It has been a stressful week. I do love change and thrive on the activity that it creates, but it does make for a bit more snappish behavior at home – especially now that I have the kids at home with me all day. Also, I’m trying to make an extra effort to lose the 10 pounds I gained last year in Singapore (mainly by reducing intake of pizza from 4 slices to 2 slices for dinner and not pouring ranch dressing all over my broccoli and switching my drinks to all water) and as a result I’m actually hungry for every meal, but it makes the hour before mealtime a very (ahem) sensitive time in family relations.
As I came home from the dog walk tonight, I found a package from my secret pal! Nothing is sweeter than a little surprise package, especially when it’s been a long week!
It is all so beautiful – I do so rarely splurge on such nice things, it’s clear how much thought you put into this package. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
So it’s been a productive week – we found Vince a nursery school, he’ll go half-days starting on Monday, ramping up to full time as I find a job and he gets used to it. We spent about an hour there today and he didn’t want to leave. They have a kitchen that provides lunch and breakfast if we get there early enough and they are really flexible with the hours and there are a ton of kids.
The school district is going to take Edda’s paperwork from Singapore and accept it as a transfer student, so we don’t have to wait for another evaluation and approval, we can start as soon as possible. They are qualifying her for a full-day inclusion program which means that she’ll be in school from approx 9am-2pm with other typical kids her age as well as special needs kids. I just have to find a spot for her somewhere and I have just found out that the most coveted preschool in the area is already full for next fall. I guess that’s no surprise and I feel a bit bad because perhaps I could have called a month earlier or something. I just have to tell myself that there are other programs out there that have dedicated teachers, etc. etc, be optimistic that I can find something good for her.
I’ve had a couple of meetings with the school district all of which I’ve had to bring both kids with me. During one meeting, Edda went unnoticed out into the hall and fell down half a flight of stairs (she’s OK! we saw the school nurse already) and then Vince disappeared on me and I had the whole school office staff looking for him – he had run out to the parking lot and was standing by the car. Apparently he had had enough of the meeting.
In the meantime, as I’ve been dealing with setting up the schools and figuring out Medicaid waivers, Jeremy’s been working on bringing our cars back from Washington DC where they’ve been stored in my parents’ garage for 2 years on jacks.
(I know – this is really exciting – hold your horses)
Jeremy in line at the DMV to get new license plates.
Jeremy in line at Southwest to fly to Washington DC.
Apparently, Jeremy made friends with his seat mate on the plane and found out that he lives in the same neighborhood as my parents so instead of taking SuperShuttle, the nice guy gave him a ride home. I’m super impressed with Jeremy – he usually hates talking to strangers on a plane. And last I heard from Jeremy he said that he reconnected the battery on my car and after 2 years of inactivity, it started right up! Hooray!
Oh, and on a little side note, I’m bummed that Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at MIT, resigned, although I concede that there really was no way she could have held on to her job. She recently got a lot of press about how the stress of getting into elite colleges was turning into some sort of weird neurotic frenzy and that there needed to be a way to turn the stress levels down. And she was known as an energetic and dynamic presence, bringing more women into the institute and making admissions at MIT a clearer process than many other schools.
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Common name: Norway maple
Scientific name: Acer platanoides
Location: New York
(apparently an invasive species)
