Track and Field

Today we had the annual track and field event at the school.  I was with Logan from 9-11:15am and then Isabel from 11:15-2:30pm.  It was a long day, but a lot of fun and it went by really quickly.  I just wish I would have thought to pack a lunch or something.  I was starving!

Logan did really well.  He participated in almost everything and seemed to have fun.  The last station was where they could buy snacks and little tokens (junk) with their prepaid debit cards.  After the last station Logan wanted to go home.  I think all of the kids were tired.

Isabel had a great time.  Always always always has to be first in line, first for everything.  She had a blast.

Girls team plotting their strategy at a 'team meeting'. So funny.

Girls vs boys.

New shark slippers

Beauty parlor

Are you ok?

This little phrase from a couple of moms at soccer practice today.  Am I ok?  Sure, I mean, of course.  But I knew they could see my haggard face and tired eyes and knew that I was not 'ok.'  These sweet moms offered to take Isabel for play dates 'anytime!  We would be happy to!' They know the struggles I have been having with Logan.  They are so kind.  Things have caught up with me this week.  I'm tired.  Really tired.

Yesterday was a very bad day.  It started off with incredible frustration and fear over Logan's seeming lack of ability to remember a sight word.  One little sight word.  The weight of his diagnosis and disability just landed in me yesterday morning with a huge thud.  I kept hearing the words 'we may need to be realistic about his disability' over and over again in my head.  I was scared.

Fast forward to school drop off.  Here is a little back story.  So the first few weeks of school were very challenging getting Logan out of the car and into school.  That is putting it very mildly.  Usually I was lugging him like a sack of potatoes over my shoulder while he was kicking/screaming/biting/scratching/pinching.  It got to be too much so one of his aides gave me a PPCD pass to drive in the staff parking lot and directly drop Logan off with his aide in the morning.  I usually walked Izzy in after handing Logan over.

Fast forward to yesterday.  This (I'm not going to use the adjective I want to, but it rhymes with snitch) from the front office is out back (PPCD drop off) barking orders and basically telling everyone what to do.  Logan's aide comes to get Logan and warns me.  Then she comes over and basically talks to me like a 6 year old about how dropping off here was 'a courtesy for PPCD kids.'  And some other shit, but I stopped listening and just nodded my head.  She wanted me to drop Logan off and go back and park and walk Izzy in.  No bitch.  No.

What I wanted to say, but didn't, goes something like this:

Fuuuuuuuuuck you!  A courtesy?!  A COURTESY?!  How about if I just utilize the bus service provided to kids with disabilities and have Logan ride the bus to school with a full time aide?  That way I'm taking up a hell of a lot more resources than just 7 feet of curb space you've provided me as 'a courtesy.'  You're welcome.

Ugh.  So that shouldn't have put me in a (for lack of a better word) tizzy, but it did. I was really upset.  Not to mention the fact that I'm up at the school busting my ass routinely to help out the teachers, etc  and I feel like I had just been shat on.

Deep breaths.  I'm feeling much better.  Tomorrow is track and field day at school and I'll be there all.day.long.  Logan's aides are both out and they were all 'sooooo....are you volunteering to help tomorrow?'  Yep.  I'll be there.  With bells on.

Reading Rainbow

After a rough start to the morning I was lucky enough to go see my friend's lovely new house while it was being inspected.  It was perfect.  Definitely a fun way to spend a couple of hours today!  After that I had Isabel's parent-teacher conference.  I was expecting all amazing things about my girl.  While it was mostly amazing I was a little disappointed that her DRA (reading level) didn't go up at all this summer.  Boo.  Parent fail.  We had workbooks people!  Oh well, she's still on level, so no big deal.  Everything else was good.  The little diva is quite the social butterfly and likes to quietly go 'visit' her friends at other tables while her teacher is doing 1 on 1 reading with other students.  Apparently she is quiet, but it inhibits her friends from completing their assignments.  She says 'but Mom, I always complete my tasks.'  And the other day I guess she picked off some of her hair tie and walked over 4 students during carpet reading time to give her friend the pieces of the hair tie.  No way girlfriend, no way.  So we definitely have some things to work on.  Her strong points were logical thinking and math.  Her father's daughter for sure.

I've heard that reading usually just clicks for kids.  Some are faster than others, but usually in 1st or 2nd grade there is a huge reading surge and they just 'get' it suddenly.  While Isabel can read on level, she is by no means a strong reader.  I'm hoping it will click for her this year!  This about sums up our reading most nights:

In super proud Mom news, I heard that there is a girl in her class who is having a sort of harder time making friends with other students.  Some of Isabel's other friends weren't being very nice to this girl.  One girl even said she didn't like her because she was 'weird.'  Isabel said to her friend 'that's not very nice and I don't think she's weird so I'm going to play with (friend's name).'  Yes!

