So kids got their report cards for this quarter. Good grades abound! Journey's getting a lot of proficients, which I'm very proud of. There are still a few "In Process" ones, but she's getting a lot of what she's learning, which is good to hear. I'm very proud of her! We'll be getting her IEP goals sheet back today, to tell us how she's doing on that as well.

Ryan did perfectly, once more. He got straight A's again for this quarter as well! Hopefully they'll be holding another Honor Roll assembly and I can go and see him get another Principals Honor Roll ribbon for his good work. I'm so proud of him!


 

Hello again.
Thought I'd drop by and write for a little while. I'm bored and I don't feel like reading, I feel like typing, so here I am.

Journey and Ryan are doing good. Ryan's been getting a lot of 100%'s on his work lately, which is really good. It's bringing his grades up. Right now, he's carrying 4 A's and 1 B. I really wanted him to get his science grade up to an A so he could have the Principal's Honor Roll for this semester, but I suppose he could get regular Honor Roll. Either way, I'm very proud of him! I've been helping him study for his MSA's, explaining to him that he really needs to slow down, read the questions thoroughly, and work out the answer, and that he'll still have time to fill out all his questions. He tends to panic with the clock and thinks he has to rush through, but he ends up making a lot of mistakes that way, and it lowers his scores. So I'm working with him to make sure that he realizes he can still take the time to make sure things are right before he moves on without missing something.

Journey's taking level tests in her kindergarten class to see where she sits for her math and reading skills. So far, she has a 3 out of 5 for her reading, but her teacher said she was going to continue with the testing on Monday to see if she could make it to a 5 because she was still reading things when they had to stop for time. I just ran through her sight word flash cards that we made this summer, and she knew all but three of them. She's doing really good. I'm very proud of her.

I was mystery reader for her class on Friday. I brought a giant Skippyjon Jones book that I read for Ryan's kindergarten class to Journey's. The kids loved the story! I got to stay for the end of the day as well, when Journey packed up, got a prize from the prize box (she got a blue card on Friday! Way to go Journey!), and went out to go talk about her day with her special ed teacher. I brought up to her special ed teacher how Journey wanted her to come to her birthday party, and she said she would definitely attend, even though it's in August. She just adores her special ed teacher. I do too; she's wonderful!

We went over to my friend Jenny's house for my (late) birthday on Thursday. I brought a cheesecake for everyone to eat, and Jenny made dinner for us that night. It's so good to have a friend like her. I honestly only have three friends in this whole area, so it's good that I get to spend time with her when I can. I'm hoping for another friends out date night with her, where we can go to dinner and catch a movie again. We did it last year, and we had a good time! I hope we can do it again this year! Instead of a movie though, maybe we'll go shopping instead.

Had a wonderful birthday on Monday. Spent the day with Don and the kids, who had the day off because it was Martin Luther King Jr. day. I got to sleep in (which I say was my gift from the school! LOL), and then we went to Olive Garden for dinner, my favorite! I even got sent birthday cards from out of state! One from one of my best friends in Connecticut (the one that came out this last summer to stay with us), and one from one of my favorite people in the whole wide world! She lives in Alabama. It was very special to get cards from them. My best friend sent me a CD for my birthday (which, I know times are hard for her right now, so for her to send me anything at all, I appreciate immensely!), and my friend from Connecticut sent me a kindle cover for my kindle! I was a very spoiled girl for my birthday!

Other than that, things are going well. Going in on Tuesdays to Journey's class. I adore working with the kids, they're so sweet and funny!

Hope everyone else is doing well!


 

It's snowing out today. As much as I despise snow, I think it's the only precipitation that should be going on in winter. No rain, no sleet, just snow. It's melting as soon as it hits the ground though. I hope that means the ground is warm, and not that it's going to turn into ice.

As of January 5th, Journey has officially been on her IEP for a year. I think it's done her a world of good. She now tells me things about her school day without me even looking at her progress report. I hope this keeps up. We're still working on the reading and math of her education, but the writing she has down quite well. She's quite the little writer too; she writes lists of words (how she thinks they're spelled anyway), and leaves them all around the house. I found one the other day talking about Sonic the Hedgehog and a boat. perhaps one day, WdC will be seeing Journey's writings!

Her teacher says she's in the average for math and for reading, which calmed me down some. I was afraid she was really behind, and seeing as I'm letting the teachers take over the teaching (if she's not reading by herself by this summer, I'm going to teach her my own way to get her to learn correctly), I hope she stays in the average or picks up.

There's something wrong with my meds.
My mood stabilizer is anything but stabilizing. I've been a range of emotions for the past two months, and it's kind of upsetting. It's my personal belief that the tablets they switched me over to are not as effective as the old ones. I would ask for the old ones again, but they say they're not manufactured anymore. I was hoping I could switch to the name brand instead, and see if that works any better, but I'd still have to take the tablets that I already have and wait for my prescription to run out. I've scheduled an appointment with my psychiatrist, hopefully she can get me on something stronger, so I won't be like this anymore. It's very upsetting to me. I don't like going through a range of emotions in a matter of hours. I don't miss that part of me.

