Report Cards

Report cards came home last week and Hannah's academics were fine of course.  We found out she's reading middle of third grade level and is right on benchmark for end of first quarter 3rd grade math.  She's in first grade!  Her work habits/social skills section on her report card wasn't quite as rosy, but it was better than I expected.  The teacher listed that she needs to work on assuming responsibility, practicing self control, and respecting the rights and property of others.  She loves writing stories and is actually pretty good at writing a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end.  They have not sent home an evaluation that lists where her written language skills are since most of her classmates are just focusing on getting a single complete sentence down on the page that is legible and uses basic writing conventions, but I would guess she is at least middle of second grade for it. 

After the biting incident we started a trial on medication.  At first we thought we were seeing some pretty severe side effects after the first day on the meds so we stopped them after one day and called the doctor the next business day to check in.  She confirmed what we had already thought about which was that the medication SHOULD have been out of her system by the time we experienced what we thought might be the side effect so it was probably something else and simply a coincidence that it happened on the same day we started up the med trial.  We tried the meds again that next day after talking to the doctor, and after 2 consecutive days on them we have seen no serious side effects and only a little bit of appetite suppression.  We have also not seen any real improvements that can be measured, but she is on the very smallest dose possible and not even up to the normal starting dose for this particular medication.  Apparently the doctor did not even expect any results at this stage, she was just ruling out negative side effects.  I'm guessing that if things stay the same, sometime next week they will up her dosage. 

  

Hannah's Halloween costume for the year is finally finished.  Ever since she's been old enough to choose her own costume she's asked for something that was difficult (or impossible) to just go out and buy, so for the last 3 years I've had to make her costumes.  I'm not a crafty lady and I can't operate a sewing machine on my own (even though I DO have one) so this is always a difficult task.  I have to create something with as many premade parts as possible that needs a minimum amount of hand sewing to get me by.  This year she wanted to be a grey wolf.  I thought I was off the hook because surely wolf costumes existed.  Well, they do, but only for toddlers or in the form of the Big Bad Wolf or werewolves for adults.  So, I was stuck with making her costume yet again.  At least this year I was able to cheat a bit because I managed to find a winter hat that was in the shape of a wolf's head to use as the head (in years past I've had to create a head on the hood of a hooded sweatshirt).  That only left me with finding the appropriate color sweatshirt and sweatpants, stretchy gloves, and tube socks.  The only thing I had to actually sew was the tail onto the sweatpants.  It was a one afternoon job to get it all done.  That was SO MUCH easier than her Bolt or Toothless costumes that I almost wept in relief.  It's not the best wolf costume to ever come around the pike, but she likes it and that's all that matters.