One of the hardest things with having more than one child when one of them has special needs is trying to find a balance between them. There have been so many things that Baylee has had to sacrifice because of her brother. It may be something simple like going for a walk or bike ride, to going to the park, a party, an amusement park etc. I don't necessarily think she resents him for preventing us from going and doing all the time but I know that she is a 9-year-old little girl who just wants to have fun, especially since this is her first 'real' summer at home since I am not working anymore and she doesn't have to go to a babysitter early in the morning. It actually took her a while just to learn how to sleep in.
This year I decided to make a summer bucket list for us to complete. 50 items. Some of them were simple like camp in the back yard (for her and her dad), see a rainbow (finally completed 2 days ago!) and build a fort. Some are pay-it-forward like donating to our local Ronald McDonald House and to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's Child Life department because they have done so much to help Carson. And lastly, completely indulgent like a DQ Blizzard, soft-serve ice cream, making Icees and baking bread. Most of these are free or as close to free as I could get. As of today we have completed 38 items. Many of the things on the list are things that really only 3 of us can appreciate but we always try to have Carson with us when we do them so we are doing them as a family. I can tell you it makes me so happy to see Baylee happy and doing fun things instead of just sitting around the house on her iPad all day.
Most of this summer has been much colder than normal. Monday of this week the high was about 68 I went to the grocery store in jeans! It's the end of July in Ohio! That's insane. Usually by now it's 105, we are sweating our asses off and just begging Mother Nature for a breeze. That has hampered some of our bucket list items such as having a water fight, swimming at night and going to a water park. Maybe before school is back in we will be able to warm up enough for maybe even one of these things. If not, I may take matters into my own hands and white out those on the list and add new things...
Tomorrow is Carson's first day of home-school Kindergarten. He'll probably be studying astrophysics lol.
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Summer Bucket List:
1. Camp in the back yard
2. Go to King's Island
3. Go to The Cincinnati Museum Center
4. Make tie-dyed clothing
5. Make home-made Icees
6. Go to the Newport Aquarium
7. Go to the movies
8. Make rock candy
9. Go to a farmer's market
10. Watch fireworks
11. Go to the Cincinnati Zoo
12. Play at a playground
13. Go geocaching
14. Have a picnic
15. Go for a bike ride
16. Make homemade pretzels
17. Go to a waterpark
18. Go swimming
19. Go swimming at night
20. Go to the mall
21. Disney movie day
22. Play in the rain
23. Make a pet rock
24. Make a photo booth picture
25. Go to Jungle Jim's
26. Go to Recreations Outlet
27. Play putt-putt
28 Go to Kings Island at night
29. Make jewelry
30. Watch tadpoles grow into frogs
31. Summer reading program at the library
32. Feed ducks
33. Plant a tree
34. See farm animals
35. Go to Ikea
36. Catch lightning bugs
37. Donate to Ronald McDonald House
38. Donate to CCHMC child life
39. Have soft serve ice cream
40. Build a fort
41. Have a water fight
42. Have a UDF malt
43. Barnes and Noble summer reading club
44. See a rainbow
45. Pet a turtle
46. Have a Dairy Queen Blizzard
47. Milkshake from Rally's
48. Make a clay whistle at the library
49. Have dinner on the deck
50. Have a baking day
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Home School Here We Come!!
It has been a long time since I have posted something. To be honest, I'm so busy during the day it's hard to remember to do it at night. :) Carson is doing relatively well at the moment.
We got our approval letter from the school district allowing me to home school him which makes me very happy. I was so afraid that I was going to make the wrong choice by not sending him to school that I really had to sit down and write out a pros and cons list. Part of my reason for having such a hard time with my decision was because we had an 'exit meeting' at school at the beginning of May. This meeting was held at the school with not only the preschool coordinator, his therapists and his teacher Amber but also with the special education department for the school district.
They explained to me that since Carson already has an IEP in place that they would honor it by having him ride a bus that had 5 point harnesses in them and he would also get a bus aide because he isn't able to get on and off safely by himself. Not only that, they were promising he would get an aide for the school day. Maybe not a 1-1 aide but possibly a 1-2 or 1-3 aide depending if there were other children who had similar deficits to Carson. Since we live in a small rural community the school does not have a nurse on staff every day. Because of his diabetes, they even offered to hire a nurse to be at the school full time for him.
