Sarah’s dreams have come true. . . . She needs glasses! She only barely needs them, being a tiny bit farsighted, but because she was singing gleefully about how much she loved glasses while she had her annual check up at the eye doctor, the doctor figured she wouldn’t mind having glasses. Now the only issue is that we have to wait while they are being made. Remarkably, Sarah is handling the wait relatively calmly.
Amy received an exciting gift as well. A couple of weeks ago I searched on Etsy for a scoliosis brace for an American Girl doll. Not only did I find one, I could get it in leopard print and with white straps, just like Amy’s. She was surprised and delighted when she opened it.
Amy’s first day of school was better than she feared, although her class schedule was not actually what we had seen online. The actual schedule is better in some ways and worse in others, from her perspective of what classes are shared with friends. Transitions between classes are even shorter than they were last year, which seems absurd to me. According to Amy, they get two minutes to get between classes and that includes any bathroom trips, refilling of water bottles, or stopping at a locker (because they aren’t permitted to carry backpacks except to and from school). Also, there will be no graded homework. Um?? I don’t see how that is good preparation for future years of school.
Amy’s second day of school had some unforeseen excitement, that we didn’t fully understand until it was over. You may have seen it covered in the news. What parents and students were told was that there was an incident in the neighborhood so the school was in a soft lock-down where no one could enter or leave the building. Since this was a Wednesday and on Wednesdays I have to get Amy slightly early to get to Schroth therapy, I wondered how that would work. That wondering was quickly answered by a robo call telling all parents of middle schoolers to pick their kids up in person immediately. This was close to dismissal anyway, so it worked well in terms of when I wanted to get Amy, but it created a ton of slow moving traffic as the pick up line inched past the school. I think it took 30 minutes from when I got to the pick up line until I had Amy in the car and we headed towards the Children’s Hospital for her appointment. While in the pick up line I searched the news and found that it was an active shooter situation regarding someone being evicted from their home and refusing to leave. Our route unfortunately took us closer to the problem so streets we normally took were blocked. We made it just in time to her appointment. Then it took a loooong time to get home and I was anxious about getting to my evening client on time. But most importantly, we were all safe.
Carl took Sarah to her new sophomore orientation on Thursday and she started her morning by walking towards the principal, who was waiting outside to greet students, and saying, “Hi, I’m Sarah.” Her morning went well, although she was starving at the end of it. Since it was a half day there was no lunch or snack, and yet it went from 7:50am till 12:30pm!
Last year the only way I found out Sarah’s bus information was by contacting the transportation helper at the St. Anthony School Program, who then reached out to the public school bus system. So this year when we were less than a week out from Sarah’s first day and I had no information in my snail mail (why that is still the method for conveying such information is beyond me), I reached out to the transportation helper again. She wrote back the next day with the details provided to her. Oddly, the details involved Sarah having a bus stop that would be a 15 minute drive from our house. Um? That made no sense and if it wasn’t an error or couldn’t be changed then we would opt to drive Sarah to and from school instead. I made calls and left messages. And then I got the snail mail. And there was my letter with the correct details explaining that her stop is at our house. Whew! Her pickup is eeeearly. If I thought it was early the past several years, I was mistaken. Last year she was picked up at 6:52am. Now she will be picked up at 6:35am, but she is to be ready, as usual, ten minutes prior to that. So I will wake her at 5:25 on school days, and I will get up at 5:05 so I can feed the cat and have our breakfasts ready. She and I tend to rise early easily, but still! She will also get home later in the afternoon than she used to. Fingers crossed that we have a reliable regular driver. Sarah's first day is this coming Tuesday.
Carl is currently with two friends from grad school, hiking in the Dolomites in Italy, so he will miss Sarah’s first day, but he got a picture of her for orientation.
While Amy was at school one day, Sarah and I went to the art supply store near where we used to live. Sarah noticed the playground we passed on the way, a place we frequented in her younger years. She asked to go so we did. She loved it and requested it the next day and the next! Our timing was flexible enough to go three days in a row, including going yesterday with Amy. Sarah loves sitting in the play firetruck and talking about how it has no steering wheel. She also loves climbing a curved metal ladder thingie, pretending to be her younger self struggling while simultaneously supporting her own leg as if she is her current self helping. Amy and I liked to eliminate spotted lantern flies.
Yesterday we did The Great Stuffed Animal Sort of 2023, yielding a large bag of stuffed animals ready to go to a new home. We also did The Great Book Sort of 2023, which yielded only a small pile of books that we could all agree to give away. I don’t mind the small pile because the activity also resulted in both kids reading many books and remembering stories they had loved in years past.
This morning Sarah felt a little phlegmy and not quite the best, although she seems to be ok now. It’s such a tricky thing to determine what the actual problem is and how to fix it. Too much of one kind of anti-seizure med can cause stomach upset and phlegm (we think) but she needs at least some of it to control her seizures. We think limiting dairy helps reduce phlegm and this past week Sarah has had more dairy than she usually does, so that may be the issue. Or maybe it was having things with orange juice and tomato sauce that got some acid reflux going? I don’t know and I hate trying to solve such mysteries, especially when Carl is away on a mountain and largely unreachable even for consultation. Whenever Sarah doesn’t feel well I get filled with adrenaline. I’m both fearing that I mismanaged something and caused the problem or that if I don’t solve it right away it will mess up future plans. I really want her to have a healthy happy first week of school!
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