Notes from June

It’s been a good month.  We did start on a particularly low note, I’ll be honest.  But June will go down as the month where it all turned around.

– Kids are out of school for the summer and it’s glorious.  Not all the time, sure, there are squabbles and so, so many dishes.  But the schedule is relaxed and laid back, bedtime is devil-may-care, and they sleep late most mornings.

– Sam is healing.  Slowly in some things (specifically eating), but once he started, the momentum is wonderful.  He’s open now, happy to go out and do things.  I’m not saying that it’s all bliss, but the issues we’re dealing with now, the anxiety, the vision problems, the diet – all of those are NOTHING compared to what it was.  I’ve unpacked my hospital bag, the next appointment is weeks away, and my little boy is back to himself.  He’s been thru so much, and has grown and changed and is a different kid in a lot of ways – but he’s still Samilicious Boy, and I’m so so happy about it.

– The school system – wow, they are really not at all interested in working with me.  We are planning on homeschooling him for at least the next year, and maybe longer.  I’ve had several conversations with the school system, and was shocked and dismayed to realize that making the decision to homeschool put us on two very different sides.   I was naively assuming that we’d all be working towards the same goal – what’s best for Sam.  Yes, homeschooling is probably necessary, given that he’s lost half the year of third grade, and I don’t want him held back, but I assumed that they’d work with me to get him back into school.  But it was clear that they had no interest in even talking to me, now that I’ve pulled him out.  In fact, the only takeaway from my last conversation with them was that they were trying to intimidate me with misinformation (I have the legal right to homeschool – they don’t get to give me permission, and they can’t deny my right to do so), and assuming that I had failed my son by not educating him for the past few months (despite my repeatedly telling them that he had been in and out of the hospital, had emergency brain surgery, and every medical professional I had spoken to assured me that I needed to get him healthy before even thinking about multiplication tables).

– That being said – I think that I’m going to continue, at least for now, with public school education for both my girls.  Very much on the fence with this – but they both like going to school, enjoy spending time with their friends, and are thriving.   It’s in the back of my mind as an option if things change – I think both of them would do really, really well homeschooling, but for now, we’ll keep it status quo.

– I’m going back to work.  Not more hours, necessarily, but I’ll be working from the office for two mornings a week.  It’s not a huge change, relatively.  It’s two mornings.   It feels more significant, just because I’ll be out of the house, working.  It’s a sign that life is going back to normal, at least a little bit.

– Julie will be going to summer camp!  There’s this lovely little FREE camp at Clark University – tennis and literacy, for three hours a day (perfectly coinciding with my hours for work).  It’s literally on my way to work, which delights me.  She’ll get a little physical activity, work a little bit on reading, and Aviva’s girls are going too – so it’s win/win for us.

– Jessie’s got her week at Model UN – and is actively searching for  babysitting gigs.  It’s a low-key summer for my girl, but that’s the way she likes it.  Glennys is coming down for a week in the beginning and maybe for a longer stay towards the end of the summer as well.