Elections!

Off to bed....

Obama won!!!  Whee!!!

Waiting on Prop 30 (California)....too close to call yet.  We need it to pass.

Very disappointed that the repeal of the death penalty is not passing, but at least the 3 strikes law is being amended.

Oh, what a crazy system we have here in California with our amendments.....S L EE EE EE EE PY.

9-year old 4th grade boys

When Iain was in 1st grade, I ended up doing babysitting for classroom meetings for a 4th grade class.  The 4th grade boys terrified me.  They freaked me out.  They were out of control, I felt, from my 1st grader viewpoint.

When I talked to other parents, they told me about how in 4th grade, when their boys were 9, suddenly they CHANGED.  They wondered where their sweet little boy went.

I've been a little worried about this whole 9 year old 4th grade boy thing.

So far, though....I LOVE the whole 9 year old 4th grade boy thing!  He understands delayed gratification!  I ask him if he has homework, he says he does. I ask when he's planning to do it, he says "after dinner".  Then, after dinner, he does his homework.  That's it....no pushing, no 45 minute whine-a-thon.  He just does it.

Yeah, he's a bit more moody.  He's more annoying in how he deals with Ria when he's in "that place."  But......I can explain to him how Ria receives his words, and he compensates.  He changes his words to Ria so she can understand.  I don't have to do much more than a few sentances (most times) to get him on track.

It is SO COOL.

I know there's a lot more 4th grade to go, but I no longer fear 4th grade boys.  I think they're great ;-).

Another SERIOUSLY cute school picture!

And here's Iain's 4th grade picture...WHAT a CUTIE!....oops, I'm supposed to call him "handsome" now.  He's that too ;-).  He's 9 now.

Ria's Kindergarten picture!

Good morning!

School picture #1 is in!  Doesn't she look mature ;-)

AND she's 6!!!

Iain's school had their picture taken 4 days later than Ria's....so I'll probably have his up next week.

The story of Ria the Towel

Ria told me this story on the beach at Christian Island this summer:

The Story of Ria the Towel

All right.

There was a towel named Ria, and she was dry, not wet.  And one day Ria got used as an real towel.  And she said, "I'm not an real towel, I want to be dry!"  And...She liked to be dry, and she ran away.  And the person said, "Oh, I'll use another towel."  Then she sneaked up behind another towel who was ?happily? being dry, but it was just real.  THE END!

(pardon the video quality of the video - it was above the limit so I had to shrink it....the audio quality didn't change)

And here's 2 happy kids on our way home from vacation....i'll post some vacation too, I'm sure ;-)  But this post has been in the works for a while (what with the video conversion!), so I ought just get it done!

Evenings....odd.

So, for the last 6 or so months, 6 nights a week, my evening activity for once the kids have gone to bed is to do 45 minutes of physio (I've allowed myself 1 day off physio a week).  I've been trying to regain control of my errant hips, while maintaining the knees and shoulder.

Starting last week with the start of school, I've been trying to do my physio 1st thing after dropping the kids at school, so that my evenings aren't so darn annoying.

Strangely enough, after 6 months of doing nothing but physio in the evenings, I'm a bit at a loss for what to do after the kids go to bed!  Falling asleep early, doing puzzles, and watching movies have filled the time nicely, but it feels WEIRD.

School Daze!

School has started....with a Kindergarten girl and a 4th grade boy!

The first 2 days of school Ria ended the day kind of out of sorts, although the teacher said she had great days both days.  Today, day #3, when I picked her up she was RADIANT.  Her smile went from ear to ear.  She was "line leader", and was so proud that when another girl had thought she was line leader, Ria "used her words."  She was on top of the world....and it seems to be going well ;-).  YAY!

Iain, being a typical almost 9 year old, gives me very few nuggets of data, but he does like his new teacher, and he seems pretty happy in class, even though his best friend is in another class.  (We did a bit of pre-thinking, and Iain wrapped his brain around how recess is the only thing that really matters for hanging with friends, so that went better than we expected!)

End of school, start of summer ;-)

Spring has sprung, and summer is in full swing!  I thought I'd confuse y'all by posting something.

My children commenting, surely, on something I said:

That was at the local glasses lab - as in, where the guys grind you new lenses for 1/2 the cost that it costs from the regular shop, what with them being the lab and all.  Nice place to have found since Ria's prescriptions are kinda going wacky.  Progressing a bit too fast for anyone's comfort, but nothing much we can do about it.  At this point we're planning to update her lenses 2x/year.  We'll be seeing the opthamologist again in October.  The main concern with progressive myopia is that it can be a sign of juvenile onset diabetes, but Ria shows no signs of diabetes (or the other rare conditions it can come with).  She just has bad eyesight in her genes, we think.

