April 2008

We've been having a lot of spring fun at school lately.

Almost two weeks ago, the early childhood center had their spring fling, which included presentations by all the classes. Ellis's class (the youngest) did a little play/presentation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which they've been studying this unit. E and his best buddy A and Cute Little Girl were the "narrators" with some help from the power point on the big screen behind them. The other kids took turns showing big posters of fruit. E and A were especially cute. They were like a standup comedy routine, totally playing off of eachother and interacting with the powerpoint. They had everybody cracking up! I wanted to make a little movie of it with my clips...there's still time. My boy's first play!!

After the presentation, the kids played outside for a bit in the warm spring sun, and then we had a little pizza lunch in the kids' classroom. E was such a little host to me, I was really touched. He went up and got a plate from the teacher who was serving and chose his little pieces of fruits and veggies (he doesn't like pizza). When the teacher instructed him to go sit down at the table, he said NO, picked up another plate and signed Mommy, and made sure I had exactly what he had and then we sat down together. It was so sweet. *melt*

Saturday was Community Day at PSD, which basically translates for our family into Inflatable Paradise. Ellis went down these slides for about two hours straight. As soon as his feet touched the ground he was saying/signing "MORE", and off to stand in line again.

The Grand Finale for the class's unit on The Very Hungry Caterpillar was a trip to the Academy of Natural Science. One of the perks of being a stay-at-home-mom: getting to go with my kid on his first field trip! And let me tell you, there's nothing cuter than a little school bus full of car seats. So how does a field trip of 2-3 year olds work? One adult per child. There were a couple of other moms/grandmas and some extra staff, and I was impressed with how smoothly everything went.

We had some time to look at the exhibits, which the kids loved.

Then it was our turn for the Butterfly Exhibit, which is a room like a greenhouse, humid and full of plants. Butterflies and moths were flying freely everywhere and sitting on the plant life. It was really cool. I think everyone was entranced from the littlest kids to all the adults.

A little excitement over here in babywatch last night.

I've been really tired this weekend. It's been lovely and warm (though I'm pleased to note that my feet are no longer swollen now that I've taken a break from basking in the sun). I rested a lot this weekend. But yesterday woke up feeling yuck. You know that weird yuck at late pregnancy that can't really be defined other than yuck? I did morning nursery at church, came home and had a quick dinner, and rested awhile. All the while feeling yuck and experiencing random contractions.

I was IMing my friend and noticed the time and it occurred to me that even though they were short and light (maybe 15 secs long), there a lot of contractions. Then I started timing them and they were like 3-5 mins apart, pretty regular, though fairly light, but definitive. So I called the midwife. Since I'm somewhere between the end of 34wk/beginning 35wk, I had to go to the hospital instead of the birth center.

When I was all hooked up I could definitely see the regular pattern of contractions (that was the only good thing about being hooked up to a monitor--I think it's cool to see the little wave read-out). I was fairly well hydrated anyway when I went in, b/c I had been drinking water all day hoping to help with the yuck. But after they realized that here we were the third or fourth hour into regular contractions every 3-5 mins, they hooked me up to an IV to see if more aggressive hydration would help. Four hours later, nothing. So I had to get three intermittent doses of anti-contraction medicine. Total yuck!!!! Made me feel jittery and my heart pound. Well, it did the trick. We got home around 2 am. And I really, really hope I can hang on for another week and a half, because I really, really, really don't want to go back to the hospital. Monitors and IV's are not for me.

It's a good thing I came in when I did, because if I had gone on for awhile I really might have started going into labor, but because we caught it early, my waters are still intact and my cervix hadn't begun to dilate.

So anyway. That's my drama. Chris was worried that this baby wouldn't have an exciting birth story like Ellis, but he's not doing so shabby at this point. I could do with less exciting myself...

... you continually have to stop yourself from asking all the old people about their hearing aids.

(And you wonder if they know they could get their earmolds in sparkles or fun colors. Just sayin.)

One of the things that needs to happen before baby is getting Ellis's IEP squared away, which is scheduled for May 2.

So far, the IEP is turning out to be a much saner arrangement than E's IFSP (the 0-3 program). It's just us and two intelligent people who are easy to work with and are specialized in deaf education. With the IFSP, there's a weird arrangement of service coordinator (who is basically a paper pusher with no specialized knowledge), a representative from a contracting agency, a crazy array of teachers providing a variety of specialized services. I find it a little annoying.

Yesterday E's new speech teacher was accompanied to our home by the person from our county's intermediate unit who supervises all the deaf ed stuff. She's really great. They both are. I imagine we probably differ a little on a personal level in terms of deaf educational philosophy, but they are really supportive of us and have been extremely helpful so far. I knew this was our official Evaluation Sessions for the IEP, but I wasn't sure exactly how they would approach it. Essentially, E had a normal "speech therapy" session, they got some information from us, and now we can check that step off our list.

I know they are qualified to evaluate him from an entire language perspective, but most of yesterday's evaluation was focused on listening and speaking with an acknowledgement of his skills in ASL. I wonder if it would also be appropriate to evaluate from ASL only point of view, too. I think I will have to ask his Deaf teacher about that. Though I'm not sure how their evaluative rubrics would accommodate that, it seems that if we're being truly consistent with our educational goals for him that this would need to take place, too. Hmm. I guess I'm off to write some more emails.