Other than that, everything's going normally around here. I'll be sure to come back when I have more update information.


 

So I was talking with a friend, who has a son that's a grade higher than Journey. We were talking about strengths and weaknesses of school subjects, when I came to realize, Journey is struggling in almost ALL school subjects. It broke me down, and I started crying.

I wish this didn't have to be so hard for her. She still doesn't know how to read right now. Don was trying to read "Hop on Pop" with her last night, and she struggled mightily. He finally got flustered to the point where he just took over and read it to her instead.

Journey struggles in math as well. She doesn't know if she's supposed to be counting up for adding or counting down for subtracting. She gets lost on the number line.

The one thing she has improved on the most is her writing. She can write all her letters, she can spell phonetically, and she writes complete sentences. Maybe she'll be a writer, like her mom.

But I feel for her. Today, I got to thinking of the "What Should Have Been"s. What if Journey was a normal 5 year old girl? Where would she be now? What if everything came as easy to her as it did to Ryan?

But then I get to feeling terrible, because I'll never know what that Journey is like. I'll never see that Journey. I'll only ever know the one she is now, the one that struggles. The one that needs assistance. The one that's so sweet, it breaks your heart to be without her.

Would she be as sweet and kind and caring if she was a normal 5 year old? She wouldn't even begin to know how to hurt someone's feelings, but it's so easy to hurt hers. Would that be different if she didn't have the delay?

It broke my heart the other day when I went into her class one Tuesday. The speech therapist pulled Journey out of class to run an assessment on her. One of the little girls I was working with said "I'll never get called out of class like that for a test. I'm too smart for that". I didn't know what to say other than "It's not about how smart you are." I don't want them to think she's dumb. She's not dumb. She just struggles. She struggles to read, she struggles to do math, she struggles socially, she struggles verbally, but she's not dumb. I just wish she didn't have to go through all of this. It's not fair. She didn't do anything to deserve this. And then I get to thinking about how the developmental pediatrician said I could've caused it, and how it's my fault that I'm making her struggle through all this, and it kills me.

I'm trying so hard to teach her how to read and do math. When I explain it to her, she seems to understand, but I don't teach it the way that her teachers do, so they're teaching her techniques that counteract the ones I'm teaching her, and this is part of the reason why she struggles. So I've decided to let the teachers do their thing and teach her, because I don't know how they're doing it, so I can't copy from them and continue that strategy here at home for her. But then the way I see her struggle just hurts my heart so bad. She was starting to understand when I teach her. At least, I thought she was. I feel like anything I'm trying to do either hinders her or sets her back, or confuses her. So what do I do?

I just wish she didn't have to struggle. I pray she doesn't have to struggle the rest of her life.


 

Went over to my friend Jenny's house yesterday and baked up a storm! We baked for 12 hours yesterday, and made A LOT of stuff! Jenn is very ambitious, so we had a lot of projects, but it was all worth it! My Christmas present from her was getting to keep some of the goodies we made! We're going to have a delicious Christmas! Now I feel kind of silly that we have break and bake cookies for Santa though, because we have a bag full of homemade sugar cookies, a bag full of homemade chocolate chip cookies (that I made myself! I'm so proud!), and a bag full of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies (my favorite!) that we could put out instead. Oh well, it depends on if that email from Santa shows up or not that I make the break and bake ones.

Looks like our Christmas shopping is completely finished too! We just have one thing to pick up for Ryan, and then we're good to go. I think we're going to have to exchange pants that we got Ryan for Christmas to a different size though. I hope I can find the receipt for them. If not, I'll just print off the e-receipt that I got from Old Navy and try to exchange them from that. Jenn said that Target has boys jeans on sale for $8.99, so I gotta go check that out and see if I can't get him some of those as well.

Tonight we're doing my Christmas gifts-we're going to Olive Garden for dinner! I've been excited about this for ages! Olive Garden is my favorite place to eat. It's my Christmas gift for us to get to eat there. Then we'll see about getting me a Kindle for Christmas as well...but if we can't, I won't be too sad. I'll just wait for tax time to come to get one.

Other than that, not much else going on! Getting to sleep in is nice...my internal alarm clock only lets me sleep till 8:30 am though. Being off of my sleeping pills really makes a difference. My sleep patterns are much more normal. If I don't see you all again before then, Have a very merry Christmas, and a safe and wonderful new year! Happy holidays to you all!