Here's Ria at her preschool graduation ceremony!  Kindergarten in the fall!!

She is, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, going to be going to the local regular elementary school for Kindergarten, rather than the parent participation program that Iain is in (yep, I'll be shuttling kids to 2 different schools, in the land of no school buses).  We tried her for an hour in Iain's school, and it was just way too distracting for her.  It was clear that a more traditional classroom would work better for her.  She's got an IEP, but its the most minimal IEP known to mankind.  No aide or anything.  We'll see how it goes.  However, she's made a HUGE amount of progress in the last year with her aide at preschool, and in the last 4 months we've had 2 sort of cognitive growth spurts that make us hopeful that the jump in class size (12 in preschool, 25 in Kindergarten) won't blow up in our faces.  She is really doing great!  She's even starting to take herself to the toilet periodically (outside of the scheduled sitting pattern we have her on) as she can sometimes feel she needs to go, so the sensations are improving down there and we're having very few accidents!

Iain has gone the way of "mom's jaw, dad's teeth."  Here's his new palate expander, which should be in for about 9 months or so before we get the actual braces to move things into place.

This spring style expander is a lot more gentle than the old "turn a key" thing, but has to be used at a younger age.  If you need to expand the palate at the more typical braces age in the early teens, you still get the key style.  The teeth that came in during the winter are kinda sideways, and they pushed one of his front teeth  out forward quite a bit so its at risk for being cracked if he falls on his face.  *sigh*.  (Ria only has 2 of her "big" front teeth, and they're already worse than Iain's crooked teeth....it is TOUGH to keep those snaggle teeth clean!!!)

Big excitement of 2 weeks ago....Iain jumped off a diving board at swim lessons for the first time!  Here he is in mid-air!

And here's Ria swimming with a noodle

Finally, the big excitement of LAST week was that Iain went to a week-long overnight camp!  This was lovely YMCA Camp Campbell again, where he did the mini-camp last year.  This picture is when we dropped him off (Ria was far more disconcerted than Iain!).

Apparently he had a bad bout of homesickness on Tuesday (after 2 nights, which was how long the mini camp was last year), but doing some archery fixed his mood, and he was fine for the rest of the week.  He's home now and everything feels back to normal (messier and noisier).

Ahhh....the California life

Late April is lovely.

The wisteria is blooming and the bumblebees buzz ferociously overhead - dozens of them.  The oranges have been picked, and the new blossoms are smelling fragrant.

This is my view from the hanging chair....quietly enjoying a few minutes until the alarm goes off and I need to go pick up some kids.

Ahhhh!

Insurance paperwork day

This is what my "insurance paperwork day" looks like.  

Don't you wish YOU were participating in this fun?

You people living in countries with reasonable health care systems can just breathe a sigh of relief that YOU don't "get" to spend 3 hours doing this, pretty much ever.  This is just sorting the responses from insurance....then I get to log them on the spreadsheet and email the guy at XXX/Google.

A small handful of checks to deposit, though!!!

Hard to believe she's my kid

Ria went to the pediatrician yesterday....48.75 inches at age 5.5.  Instead of hovering around the 97th percentile line on the growth chart, she is now flying way above it.  This is, mind you, 0.25 inches shorter than Iain was on his ***8th*** birthday.  They even measured her height a 2nd time, figuring they had it wrong.

She had a growth spurt in the last 2-3 weeks.  She grew at least one full inch...I know because I had just recently measured her against my body, and now she's at least an inch higher than she was last month.

Clearly she takes after William, not me!

*Phew* / Happy swinging girl!

Happy Swinging Girl!!

Oh, wow, here we are!

Ria's IEP is signed off, we're all set.

We even this week got a "504 plan" set up and signed off for Iain.  That's secret speak for "modifications to the classroom for a child's disability".  Might be a wheelchair ramp.  In our case its reducing homework when the practice isn't necessary (math), allowing work to be taken home (writing projects), ignoring misbehaviour in the classroom when it isn't really a big deal.

We also did Ria's tester day in a Kinder classroom in Iain's school to see how it would go.  Wow, was she distracted.  All I could think was how if she had a controlled little area, her own desk, she'd be able to focus on what the teacher said so much easier....she was just soooooo distracted by everything going on around her.  When we toured the "typical" school, I was a bit disturbed by the Kindergarten kids all sitting at their desks.....but that would be just Fabulous for Ria.  Just the ticket.  So we officially switched her registration to be in the normal neighborhood school.  She won't be in Iain's school in the fall.  She took it really well, actually.  She is very aware how she likes a calm and quiet place....and the neighborhood school will be much calmer.

