parenthetical Insert above) The really scary thing was that no ONE person really had the fully story. Each person paused with surprise, shock, or confusion at least twice as we shared details amongst ourselves.
- August 13, 2008: I missed my business network meeting at 8am. I missed my dentist appointment at 10am. I had a huge migraine/tension headache and probably could have stayed in bed for another 2 hours. But I could NOT miss the 2:45pm meeting at the school with The Teacher, The K Teacher, and The CDC Teacher. Well, it was close. We got stuck in the pick-up line. First week of school obviously had everyone a little chaotic when it comes to pick up. We couldn’t have been luckier to have had The Teacher there and really advocate for what The Elder needs in the classroom. I personally am excited about this little blessing in disguise. I think he will really do well. He still gets CDC support of course. And then in October we are going to review his IEP at the official IEP meeting and that should give us enough time to set some new goals in this new environment.
- August 14, 2008: The Hub took The Kiddos over to The Gma’s house to hang out with her so I could sleep in. I woke up at 10ish to an empty and quiet home. I didn’t know what to think. So I went back to sleep. (The poor bus driver tried to come get him again that morning. We were just all confused on this!) Once The Hub got The Kiddos, he took them on a school supply spree, seeing that that was YESTERDAY and school started TODAY. Then The Hub (I should call him The Super Hub) took The Kiddo’s a birthday party (The Elder’s Girlfriend’s). When I got home from my meeting last night (9ish) they were conked out! I went in there and laid down next to them and watched them sleep for a while. After all, I hadn’t seen them ALL day pretty much. I missed my little guys.
- August 15, 2008:
The Hub: (in the most urgent voice while still arising from the dead) Jen, wake up. It’s 6:35!
Me: (dazed and confused) What day is it?
The Hub: It’s the first day of school and we wanted to be ready by 6:45!
Me: (to The Elder) Wake up. It’s time to get ready for school. The bus is picking you up today.
The Elder: (looks at me with a crinkled forehead, stands up, heads down the hall, and sits at the kitchen table. without saying a single word…or to stop to pee)
I sat by the window with a phone ready to call the bus driver if she wasn’t there by 7:15. We all waited patiently. Well, some more patiently than others. Here are some snapshots:
The Hub: (in the most empathetic script) So, are you ok with having a Kindergartener?
Me: (relaxed and confident) Oh, yeah. He’ll be fine. It was not knowing if I had a Kindergartener or not that was killin’ me!
At the end of the day, I got to spend one-on-one time with The Younger, I survived the pick-up line, and I got out of taking The Elder to The Kid Doc to get the rest of his Kindergarten shots thanks to The Hub.
Final Statistics:
The Elder is attending a Regular Ed Kindergarten Class with 18 students total.
Today was his first Staggered day of 6 students. He will have another stagger day next Friday and then he will go full-time, 5 days a week, 7:45-1pm starting August 25th.
He will continue to have CDC support, and I need to verify he will continue to get S/L since it is on his IEP. That one slipped my mind.
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Tag…You’re It!
Little Me is going out of business. (They might already be out of business by now.) We stocked up on the cutest little argyle socks of a variety of colors for the boys and little striped fleece coats. They had racks and racks and racks of footies pajamas that were so cute that I just wanted to buy them all. We are in this trend where we are dressing the boys alike. (Hey it’s cute and as long as they let me, I’m going to have fun playing dress up with them since I don’t get to have a girl.) And it isn’t a total waste of money because The Younger will eventually wear 4T and by that time, The Elder probably won’t allow me to dress them alike. On the other hand, a lot of the twinning has been at The Elder’s request. Mmmm So much fun!! Too bad I can’t put them in pink. Anyhoo….
We didn’t buy any because it isn’t as fun to get cute PJs for The Younger if you can’t get it for The Elder too. I think The Elder gets a little claustrophobic in body suits, especially ones with the enclosed footies. He has refused to wear them since he was 18 months. The Younger will wear them in 80 degree weather. We actually had to hide them last summer because he would pitch a fit to wear them.
On Christmas Eve, The AP was so thoughtful to purchase nice matching Timberland Footies PJs for the boys. The Hub and I looked at each other with this “Thanks, I really really really hope he wears it” kinda look. Since The Elder is the one who has been requesting dressing the same, we took that angle. We put them on The Younger first. He of course loved them. Then I showed them to The Elder…
“Look! Just like brother’s!!”
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” (screaming and running away.)
“Don’t you want to dress like brother?”
“I can’t like that! It’s too scary to me!”
“What is?”
“The Tag”
“Well put them on and I’ll tear the tags off.”
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Not that.”
“Which one then?”
“That one.” (with no pointing to give me a hint)
“This one?” (pulling at the inside label)
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! That one! That one right dere!”
“The tag on the zipper?” (the zipper pull)
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Not that one.”
He’s totally lost his patience with me at this point. Likewise, I’m running out of tags to point to. I’m beginning to believe that it is an imaginary tag…
“Show me. Point to it. With your finger.”
“Dere.” (quick flick of the hand – still not helpful)
“Lay your finger on it.”
“That one. Dere.”
It was the embroidered Timberland Emblem on the left breastside…
Well, there’s no cutting that out, so I left the tags on and handed them to The AP apologizing that he wouldn’t wear them. She was planning to return them when she got back from New York (she didn’t get to see the ball drop – sad).
So while she was gone, The Hub and I tag teamed on Tub Time duty. He had to shower anyway after his run so The Elder showered with him and The Younger got the tub all to himself. When we got to my bathroom to use the hair dryer, The Younger had already picked out his PJs – The Timberland ones! The Elder asked,
“Where’s mines?”
“Your PJs?” He nods. “You didn’t like them so she’s taking them back to the store.”
“But I want the same as brother.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“These? With the Tree?”
“Yes.”
So I sneaked into The AP’s room to look for them. I brought The Younger with me so I didn’t feel so guilty snooping around. I had a witness. Ha! Luckily they were in plain site. I brought them to The Elder and ask the same questions.
“Yes, I want to wear dose.”
“Ooookayyyy.” I say tentatively.
“Um, you need to take dese off.” (the tags)
“Put them on first and then I’ll take them off.”
He complied. I even left the tags on for a while in fear that he would change his mind. Finally I gave in to his request, letting him know how permanent a decision this was. Evidently when I ran to get the PJs, The Hub ran to grab the camera. We both knew this was picture worthy, even if for a few seconds. But he wore them all through the night and even requested to wear them again on New Year’s Eve. “Where’s my NEW PJs? The ones with the socks?”
I would say, “My baby’s growing up,” but they are footies pajamas. Nothin’ says “baby” like onsies! Look at my babies!
By the way, they carry footies at Target that 5-foot (and shorter) humans can wear. I got a pink one with princess frogs on them! Too cute! And sooooo warm! =o)