 

Well, almost ALL the Christmas shopping is done! Except for maybe a couple things here and there, it looks like we got everything! Whew! My biggest concern was paying off the layaway for Ryan's big gift from Santa. Got that taken care of no problem! We went out last night after getting a baby sitter to get some jeans for the kids, some pajamas, a few sweatshirts, some socks and underwear. I know kids aren't thrilled to get that kind of stuff for Christmas, but they need it, and it's good to get. Santa may get all the fun stuff, but we get the practical things. Besides, when they find out the truth about Santa, they'll realize that we were able to provide both the fun stuff AND the practical stuff for them. For now, we'll let Santa take the credit.

So far, the kids have kept true to their promises. Ryan hasn't been nosy in a very long time, and Journey remembered to bring her homework home for the last three weeks. Ryan keeps asking me when I'm going to call Santa and let him know this LOL. I told him I'll get around to it soon, when I feel it's time. I guess he's worried that Santa will run out of time to get his 3DS if we don't message him right away.

Other than that, we're just hanging out. Holiday break has started from school (it started yesterday for them technically, because they took the day off school to come to Don's Christmas party at work), so me and the kids will be hanging out, sleeping in for the next 15 days! Ahhh, to have no alarm. A girl could get used to this!

 

Hooray! I have $40 to put towards a gift card, including my $5! 7 people finally participated! I have 2 more people to go, to see if I can make it to $50. I wrote them an email today, hoping they'll get it and send in the $5 so I can have $50 for the gift card. Even if they don't, I'll just get the $40 gift card and say it's from most of the class, which it is. I had to shake down a few people at the Big Blast party (which is a school party for the kids who sell enough items in the school's fundraiser) to get some $5's, but it was worth it, and now I can finally put together a decent gift card donation for the teacher! *Does happy dance*

Got into a discussion on my facebook about how "Happy Holidays" is a more tolerant way to wish someone at this holiday season time, and got blasted by a supposed "friend" that is a Holy Roller. She decided to be rude to me and tell me that the holiday I celebrate is NOT Christmas, and should NOT be called that because I'm agnostic and choose not to believe in Jesus Christ. She then inferred that if I'm going to have my own holiday for my beliefs, that I needed to do it at another time of year and leave HER Christmas alone. Christianity has done some really crazy things and has made a LOT of RUDE people. I thought Jesus was all about love and good will towards all? Isn't that what he teaches? Then why are Christians like my "friend" so rude and arrogant? Sickening.

Oh well. I'm celebrating the Christmas that deals with decorating trees and having Santa visit, and giving gifts, and visiting with good friends and family. And love, lots of love. Because, that's what MY heathen Christmas is all about. So fa la la la la to that! Nothing's going to keep me from enjoying holiday time, not even pious, rude people like her.


 

I'm so disappointed and grumpy.

I came up with the idea to get both the teacher and the paraeducator $50 gift cards to Olive Garden for Christmas, from the whole class. All it required was everyone in the class send in $5. You'd think that would be easy enough, don't you?

Apparently not.

I don't know WHAT the problem is persay, but I know that hardly anyone is interested in this idea. My cohort and I (the other room mom I mean!) decided to split up the class list again, and she would ask her 10 parents, and I would ask my 10. So we got on it. Sent out emails. She actually got responses from 5 people, and so far has collected $10. Me? Not so much. I had two people respond that it was a great idea, and one person send me $5. NOTHING from the other 8. So what do I do? I don't want to bail on the idea, because I want to give something to the teachers, they deserve it. But I can't spend my own $50 and say it's from the class, because that's MY $50. It's ludicrous to believe I'd need to spend my own $50 for this anyway! What is WRONG with people?! It's not like I'm going to take all the credit for this idea, take all their money and say "Look what I bought you!", no, I'm putting that it's FROM THE WHOLE CLASS. But how can I do that if NO ONE in the class participates? So angry with these people!

I talked it over with the other room mom, and suggested that if worse comes to worse, maybe her and I could split the cost 50/50 of getting a lower denomination gift card for each of them, and just say it's from us room moms, and for those of them that sent us money, we'll just send it back. That's the only thing I can think. I mean, this is ridiculous. These parents are willing to spend $10-$15 for party supplies and snacks for class parties no problem, but when you ask them for $5 for a class project, this is how they respond? AGGRAVATING!! ARRRGGHH!!!

So other than that, not much else going on. Thought it would be nice to finally update. Sorry it's not about something nicer. Guess rude people put me in a bah humbug kinda mood. I'm half tempted to send an email that says, "YOU PEOPLE ARE KILLING THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS!!", because they are. Jerks.



 

Today was the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and it was adorable! We got there early, started buttering toast (luckily two moms brought their 4 slot toasters, toasting went quite quickly!) and set up the plates so everyone got a piece of toast, some pretzels, some jelly beans, and some popcorn. Everything went quite smoothly. The only hitch was the mom that was supposed to bring the waters for the kids forgot to bring them. She didn't come in either, so we missed out on that. It wasn't that big of a deal though, because the kids could just get drinks from the drinking fountain. I knew I should've sent out a reminder email though...oh well.

