March

I have a feeling March is going to be a rough month. Kyle has already traveled out of state once and he is schedule to go out of state (and out of country) at least 3 more times this month. Hannah gets all out of sorts when he is gone and even the toddler, who I will hereby refer to as the Hurricane on this blog, seems to be affected by his absence. When he's gone I don't sleep well and that affects my patience to boot. It's a vicious cycle! We also have a 6 day weekend coming up this week. Hannah's school's "spring break" is actually 2 days off at the end of one week, the weekend, and then 2 days off at the beginning of the next week. The change in routine and the lack of structure on breaks really throws Hannah off as well. Add to that the fact that Kyle will also be gone for half of that break and we're prepping for disaster!

On a positive note, the door alarm is working. We do not believe Hannah has managed to leave her room even one time without our knowledge and that goes a LONG way to easing my fears about the medication stealing. There's still always the daytime that she could go for it, but at least I'll be awake and alert to her absence. I try not to let her out of my sight for very long at a time.

We had her latest IEP meeting and got things set up for next year. They even added some specific and measurable academic goals to ensure that she's not being allowed to simply slide by not learning since she already meets grade level standards. They identified that her reading level was at the beginning of 3rd grade level and her reading goal is to be at the beginning of 4th grade level by the end of first grade. I think that's actually a very ambitious goal since 3rd grade is where reading gets tough. You stop learning to read and start reading to learn. Comprehension and vocabulary knowledge as well as life experiences become a bigger part of reading than decoding and those are the things she sometimes struggles with. Her math goal is to be at the end of 2nd grade level by the end of the year. I actually think that is a skimpy goal since she's mastered much of 2nd grade material already. She's only doing first grade curriculum because there are a few holes in her knowledge on a select set of concepts. Her overall knowledge and computation ability is already into the 2nd grade level now. She continues to have her various social skill and behavior goals and now has OT goals as well since that was finally added to her IEP after the full evaluation the team did a few months ago. In general, I'm quite pleased with her IEP and I think it should set her up for success next year. The biggest factor will be her teacher. The wrong teacher could be her demise. This year the principal hand picked her teacher and it was a perfect fit. I HOPE they do the same thing next year.

Hannah's ability to spell and write complicated sentences has really blossomed the past month. I'm quite impressed by her progress. They do a lot of writing in her classroom and she does quite a bit in the resource room as well. Writing was one of her biggest weaknesses going into the school year and now I would say she's above grade level on it too!

Hannah continues to grow into her role as big sister. Jealously still abounds, but she did express to me the other day that she hopes the Hurricane gets to stay forever. She likes to play with him (in small doses) and he wakes her up every morning which she pretends to hate, but really loves! Working the behavior plan is tough with the Hurricane around, but somehow I'm making it work.

Never Dull

Life it seems is never dull around here. You know how you read something and you think, "Wow! That's crazy/funny," but it's only funny because it's not happening to you and you know it'd never happen to you because things like that always happen to someone else? Well, that's my life. I'M the one who those things happen to! Kyle's been gone on a business trip to Germany for the past week and the kiddos (mostly Hannah) decided to really give it to me while I was doing my single mommy gig. Before even a day had elapsed Hannah had cut her hair again! I believe this is the 7th, maybe 8th time she's done this. This time she decided to cut the bangs she had created the last time she got ahold of the scissors completely off. She has maybe an 1/8 on an inch right at the front of her forehead left. Then she got into the baby wipes and scattered them about the toddler's room for the dog to shred. Seriously, shouldn't that phase have passed when she was like 2? Next she decided to douse the cat in baby shampoo. Let me just say that the cat was both angry and humiliated. I still haven't managed to get it all rinsed out of him yet and I'm covered in scratches from the attempts. It's quite difficult to hold a cat by the scruff while also wielding the sprayer and trying to scrub the shampoo out. Finally, a few nights ago she figured out how to pick her door lock (the door alarm still isn't in yet so we HAD to switch the door knob around while I was here alone) by prying a nail out of the wall and using that to pop the lock! She did it several times one night before I finally figured out what she was doing and where the nails were coming from. Now all pictures and nails are removed from her room. It's starting to look pretty bare in there! Oh, and just to be sure I preserve everything, a few days before Kyle left Hannah was supposed to be doing a job card chore. I had to supervise the toddler so she was left alone for periods of 5 minutes at a time. After one of those 5 minute intervals I went to check on her and it was like all heck had broke loose in the basement! Paint was smeared on the walls in several places. The paint bottles themselves were coated in paint and then doused with glitter. The dollhouse roof had been repainted. The floor was covered in glitter. There was paint on the carpet. AND she had left a trap for me of a pool of paint on the bathroom floor for me to step in and track all over the place. This was actually the 2nd trap she had set for me. The first one she made a trail of Q-tips leading to behind her chair to try to fake me into thinking she was hiding behind there instead of in my bathroom getting into my body spray. I'd say I made a fatal parenting error by allowing her to read Roald Dahl's book Matilda!