IEP.  504.  School officially chosen.  Whew.  what a week.

;-)

There's always a tinge of fear and sorrow:  Will the world be gentle to her?  Will people recognize her exuberance, hidden behind the book in her hands?  Will they dance with her when she dances in joy?  But she's lovable...she's sweet and kind.  So I expect people will always be disposed to take the time to really hear what she has to say, and once they do that, she will always win them over.  She's a nifty kid.  Smart.  Funny.  Kind.  You just have to be willing to move more slowly, at her pace, and then you will hear her.

This is going to be the last big transition for her for many years.....by the time she transitions again (out of elementary school), we'll know much more how she'll turn out.  I know she'll be kicking ass....she's a stubborn little (big!) thing....I just sometimes wonder how we'll get there.

(William had me listen to lovely songs that made me cry tonight, so I'm a bit melancholy....)

Half a Brain

William and I have a joke from waaaaaaay back....that we share half a brain.

Mind you, this is of the 1.5 brains total for the marriage calculation, not the alternative of 0.5 brains total.

Tonight, while fixing the wooden towel rail that Ria broke, we were listening to some music.
Mona:  "This is the guy who starts with a 'G', right?"
William:  [not too terribly long pause], "No, it's his brother."

Hence, half a brain.

B.t.w., Garnet Rogers v.s. Stan Rogers, the song was "Three Fishers."

(Similar conversations occur with books... William says it's most often for "The Venus Equilateral" by George O. Smith, which gets described as "The book with the light blue cover with the thingy on it and both me and my dad like it."  Apparently I forget that one rather often.)

just some cute pictures!

Hi everyone!

I've been so wordy, so have some cute kid pictures!  1st, Iain slurping down a mango lassi, the worlds best drink, in his mind!  Soccer (aka football) is on the screen.

 And here's Ria, enjoying a good read!

see you!

Contemplations

We're in a phase of contemplations for Ria, again.  As usual.

Iain is at a fabulous "choice" school in our public school system...parent participation, developmentally focused, etc., etc.  We have been excited about the idea of Ria being at school with Iain for months, years!

So....since finishing the IEP excitement, we've been thinking about actual Kindergarten, and realizing that Iain's school might not be the ideal place for Ria.  There is just so much stuff going on in the classroom at Iain's school, and with Ria's tendency to lose focus in noisy/exciting environments, that might just not work for her.  So, we're considering whether the regular, normal, neighborhood school might be better for her.

I've been feeling pretty odd about this idea that it might be better for her at the regular school.  Tonight, William realized that my odd feelings are stemming from the fact that, if we figure that the neighborhood school would be better for Ria, it will be the first time that the right thing for my kids will be the thing that is EASIER FOR ME.

How very odd.  Good for the kids, AND easier for me.  Is that allowed?

We're not fully decided.  We're scheduling visits for Ria at both schools so we and the teachers can watch her in the 2 environments and compare and contrast.  However, we're thinking its more likely she'll be at the neighborhood school.

*Phew*!!! What a relief.

What a lovely day.....have a picture!  This is Ria's Valentines picture from her Social Thinking class....just too darn cute!

So, we had the initial IEP meeting on Wednesday.  This is the one where they decide if she's a difficult enough case to spend any time on, if she gets services, if she gets put in a special classroom, if she speaks well enough, everything, just everything.  We've been a bit spazzy this last few weeks, months.

It ended up GREAT!  Not the ideal I'd hoped for, but definitely, I think, the best we could have managed.  Ria qualified for an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) under the autism clause, and was determined to be able to benefit from being schooled in a "general education classroom".  I.e., no "special day class" (SDC), which is what we all think of as a special education classroom from our childhoods, and no "inclusion classroom" which is kind of higher performing SDC (not sure if California terms them "inclusion classrooms", but other states do).  We were worried a bit about that, since Ria's ability to focus declines precipitously when a room gets noisy/lively, even in her 11 child preschool.  Based on reading the reports, we felt like we would either not get an IEP at all, or they'd swing way the other way and want to stick her in an SDC.