So tomorrow I'm going in to get a few things done. Firstly, I need the new student's parents information, like email address and/or phone number, and then I'm going to show the teacher the two crafts that I was thinking of getting for the Christmas party and seeing which one she wanted to do. Otherwise, I'd just stay home tomorrow because it's the last day before school ends for the kids. But I have things to do, so in I go!

Me and the other room mom are planning on getting everyone in the class to send in $5 for us to get two $50 gift cards to Olive Garden for the teachers for Christmas. I have to get the new student's information first before I can send anything out, so I'll wait til after tomorrow to get that email sent out. I want to be on top of it though, because I want to be able to give them the cards before the Christmas break comes up in school. I'm going to have to plot this email thoroughly and then send it to the other room mom so she can get an idea of what to write hers to say, and then we can send them out and get moving on this. I hope we can get it all figured out and done before Christmas break comes!

I may just give $15 gift cards to all the teachers for Christmas from Yankee Candle...I don't know, I haven't thought it through yet. I was very surprised to get a gift for Christmas last year from Ryan's teacher. I'm not expecting the same again. But I do want to give to the teachers.

Other than that, not much else going on. Next week, Journey has her annual IEP meeting. We're going to meet with the occupational therapist, the adaptive P.E. teacher, and the speech therapist again, see if we can't get her anymore necessary services. Last year she was tested for speech therapy, and they turned her down, saying whatever she needed to be taught for it could be taught through her special ed for her developmental delay. After an episode where she was crying and upset, and couldn't word properly what was wrong or why she was crying, her special ed teacher decided it would be a good time to look into speech therapy again. She's looking into adaptive P.E. as well, because Journey isn't very good at P.E. when it comes time to take that class during the week, her gross motor skills still need some work. That's also why we're looking into the occupational therapist. I hope we can get a few more things done for her if possible, and I hope it helps her a lot. The special ed teacher said she's doing really well on her goals, and they're probably going to set her up with some new, harder goals. I say as long as they can get her to work on it, and do her best, then go for it. According to the special ed teacher, she can recall most of her day with great accuracy, sometimes even better than the special ed teacher can! But I find that news, because when I ask her about her day, she only says a few things, not really going into everything. I still have to rely on that daily progress report. I'll be sure to let her know that at the IEP meeting.

 

So I sent the email out yesterday to coordinate the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving party. I was going to split duties with the other room mom, but she's on vacation at Disney World right now, and I didn't want to take up her vacation time worrying about the party, so I went ahead and sent out a mass email to everyone. I didn't mean to steal some of her thunder, it's just that she was very busy, so I thought I'd help her out by sending it out as soon as possible. Also, the other reason why I sort of just took over was because if we would have waited till Monday to send all this out, it would only be one week until the party, and I wanted to give everyone more time than that. I was going to send out the email on Tuesday, but I thought I'd let the other room mom know what was going on first before I just took over. I waited till Friday, when I finally got a response from the other room mom, and I knew she was busy on her vacation, so I thought sending it out for both of us so she can have less to worry about on her vacation would be helpful. I hope I didn't overstep my boundaries and upset her, I just wanted to get it out there as soon as I possibly could, to give everyone enough time to get off from work for the party and to gather supplies. I was looking at it more from a time constraint point of view than anything else.Justifying it this way is the only way I can make myself feel better.

So far, the donations are coming in pretty good though! We have all but the water bottles covered, and we need a couple more people to bring their toasters. I'm not sure how many volunteers we have to help set up and butter toast and put the buffet out together, but I know who's bringing what so far. I'm very excited for this! I remember when we did it for Ryan's class when he was in kindergarten, I brought a 2 year old Journey in with me and we buttered toast and popped popcorn, it was a lot of fun! This is one of the parties I've been looking most forward to.

Speaking of parties, Journey was invited to two birthday parties this month so far. The first one, she had a lot of fun, but I didn't really. A lot of the moms snubbed me, and I felt socially outcasted. I didn't do a lot of socializing, and the only 4 people I would've socialized with were busy throughout the party. Maybe I should've tried harder, I don't know, I just felt really awkward, and no one was talking to me, so I just kind of sat in the background and let everything go on.

Today's party was less awkward for me, I socialized with a lot of moms, and we talked about the upcoming Charlie Brown Thanksgiving party. It was nice to have people to talk to.

Journey was also invited to a friend's house, which we enjoyed! I feel like I get to make friends too when she goes over to a friend's house. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to drop her off or stay with her (I've never done a house playdate before, this was a first for us!), so I stayed and talked with her mom while the girls played together.

All in all, I'm enjoying my time this year. It's nice to be able to talk with other adults (considering I stay at home), and I'm loving going in to be with the kids!