The Ides of March

When did March 15th get here? Seriously, I just realized that Saint Patrick's day is on Saturday...in two days...shows you how crazy busy we have been. I got the pleasure of sitting in Mia's preschool class today. She was so excited that her Mama was coming to school with her. During one of her "centers" she was sitting across the table from me and every time she'd look at me, she'd get this sweet smile and wave at me. I ate it up, I won't deny it. The others kids really enjoyed having Mia's mom in class too, they all wanted to hold my hand whenever we had to walk somewhere. And they called me Mom because they didn't know what else to call me. Anything different than the routine is exciting.

We are struggling with where to put Mia next year because her cognitive abilities are so strong (Praise God!), but she still has physical limitations. So, I really wanted to see how she interacts with her peers and her teachers and the different activities she does at school. There wasn't anything major that made me think, "oh no", but I did notice how she struggled with many simple tasks, like hanging up her backpack, taking off her jacket...even transitioning between activities. She still has some uneasiness about physically maneuvering her body and so when all the kids got up to move to different activities, she just sort of stayed until everyone else had settled and then she could get herself where she needed to go. She did very well with listening and following instructions, she even was used to the routines, but physically she's really far behind.

I love how her teacher would ask her to read things because she knows that she can read. It was integrated so easily into everything they were doing and it didn't seem to phase the other kids at all. It was nice to see her being challenged academically since she's further along than her peers in that area.

Anyway, the plan is for me to observe the different kindergarten options for her and we've been thinking of some other plans ourselves...private preschool is a potential option along with homeschooling. One of our concerns about public kindergarten or transitional kindergarten is that all the classes are going to be "all day", so rather than getting out at 11:30, they will go until 1:30 or 2. It ends up taking up a huge portion of our day and trying to fit in all of our therapies after that, along with Calvin's afternoon nap, might be a struggle. So, that might mean she'd be pulled out of school more to do some of our private therapies...we are just sifting through all of this and processing what is best for her. We have an IEP meeting at the end of April and hopefully by then I will have been able to see some classes and get more info for next year.