Change

Our lives have taken some pretty remarkable turns in the past few hours. It all started with our move. Our move to the beautiful townhome that is paces away from a playground, has a front door, and a room for each in the family. Our townhome which will serve as our new home beginning May 19th. Our new home.

Our move will literally move us into a different attendance district for schools.

Yikes huh?

That is pretty scary considering the amount of work and time I’ve invested with the staff at Sandis’s school. It is pretty scary considering the lengths I had to go to get them on board concerning appropriate services for Sandis. It is pretty scary imagining forging those bonds with a new set of staff. A new principal. A new special education case manager. New new new. New is pretty scary stuff.

You wise ones out there are smiling and nodding, and sighing under your breath that fortunately….Yes fortunately, IEPs transfer as is from school to school and from district to district. And yes, there is that sigh, that fortunately thing. But I don’t know this school’s staff. I don’t trust them. And I worry that they just don’t have the tools to DO what Sandis’s school right now is set to do. The new school is actually an older school. It is an older school that serves a larger student population with less rooms and less technology. They’ve got an uphill battle as it is.

Will they be able to provide a para for Sandis? Will they have someone who can do the number of pull-outs per day that are needed to adequately address Sandis’s sensory needs? How long will it take for them to truly understand the ins and outs of my boy? My precious boy?

And then after the questions, how am I going to tell Sandis that he is changing schools? What will this be in his little mind along with the airplane ride, move, and tonsillectomy anxieties that are already in residence up there? I don’t want to give him one more thing, but I don’t see a better choice.

You see, open enrollment at Sandis’s current school is, well, closed. I could certainly get an exception for Sandis from the principal, but that wouldn’t take into account the fact that Gracie will be starting kindergarten the following fall. And do I want to bank on the mercy of the principal for not just one student but two? And what do I do if they end up in two different elementary schools? That just isn’t workable. So we are moving on to the new (but older) school.

And ya know? Somehow things just manage to work out. This new (but older) school starts at 8:30am rather than 7:30am. Taking into account that I start work now at 8am, I have to find morning day care for Sandis that is in his new attendance district so he can bus from there to school. Just so happens that his OLD day care (before the day care that he went to before he went to school) is in the bussing district. And they can take Gracie too. And they are totally cool with diabetes, autism, and leg/hip/ankle braces. I loved them when we went there, but we left because they were too expensive. But you know what? God works in awesome ways because Congress passed a bill last year that allows daycare assistance to pay 15% more to accredited facilities than to other daycare facilities, which, well, makes them just as affordable as any other place on the block. Awesome. And you know what else? That means that I can change my shift at work from 8 – 4: 30 to 7 – 3:30, AND I can start running in the afternoons again. As early as mid-June.

Awesome

So ya, I have some more paperwork and I have some more meetings and I have one more thing to layer on the boy and the girl. And I get to do it all in MAY.

Holy shit huh? I manage to fit all of my life’s major positive stressors into one freaking month? How do I manage to do this to myself?

…. airplane ride, final IEP concerning para, tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy, MOVE, change schools, change day cares…….

May has GOT to be the month to buy a new car…….(while I’m at it…)