Admittedly, we only got the IEP by the skin of our teeth.  Ria was too borderline to clearly match the federal definition of who MUST be given special education services, so even though we all agreed on her strengths and weaknesses, she couldn't be definitively given an IEP.  They didn't even come to the meeting with draft IEP goals, which says a lot.  The director of special education was at the meeting, and she basically had to make the call at the meeting based on what we were discussing.  Luckliy, through working with the IEP advocate, we had developed a better understanding of the very basic minimum meaning of having an IEP, which is having a child who needs to be tracked against goals that are different from what the general population need to be tracked against.  Notice the lack of the word "services" in that definition.  We pushed on the "how are we going to track her progress", and "how will we measure if she is not progressing and needs more assistance" type of questions, and apparently that really resonated with the director of special ed.  Initially she's going to be assigned to one of the autism inclusion specialist for our district, who will work with the teacher to set up techniques to work with Ria, and will be in the classroom 30 minutes a month to take metrics (to measure progress against goals) and fine tune classroom approaches.

You've come so far!  Have a picture!  This one was taken by Alastair and Bev when they bravely took 3 kids, on their own, to a place they'd never been before back in January.  This is Ria, Rowan, and Iain having fun with bubbles at the Children's Discovery Museum.

The next step is to talk to the teachers at Iain's school to decide how to best place her.  The district wants her at a typical school (Iain's school is a parent participation school that is project based...a FABULOUS school, but with a tendency towards more movement and chaos, since there's often 2 or 3 different groups working on different things in the room.) and advises against Iain's school....but then they advise EVERYONE who is slightly atypical to avoid that school, so I take their advice there with a grain of salt.  We're going to see if the calmest of our 3 classrooms, possibly with a reduced day length (Kindergarten is "full day" here), would be sufficient for her.  If the teachers at Iain's school feel strongly that Ria wouldn't do well there, then we will put her in the regular school for our neighborhood-- which is also a great school, just not Iain's school.

So, we're still waiting for the draft IEP to review and comment on, but once we've done that, and decided about the placement for next year, then we are DONE with this issue until school starts in the fall!  Whee!

I cannot describe how much more relaxed I feel now that this horrific part of the process has been done.  They've been convinced, not only that Ria needs help, but also that she is WAY too close to "typical" to be stuck in a special classroom.  They see how smart she is, and her huge potential (and as is typical for her, she's charmed the socks off them all!).

We'll let you know how the school decision goes ;-).

"The Baldness Returns", coming soon to a blog near you!

In the midst of our IEP preparations, William is preparing for something else too.....to go bald once again to support research towards childhood cancers.

See his blog HERE.

See what he looked like last year in my blog post HERE.

An Insurance Victory!

We just received a check from insurance for, among other things, Ria's individual speech therapy for 2/17/11 and 2/24/11, and her *dyad* speech therapy for 2/17/11 and 2/24/11.

VICTORY!!!

I sent these in in July.
They were denied. The dyad sessions were denied "because we don't cover group speech codes", and the individual was denied "because it occured on the same date as those other speech sessions".

My insurance saviour at Google sent them back in January saying "pay them".

Jan 24: the 2/24 dates are denied "because this person doesn't have insurance with XXXX, send it to your real carrier".

Jan 31: the 2/17 dates are denied "because they are duplicates and we already finalized this one"

Feb 2: The 2/24 dates are denied for the original reasons "we don't do dyads" and "this was on the same date as another speech code, so its not covered".

Feb 3: ALL 4 SESSIONS, both the 2/17 and 2/24 dates, are denied AGAIN, because the claims are duplicates.

[Right about here we get the letter from 1/24 saying Ria has no insurance with XXX, and we fax the amusement on to our insurance saviour at Google.]

Feb 4: ALL 4 SESSIONS, are now magically approved. paid in full. ;-)

Today, we got the check.

Heh. You take THAT [unnamed insurance company]!!!

Did you miss me? and IEPs.

So, it must be easy to tell when our life is crazy, as I don't post anything, eh?

I keep thinking, "surely at least one of these areas will come to some sort of neat conclusion soon, and I'll post about it then!", but then nothing comes to conclusion.  And my progress on pictures is, erm, non-progressing.

Have a picture!  this is from our spring 2011 visit to New Hampshire, while William was still mostly bald-ish.  Ria had a bad haircut.  She HATED being mistaken for a boy.

One of the areas of our current saga is starting to work with the local school district to determine what services they might provide for Ria next year when she enters Kindergarten.  "Services" = "special education services", which is now called an IEP, or Individualized Education Plan.  We started the process to get Ria evaluated to determine if she qualifies for an IEP late last year, and since then we've been getting reports from all our therapy providers to give to the school district to guide them, and the district has been doing a bunch of testing/evaluations of Ria on their own, to determine how her "challenges" (how do you like THAT euphemism!?  Get used to it.) might impact her ability to learn in a school setting.  Filter this all through the "California schools have no money since the state keeps stealing the school money" issue, and it's clear that there is a conflict between the needs of the kids, and the money available to meet those needs.