I was so overwhelmed when I left that day. I have heard so many horror stories about people having to fight with everything that they have to try to get aides for their children and here Carson was being handed one basically without me even having to so much as ask. So when I got home I was literally in tears because I seriously was about to have a nervous breakdown. To de-stress I started making dinner. Carson was in the other room on his iPad but he kept coming into the kitchen trying to get into the freezer where his beloved chicken nuggets are. Knowing he was hungry, I kept shooing him away so that he wouldn't get burnt by the grease in the pan for the hamburgers and kept telling him dinner would be ready in a few minutes. When he came in for the 5th time again going for the freezer I finally just said, "Okay, what is in this freezer that you want so badly??" He opened the freezer and then pushed my hand in towards a box of Popsicles. Knowing immediately he was trying to tell me his blood sugar was low, I grabbed his meter and sure enough. 58. I swear I felt like I was about an inch tall. Here I was so preoccupied with making dinner that I didn't even have a clue what he was trying to tell me.
That was what made me realize that homeschooling him (for now) is the best option for us. There have been several times that he hasn't shown any symptoms whatsoever that he is low. This happened to be one time that he was able to communicate it to me. What happens if he is in the classroom and, by no fault of the teacher, she is busy with other students and completely misses the signs? The next day I sat down and filled out all the necessary paperwork and had it in the mail by the end of that week. They were supposed to give me a written answer within 2 weeks of them receiving the letter but I still hadn't heard anything by the end of June so I called the county. They told me that they had approved it on June 1 and sent it to the local school district. They thought maybe the superintendent was on vacation because several other families in the same school had already called too.
I finally got my letter on July 23. Of course it was dated June 9. I don't care though. I'm just glad that I got it. I am officially starting August 1. I am trying a child-driven approach since trying to get him to even look at something he isn't interested in is like pulling teeth. Yesterday he counted by 5's all the way to 100 on the whiteboard so I'm not too concerned :)
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We got our approval letter from the school district allowing me to home school him which makes me very happy. I was so afraid that I was going to make the wrong choice by not sending him to school that I really had to sit down and write out a pros and cons list. Part of my reason for having such a hard time with my decision was because we had an 'exit meeting' at school at the beginning of May. This meeting was held at the school with not only the preschool coordinator, his therapists and his teacher Amber but also with the special education department for the school district.
They explained to me that since Carson already has an IEP in place that they would honor it by having him ride a bus that had 5 point harnesses in them and he would also get a bus aide because he isn't able to get on and off safely by himself. Not only that, they were promising he would get an aide for the school day. Maybe not a 1-1 aide but possibly a 1-2 or 1-3 aide depending if there were other children who had similar deficits to Carson. Since we live in a small rural community the school does not have a nurse on staff every day. Because of his diabetes, they even offered to hire a nurse to be at the school full time for him.
I was so overwhelmed when I left that day. I have heard so many horror stories about people having to fight with everything that they have to try to get aides for their children and here Carson was being handed one basically without me even having to so much as ask. So when I got home I was literally in tears because I seriously was about to have a nervous breakdown. To de-stress I started making dinner. Carson was in the other room on his iPad but he kept coming into the kitchen trying to get into the freezer where his beloved chicken nuggets are. Knowing he was hungry, I kept shooing him away so that he wouldn't get burnt by the grease in the pan for the hamburgers and kept telling him dinner would be ready in a few minutes. When he came in for the 5th time again going for the freezer I finally just said, "Okay, what is in this freezer that you want so badly??" He opened the freezer and then pushed my hand in towards a box of Popsicles. Knowing immediately he was trying to tell me his blood sugar was low, I grabbed his meter and sure enough. 58. I swear I felt like I was about an inch tall. Here I was so preoccupied with making dinner that I didn't even have a clue what he was trying to tell me.
That was what made me realize that homeschooling him (for now) is the best option for us. There have been several times that he hasn't shown any symptoms whatsoever that he is low. This happened to be one time that he was able to communicate it to me. What happens if he is in the classroom and, by no fault of the teacher, she is busy with other students and completely misses the signs? The next day I sat down and filled out all the necessary paperwork and had it in the mail by the end of that week. They were supposed to give me a written answer within 2 weeks of them receiving the letter but I still hadn't heard anything by the end of June so I called the county. They told me that they had approved it on June 1 and sent it to the local school district. They thought maybe the superintendent was on vacation because several other families in the same school had already called too.
I finally got my letter on July 23. Of course it was dated June 9. I don't care though. I'm just glad that I got it. I am officially starting August 1. I am trying a child-driven approach since trying to get him to even look at something he isn't interested in is like pulling teeth. Yesterday he counted by 5's all the way to 100 on the whiteboard so I'm not too concerned :)
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