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.