You've made it through another paragraph!  Have a picture!  This is from the same trip out east last spring, from our visit with Mormor and Grandpa Henry.

The testing process for Ria's IEP is done, now it's just a 3 week wait until the official meeting on 2/29.

It's been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster process. The 1st date of school testing, back in January, seemed to test 100% to Ria's strengths.  She performed fabulously on the tests, so much so that the school psychologist was using careful words to prepare me for Ria not qualifying for an IEP.  The 2nd date of testing the speech therapist pulled the test that she expected would be the most likely to make Ria "fail" (i.e., qualify for an IEP), and we thought she had failed it, but when the test was scored, she squeaked past, so no qualification based on speech skills (I guess 2 3/4 years of speech therapy has been helping!!).  Then there  were various parent questionnaires, and 2 observations of Ria at her school, one by someone from the Autism group and one by the school psychologist.  Both of the observations seemed to run "short", by mine and the teacher's thoughts. We were all really concerned that they'd not stayed long enough to see Ria have to do something she REALLY struggled at. So, at this point, I'm freaking out that they aren't seeing what we see, that they're going to blow us off, etc., etc., which was in conflict from the very supportive feeling I was getting when I met with them in person.  But then, luckily, someone had told me I should request to receive the reports/test results prior to the actual IEP meeting. I did that, and though I won't get some of them until a few days before the meeting, the school psychologist passed her draft on to me to review for factual errors. I reviewed it yesterday and was just thrilled....the things she noticed and noted down from the school observation were just spot on. She described Ria to a "T". Even though she only saw Ria performing less stressful/hard academic tasks, she still saw clearly how Ria responds. Basically, even though she left earlier than we had expected, she had seen all she needed to see ;-).

So, as of yesterday, my stress level and concerns have plummeted, and I feel relatively positive again about the IEP meeting coming up.

I'm still going to get what is called an advocate, someone who is specialized in special education law to be your personal expert. I've re-realized that I function best if I have maximum data, maximum information, maximum expertise...otherwise I collapse in a puddle of stressed out goo. Hopefully we'll never need to bring the advocate to an IEP meeting, I'd like to avoid the conflict approach.  However, I need someone to help me understand if my expectations are reasonable, where is the line between what the school is supposed to help with and what we do with medical insurance.  I just don't know the lay of the land in this area, and it's stressing me to death. So, we'll hire an expert, to help in the sanity area.

The reports we got from OUR providers to support the IEP process were great. The speech one was especially interesting. Since Ria had crossed over the 5 years old boundary, new tests were available for her. Based on her progress on the old testing we had been thinking we might be able to graduate her from individual speech therapy this year, but the new testing showed some fabulously interesting discrepancies in Ria's skills. Some tests she performed at the 83rd %ile, age equivalency of 9 yrs 11 months, others she was less then the 1st %ile. It's redirected her speech therapy into focusing on different skills. We'll be continuing with them for another few years ;-).

Oh, I could go on and on about the IEP stuff, but I'll stop there.

Here, have a picture!! This is from Julia, Will, Duncan & Toby's visit in July....a short escape from the earthquake insanity that is their home in Christchurch, NZ.

In addition to the many many many (many many) layers of the Ria saga, I've been trying to reclaim my body from the abyss it seems to have fallen into in the last few years of chaos.  There's, of course, the requisite 5 MORE pounds that have shown up since I turned 40 a few years ago.  In addition, however, my hips have returned to their post-childbirth chaos, and I have this vertebra that went AWOL during our visit to England over the summer, and which I can't seem to regain control of.

Have a picture for making it this far! This is from our visit to England last summer.  Grandmother, us, and Alastair, Bev, and Rowan spent most of a week in the Lake District.

I can sometimes put my own hip back in place with my old physio exercises, but it's not reliable enough that I can give up the chiropractor visits. The one vertebra in my back is being tricky too.  I've had to up my commitment to my physio exercises....I do them 6-7 days a week, 30-45 minutes a day. I've had to add in the core strengthening exercises.  That plus trying to actually do cardio/fat burning exercise.  The weight isn't coming off, but at least the joints are doing better ;-). It just takes so much TIME. I don't get to spend my evenings doing little projects on the couch (like blogging!), I spend them doing therapy. It's frustrating, but I guess that's what I get for ignoring my body for 2 years.

Insurance is making progress, very very slow progress, but that's whole other rant/story.

Reading time....

3 out of 4 family members can't be wrong....I'd best get a book and join them, eh?