A Boy and His Blog

Archive for May, 2010

Owen will be finishing up with preschool in only two weeks which he attends on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. When Owen started preschool there in the middle of the 2008-2009 school year he was so anxious that simply leaving him in that setting was a challenge. The program was specifically for anxious children with sensory or other issues, and Owen fit that profile perfectly. I was able to leave him after a few class sessions where we weaned him into being comfortable with me leaving. This was fabulous, because suddenly I was able to leave him at other places as well, when previously he would only occasionally stay at my Mom’s house for a few hours at a time. He spent many months in preschool in a shut down muted state and barely interacted with the other kids or the teachers. Owen made some progress in getting more comfortable during the year and we then took the summer off. We returned in the fall and Owen did much better at this point. During this school year he has gone from being totally shut down in this setting to interacting with all his schoolmates and talking to his teachers quite often. When he was observed recently by someone from the public school system in anticipation for services he will get for Kindergarten, the observer told us he was doing great and that “he was the star of the classroom”! He now interacts with his teachers, has meaningful play with the other students, talks to me about the other students and teachers and things they have said, uses the hand signs when they sing songs in circle time, and sometimes participates in sharing about himself in circle time. The other mom’s from preschool and I are so pleased with our children’s progress! We all intend to get our kids together often over the summer and hopefully keep their relationships going. Owen’s preschool is giving a graduation ceremony for his class. They will have their ceremony separate from the other preschool classes. They will wear little caps and gowns and they are preparing about 4 songs to sing. Normally I think these preschool or kindergarten graduations are really lame, but this group of kids is different. They have all worked really hard and made huge strides during the time they were in school! We are all so proud of them! None of us thought our children would even be able to attend kindergarten, and now they are all prepared and excited for their next school adventure. One of the mom’s is even having a graduation party for them with a cake and graduation pinata.

Speaking of Owen’s next school adventure, he was accepted to our second choice kindergarten, which is our neighborhood school. He will be attending for half a day and he has qualified to receive an IEP (individualized education plan) in the social/emotional area. This will ensure that his teachers, aids, and school social worker are all aware of Owen’s special needs in transitioning and adapting to a new school situation. We will be meeting with the person in charge of his case soon and developing a plan for Owen. He is doing so well, he has integrated the new social skills he has learned in preschool and he has been applying them in his life in other areas. He now knows how to interact and socialize with children we meet at the park or play areas. However, he still has issues to deal with that make a large classroom setting a real challenge for him. It is really important that we create a smooth  transition for kindergarten to make his schooling a successful experience. I am very pleased with his kindergarten school. Of course public schools have a few too many kids in each classroom for my liking, but the classrooms are great and the curriculum is challenging (which is good for Owen who really needs intellectual stimulation in his life – for a typical child I would like to see a less aggressive kindergarten curriculum). I am hoping with his preschool experience, and his extra help with the IEP, he will adapt to kindergarten and continue to do very well.

Our first choice school was a Montessori school and Owen is number 25 on the list. It is possible that he will get in there, though we can’t count on it. That school has all day kindergarten, however we are having it written into his IEP that he will only be going half a day. After a few months of half days, we can then try transitioning to full days. Though I feel our neighborhood school would be better for kindergarten, I think the Montessori school would be better for Owen’s learning style in the long run, so we are prepared to enroll him there if we are given the opportunity. Owen prefers the Montessori school and is hoping that he gets in to that one.

It is sad to say goodbye to his preschool and his teachers and his friends, but I think it has helped so much to prepare him for the experience of kindergarten which we are all looking forward to.

Owen turned five last week. We spent the day of his actual birthday doing many things. First, we took pictures of him in his man’s shirt, which we have done each year since he turned one to track his growth. Then we went to The Works museum which is a museum devoted to engineering and science which Owen loves. We stayed there for quite awhile. Later that day we went to eat at the Olive Garden where Owen got a cake with a candle to blow out, and then we went bowling. It was quite a full day.

Two days later, we celebrated Owen’s birthday with family and friends at my parents house where his birthday party was held this year. Daddy and I had been finishing up our school semester, so Grammy graciously offered to host his party this year which saved us from needing to find time to clean. Owen had a few friends this year, including two of his friends from preschool. The kids had a great time playing in the back yard, doing a pinata, and eating cake. Owen got many exciting gifts and he loves them all!

Hopefully I will get some pictures up of Owen’s birthday party soon. I am way behind on photos, so this one will have to do for now.

Here I am in the third trimester already. I have a lot to do to prepare for the birth, but need to finish my last week of school first. The baby is still sitting really low, though it’s turned head down for the time being, which makes things a bit more uncomfortable because that little head is heavier than those little toes were! It is kicking me on the top right side, just like Owen used to. This position must be the cozy spot in my uterus.

We went to a midwife appointment yesterday evening and she felt baby’s head down low just like I said it was. We still couldn’t hear the heartbeat. She heard it, but I couldn’t hear it at all. I’m slightly dehydrated and need to drink more water. I was already making an effort to do so, but apparently I need to make more of an effort because something came up low on my urine sample that showed that I could be getting dehydrated.

I saw my chiropractor the other day and she worked some magic. She massaged some muscles that were pulling my pelvis out of place and balanced everything out. She gave me some exercises to do for the next few weeks to strengthen my pelvis, but I need to stop doing them in the last month so everything can loosen up and prepare for the birth. Things are going well, but as can be expected in the third trimester, I am getting more uncomfortable. I lost half a night of sleep the other night due to a bad combination of acid reflux, back spasms, and restless legs. This is all typical stuff for late pregnancy, it was just unfortunate it had to all come on the same night.

I think we have decided to hire a postpartum doula. We have some pre-tax dollars set aside to use for this expense. I made a final decision on it the other day when I asked James to make us a frozen pizza for dinner because I needed to elevate my legs but was also starving. He was very frustrated by this request and made me come in and look at the pizza to see if it was done because apparently he doesn’t know what a cooked pizza looks like. I realized that he is pretty much completely incapable of making any sort of food for us, or even heating up what I make and freeze in advance. This is not his fault; it is just due to lack of any teaching of everyday skills by his parents, combined with a lack of interest, and never experiencing a time in his life where he was required to learn this skill in order to be able to eat. Our lives are too busy at this point for me teach him cooking skills, but he pitches in quite a bit with the dishes, the laundry, the grocery shopping, and many other cleaning chores, so I am not complaining, just recognizing limitations. I think we will get by for the first week with my Mom helping out, and James following explicit instructions on how to heat up some frozen meals (I’m thinking crock pot soups, because you can’t really go wrong with that), but for the next couple weeks after that it will be nice to have someone come over for the dinner hour and make us food. If the baby is colicky, we will hire her for longer to hold our screaming baby every night. It may sound weird to hire someone to hold our screaming baby, but I already know it will save our family’s sanity and that is very important in the postpartum period.