Third grade like a boss, yo

Hi, I’m Susie, and I like rainbows!

Hi, I’m Johnny, and I like football!

Hi, I’m Mikey, and I think school is neat!

I AM JACOBY, LORD HIGH MASTER OF THE DOMINION MZULNOC.

I WILL CAPTURE YOUR SOUL AS THE VERY ESSENCE OF POWER.

We’re in first grade now, kids.

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.. And also apparently ‘Barbie School’.

But fear not: she and I will have the whole why-Barbie-is-evil discussion over calorically-rich milkshakes soon enough, I promise.

You know you need to ramp up your parenting awareness..

..When you are leaving to walk to school to pick up your kid and he shows up on the bus, instead. 15 minutes earlier than you thought school even got out. <<scratches head>> So yeah, Jon’s at back-to-school night, and I’m hoping we can go ahead and pin down exactly when school gets out. Seems to be a minor detail we should probably get straight.

[ETA: Turns out they yanked him early to get on the bus with the pre-school kids who get out earlier than regular school. So take that, parenting insecurities. I wasn’t wrong after all.]

SO. I had a good weekend. Went out with a couple friends for a birthday night out, and spent a lazy Sunday relaxing. Thanks for the well-wishes here and elsewhere, this year was significantly better than last. Snort. And actually, it’s curious to me just how apathetic I was about it yesterday. It wasn’t the same.. eh.. validating need like it was then. Maybe that’s what old age does for you?

Next, the good news is I’ve started the job. Sort of. In spurts. I’m trying to ease the kids into going to daycare – which they love, HALLELUJAH – but after Jack’s meltdown when the bus showed up to take him to school today, here, at the house, I know I still need to take it slow. So, slow we’ll take it. But I tell you what, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this if I didn’t have flexible bosses and daycare providers and bus coordinators and speech therapists and occupational therapists and friends..

Right now this is my village helping me raise my child, and I am incomparably grateful. I want to acknowledge that.

And finally, random addition #1: A picture I just got of the float trip, taken with a cheap and foggy underwater camera. We called the (unknown and sort of.. green looking) kid posing in front ‘Minnow Man’, b/c he was hellbent to catch a minnow, and he had some serious ‘tude.

Random addition #2: While listening to Pandora, I was literally floored to discover I liked a song by a band I previously thought totally blew. The Get Up Kids are hometown KC darlings, and I’ve always hated their music (which strangely enough, diverged further with the side projects. I almost violently disliked Reggie and the Full Effect, but liked the New Amsterdams well enough). I thought they were overrated and monotonous. However, I have to humbly admit that I do like this song. It’s not mind blowing, but it’s definitely better than I thought they could do. It’s called “Is There A Way Out”, and in fairness to them as a mea culpa I figured I’d share it.

Happy Monday, everyone. Hope life is well.

The serenity to accept the things I cannot change..

(First and totally unrelated to the rest of the post: we have a French press now to make our coffee, and SWEET MARY IS IT SO MUCH BETTER THAN OUR OLD DRIP COFFEE. And I love – no, subsist – on coffee as my morning ritual, so although this takes longer, it’s like graduating from Natty Light to Newcastle: I can’t ever have the old kind again without knowing the truth of what’s out there. Yum.)

So, yesterday was an emotional Jack day for me. I had his IEP meeting in the afternoon, and it was so overwhelming, which really threw me for a loop after a couple years of these. First, there were ten, maybe eleven people in the room, and I had no idea why or who all these professionals were. Speech, Occupational, Resource teacher, Pre-school teacher, Kindy teacher, Principal, Special Needs advocate, Psychologist and a few others thrown in to raise the temperature level it seemed like. And it was surreal the way they discussed Jack as if he were an inanimate object, a case-study maybe. And don’t get me wrong, they are very kind and loving people, I feel ridiculously blessed we are in the school district we are. But at one point they were clinically explaining all his deficits and below developmental-average percentages, and I just burst into tears. The whole room stared at me for a second, totally confused as to why I’d be crying, when the spark of realization that they were talking to the mother of this real child hit them.

I am more anxious about how successful Jack will be in Kindergarten than I have been about anything previously. His pre-k is a program geared towards kids with various special needs. There are at least 5 adults in the room, and most of the kids have IEPs of some sort. But next year will be Jack mainstreamed in a normal classroom where he most likely could be one of maybe two kids who are special needs. The IEP team had a heated and obviously old argument about how much Para time could be allocated to him. I mean, they’re arguing over whether “Jacoby” will succeed in a three hour class with 60 minutes, or if he really needs 90 minutes of personal adult attention, and I know they’re thinking solely of time and budget. But I, on the other hand, am picturing my sweet boy having an anxiety attack and melting down in this alien environment. And the truth is, we’re all a little nervous how it will go – and this is a new feeling for us as a team. This is a wonderful school filled with genuinely caring people who adore my son (thus I adore them), so I know he has a great support net. I just feel so helpless to help him sometimes. And basically, it scares the shite out of me to know the professionals who know him almost as well feel the same way. There’s just not a lot we can do besides pray and wait.

But on a lighter note, we had Jack’s first of two birthday parties last night, along with another little boy in his class with an April birthday. The kids all had fun, and I was so proud of how Jack handled it. He was a champ, even during the few moments when I could see he was overwhelmed. At one point he stood up on his bench in the noisy pizza room and hollered THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER! Ha.

He’ll turn 5 next week, and he’s come so far it’s unbelievable. I love that little fartknocker so much my heart hurts with it.

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And I mean really, who couldn’t?