Logan's parent-teacher conference is tomorrow...stay tuned!

After dropping Logan off at ABA on Tuesday's I take Isabel to gymnastics.  We usually get there a little early so she plays on the playground or we read.  Today as I was reading to her she notices some squirrels in the trees above us.  I'm reading and she's literally going "squirrel!" 

So I keep reading and then I feel a very hard thump on my back.  Those fuckers fell of the tree and on to my BACK!  UGH!!!!!!

Going around the house

Logan has decided to share his bug with me and Brian.  Luckily it seems like it's just a 24 hour thing.  I was totally down for the count yesterday and Brian came home from work about 10am and has been in bed since.  I guess Isabel is next?

Today we have speech, soccer and 2 hours of ABA.  Lord help me.  Last week I totally spaced on speech and just forgot.  I never do that!  They were very kind about the no-show.  I got Logan's new evaluation from the private speech eval.  Lots of room to grow.

I have Logan's parent teacher conference tomorrow and Isabel's is on Wednesday. I'm excited to see what Isabel's DRA is.  I have no clue where she is right now.  They haven't assigned books or reading groups yep.

This weekend Isabel killed it at soccer!  She scored 7 goals and just played great!  She had a fun time.  I had fun watching her!  Poor Brian had to go get snacks for after the game.  I forgot we were signed up this week.

Sunday Brian took the kids to the playground Sunday and they both climbed up to the spider web.

Last night Logan somehow put thinking putty in his hair.  Oh my.  It was a huge mess.

He is now sporting a few bald spots.

Yep, I did

I sent Sir Pukes a lot to school today.  His pedi said it's ok since he didn't have a fever and had 3 doses of antibiotics.  So I sent him to school.  He had a great day!  He had part of his speech evaluation.  They are 'very concerned.'  No shit.

Izzy had been 'looking forward' to her flu shot all week.  I'm not kidding.  I had to reschedule it from yesterday to today and she was disappointed.  I think she was just trying to psych herself up.  About 3 seconds before go time she looked at me with big tears and said she didn't want to do it.  Poor thing.  We held hands and she looked at the ceiling and it was over quickly.  She got 3 toy tokens, so she was happy.  She did walk out of the office with this absolutely increadibly ridiculous limp.  I was quite amused.  She claimed she couldn't walk.  We went to Target afterwards and she somehow miraculously regained her ability to walk without a major limp when I said she could get an icee.

The Pukes

I washed all of the bed sheets, 2 of the comforters and a big blanket.  Yesterday. And then Logan woke up at 3am covered in puke.  And then proceeded to puke 9 more time before 9:00am.  Needless to say the washing machine was running all day long.  Poor little dude.  Strep test came back positive, but his tonsils weren't inflamed.  I'm starting to think he's just a strep carrier.  He always tests positive.  Off we went with amoxicillin and Zofran.  The Zofran really helped with the puking.  He was starting to get really dehydrated quickly.  His lips were pale, etc.  We tried pedialyte but he wasn't having any of that.  He has been able to keep down water, so that's good.

Poor little dude:

He had been up since 3am and finally crashed in his bed at 3:30pm.  I let him sleep until 5 and then we had to take sister to soccer.

He went through 6 outfit changes, 3 sheet sets and a car seat today.

Crossing my fingers tomorrow is less eventful!

Bless their hearts

They tried.  And they tried to rationalize, deflect, etc etc.  We called them out.  We had our point taken.  Turns out chatting with the assistant director of special education for AISD at a parent support meeting the night before you have a meeting scheduled can result in, well, results.  We will see what happens in 3 weeks.  It was very emotionally taxing.  That's all I'm going to say on the interwebs.

After the long long meeting Brian and I were both spent.  Brian was planning on working from home, but ended up just trying to regroup.  ABA got cancelled, which was sort of a relief.  Logan and Brian hung out while I took Isabel to the pool. 

Everyone was starving when I got home and I realized that we had no food in the fridge.  Oops.  So we made due with a smorgasbord of stuff.  Not too bad and everyone (at least the kids) was full.

We have no plans this weekend.  Amen!  Even Isabel's soccer game was rescheduled from Saturday to tomorrow night.  Is it wrong that I just want to head to Houston and get spoiled by my parents?  Probably.  It has been a long few weeks and it looks like it will be a long road ahead.

At least we have our AMAZING Halloween village to gaze at!  My dad did a fantastic job and I really can't thank him enough.  All of my brain power was taken up with Logan's stuff so I called him one day literally to ask about how to plug things in to an outlet.  No joke.  Anyway, it turned out absolutely amazing.