In other news, the school system finally did thier full evaluation of Hannah for her IEP eligibility. The information the psychologist gave was no surprise. We already knew she is freaking brilliant. He mentioned that she has some executive function deficits, but that at the moment they really aren't much of an issue due to her age, but will most likely become more of an issue as she gets older. That was the first I had heard of executive function problems. We actually thought we had managed to dodge that bullet. I guess not. The big kicker was the OT's report. They assessed her fine motor skills, her sensory system, and her vision. I had no idea that OT's dabbled in the vision arena, but apparently they do. Her fine motor skills were perfect. No surprise there. She showed significant sensory issues. Also not surprising. What was surprising though was that the OT felt that she had some visual processing problems. She said that her two eyes do not work together correctly and that that could be the cause of some of her hyperactiveness. She also said it could cause reading problems down the road when the type gets smaller and the white space on the page lessens. She recommended she have an evaluation by a behavioral optometrist for possible vision therapy. UGH! That's all we need, more therapy. I read up on vision therapy since I'd never really heard much about it and I can't say that I'm convinced. A lot of what I've read seems a bit like voodoo science and there seems to be no real evidence to back it up. We are definitely going to have to do some thinking about that before we jump into something else. Anyone else know anything about vision therapy or had your child do it?

Finally, Wednesday we have Hannah's evaluation at the severe behavior clinic. Apparently, even if she does qualify for the program, we will be put on a waiting list for services. It could be quite awhile before treatment could begin. Sigh. . . .

Hannah seems to be settling into sisterhood well enough. She's had her moments of jealousy and still gets quite clingy, but I see her enjoying our new little one as well. Whenever something annoys her, such as crying, I try to put it into the perspective of how she used to do it when she was a baby. That seems to help a bit. She's been very curious about how she was when she was the baby's age. We've watched some old home movies of her at that age and then compared the two of them. Boy was that a shock. She wasn't nearly as physically competent, but boy was she a lot more verbal!

Photo Notes: All of these pictures are from December. We've got swim lessons, Christmas, and working in the shop with Pap.

Kindergarten

Well, it finally happened. My baby girl is officially a kindergartner now. So far things have gone well I think. We had meetings with both the principal and the special ed staff and Hannah's classroom teacher before school started. It was formally considered an eligibility meeting, but we went over all of Hannah's needs and I really felt like we had a good base going for the first day of school. She qualified for services under an IEP and the actual IEP meeting was set for the end of the month. Her teacher seems awesome and has been doing a lot of observation of Hannah to ascertain her needs in the classroom already and it looks like she's already noticed a pattern to when her sensory needs ramp up and wants to set up a mid afternoon sensory break to help Hannah get through the morning. She called to see if I would be ok with that. Would I be ok with that? Seriously! I expected to have to fight tooth and nail to get sensory needs even acknowledged. She's also already noticed a few of the behavioral and social concerns we had going into school. I really do think Hannah's been holding up remarkably well given how hard it must be to be on her best behavior all day long. The reports have been that she's had good days, but she's been left with a hair trigger and barely enough energy to walk home! I'm sure it will get easier for her as things go on, but this week (and maybe several more after it) is going to be tough at home I imagine.

It was VERY hard for me to drop her off Monday morning at the curb and just go, but they don't even let parents into the building at drop off and pick up. In fact, if you drive you don't even get out of the car. They walk up to the car and open the door for the kids and everything. I'm sure this makes transitions easier for the kids, but it sure can be hard for the parents of the kindergartners! Especially on the first day!

Well, it's been 2 weeks since I started this post and Hannah began her 3rd week of school today and we also had her IEP meeting. I was VERY pleased with the plan the team came up with to support and supplement Hannah's education. I think she's in excellent hands. I've also been quite happy with the communication from school so far. Her teacher emails me back every time I send her a question or heads up. She also has class wide newsletters and a class website. Hannah seems happy at school and I'm looking forward to seeing how the year progresses. Tomorrow she starts heading into the resource room to do work beyond the typical kindergarten curriculum. I'm tickled pink that they truly realize that it's essential that Hannah be challenged in order to keep her behaviors in check. I'm not sure the resource room teacher has ever had to do differentiated instruction with a kid that is ahead academically like Hannah, but she seems more than willing and up for the challenge.