Catch Up

I have come to realize that when I have a subject that I want to talk about but am hesitant to do I stop posting.  Hmmm, I think that I will catch up and then talk about our current challenges with foster care tomorrow.

First, we had an IEP meeting for Larissa,  Honestly, we are all at the point where we don't know how to best proceed.  I do know that right before Christmas I told the school that Larissa was seriously struggling.  No longer reading for fun, no longer able to do dance, having more severe seizures. Right before school was out we changed her day to half days.

At our IEP meeting we did officially change her days to half days.  She gets out of school at 11:40. She goes to math in the resource classroom, does language arts and recess in her regular class and then returns to the resource room for writing.  She is not doing art, science and social studies at school.  Not sure how we will address this in the future.  They did discuss medical home bound for those subjects.  Problem with that is it would just extend her day which is what we are trying to get away from.  Also, some days she does well at home and some days she comes home and sleeps for hours.

The impact of shortened days is her return to dance and reading.  I find it interesting that her reading level increased after Christmas break.  When school started she was at grade level.  As the semester went on she dropped significantly.  After Christmas break it came up.  I think that her level of tiredness impacts her ability to concentrate and learn.  I am not sure what I will do next year.  I feel that I can teach her all the subjects she needs in the time that she does math and language arts at school.  I wish that we could find answers to her seizures.

Next, Larissa is back in dance.  She was invited to participate in a group number that will be doing entertainment for some local activities.  She is very excited about that opportunity.

She has also asked to do a solo at the recital, her dance of choice will be classical ballet.  She loves ballet.

Tell me, how often have your kids been out of school recently?  Our kids were off this Monday and Tuesday.  Then there was a 2 hour delay on Wednesday because the temperatures were too cold. They also have this coming Monday off.

So I took the kids to a place in Columbia called HiWire.  They loved it.

They were also exhausted.

After 15 minutes they asked if their time was almost up (each session is an hour long)

I had bought some discounted tickets, it can be pretty expensive otherwise.  Perhaps we will do it again on a cold, rainy day.

We have also been doing lots of school projects.  Honestly, these projects annoy me because ti seems like so many of them require parents to do them.  I already finished elementary school and don't feel the need to do these projects.

Anthony's latest project was on the telegraph.  He did the written part (somewhat) while I researched how to make a telegraph and bought the supplies.  I left that building to him and my husband. Anthony did most of the work and he loved it.  Now he is not satisfied with just pasting all the information on a poster board, I may have created a monster.  I was happy to see him so excited about a project (it worked).

We also attended a birthday party at the local skating rink.......where I tracked down a boy and talked to his mother.  Larissa was in tears because he was hitting her in the ball pit.  I just don't put up with that behavior.  We have been to too many places where the boys feel they can hit on her.  (Yes, they mostly are white boys and I don't understand it)  Luckily this mother took care of the situation and her boy apologized and stayed away from her so I didn't have to shadow her.

I have also been doing Mimi duty and babysitting one sweet grandbaby.  She is such a sweetie and is growing up so fast.

And finally, I am still working on my picture wall.  I struggle with working on it because it is outside of Little Man's room so hammering is out of the question when he is asleep.  When he is awake I have to be in the family room with him, this doesn't leave me much time to work.

Of course when working on a project (or two) my house gets trashed.  That would be the worst possible time to forget about a guardian ad litem visit!  Which I did.  She came in and said that this must be the normal way our house looks.  Actually, it was worse than the normal.  Sigh....

About foster care, we have been to court, been to another foster care review board, still haven't heard from Little Man's mom (since July).  More on that tomorrow.