This is my last semester of undergrad! I’m so excited to start, too. I don’t technically start until Monday, but I had my first day at my internship today. I’m interning at the March of Dimes, which is an organization I’m already pretty immersed in. I figured I might as well put all that work to good use and get 6 credits out of it! I’m super excited! I’ll be a family teams specialist, with a little bit of admin work. I think it will be fun to get a feel for the inner workings of a non-profit.

I went back to campus yesterday to turn in some necessary paperwork to fix something that should have been fixed a long time ago. I found out last week during my winter session class that I’m being counted as an out-of-state student for tuition purposes, despite the fact that I’m getting a state grant that’s only available to residents! No one had bothered to tell me that I needed to fill out a residency affidavit prior to the fall semester. I paid 3 times what I should have in tuition for last fall and the winter term! Had I known, and had everything been squared away last summer, I would never have had to take out student loans.

So, I had to take the residency form to school to get notarized and turned in so they’ll change my status. I’ll get a massive refund this semester, too, because of that. That’s nice, but it still stinks that I wouldn’t have had to take out the loans I’m getting refunded to me in the first place. The only good part about that is that I was able to pay for my text books out of that refund. And because I’m taking a political philosophy class AND a politics in literature class this semester, there are a LOT of books! It’s nice to know I’ll have them all when the semester starts, though.

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I belong to an online twins site. One of our forums is entitled :Here in Holland.” It’s a forum for those of us who have children with special needs of any sort. I always perused the forum to see what was going on with my TCO friends who frequent the forum.

As of Tuesday, I am officially a part of that forum. We had Ryan’s official IEP meeting on Tuesday. He’s been getting both speech and what they call special services. The special services he has been receiving is simply a special education teacher coming in 3-4 times a week to help teach him strategies to cope with certain situations that may arise. She also tries to help him stay organized. They have been pulling back the services from the special ed teacher in an effort to see if he can function without her in the classroom. The goal is to arm him with the tools he needs (things like check lists, which he does great with!) and see how he does implementing them on his own. So far so good. If he can function with these tools and no support, he won’t need that support over at the elementary school next year. If we find, in the next couple of months that he needs the services again, they will be put into his IEP in May. Right now, though, he’s been classified as a student with a speech and language impairment. There were several times during the meeting that I wanted to break into tears. Not because anything bad was said, but because they had such praise for Ryan and the progress he’s made since they did his intake eval last Jan. It was so heartwarming to hear all the wonderful things they had to say about him (Zach, too!) and about us. I honestly can not thank any of those people enough for what they have done for him. It has been a difference we’ve seen here at home, too, not just in school.

Our next meeting will be in May, over at the elementary school. That way, his teacher, speech therapist, etc can meet with the incoming people who will take over. I think, at that point, I’m going to ask for those special service to help him in his transition. He is very apprehensive about leaving his teacher and his classmates, all of whom he’s been with since we moved here last January. I’ve been trying to hype up how great 3rd grade will be: they get their own lockers, he’ll make new friends (he’s good at making friends), etc. He’s just such a creature of habit, and thrives on routine, and doesn’t like change that I can see how he’d be a bit scared.

I wanted to share a poem with you all.

Welcome To Holland
By Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability-
to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience,
to understand it,
to imagine how it would feel.
It’s like this….

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip-
to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans..
The Coliseum.
The Michelangelo David.
The gondolas in Venice.
You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.
It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off
you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says,
“Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease.
It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around… and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was suppose to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.
But…if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things …
about Holland.

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Family, The Family, life, school, the kids | 1 Comment »

Once again, it’s been far too long since I have blogged. I find it much harder to even be in the mood to blog now-a-days. It isn’t that I don’t want to, I’m just not motivated enough to think of something to blog about, lol. Not to mention that for the last two weeks, I’ve been studying for midterms. I did very well on my midterms. I have two A’s, a B and a C.

Life has been crazy around here lately. I’ve found balancing it all a very hard thing to do. I think I’ve just finally figured out how. At least most day. School is getting a bit easier and work, well, it’s work. I love working in a cafe. Reminds me of college (the first time around, lol). The extra income is very helpful, too. We’ve managed to pay off quite a bit of debt and should be pretty well set for Christmas and the start of the new year. I’m looking forward to having two and a half months off, too

We’re getting into the busy part of the year. Halloween then Thanksgiving, two birthdays, Christmas, Matt & Jennifer’s wedding, then my birthday (see my previous post for my thoughts on that) then it’s back to school and everything the spring semester brings.

We bought Halloween costumes for the boys over the weekend. Zach wanted to be Indiana Jones, but since we found no Indy costumes (which surprised me), he settled for Anakin Skywalker. Ryan decided on a skeleton. Alex wanted to be Frankenstein’s monster, but we couldn’t find anything at Target so he originally settled on being Tony Stewart. However, when we went to WalMart, they had a Frankenstein costume, so that’s what he’s going to be. It will be the first year without at least one homemade costume. But, I suppose that’s ok. Maybe next year

I have a few new pics to share, too. Here goes

First day of school for the twins:

First day of kindy for Alex:

Alex’s first bus ride:

My beautiful new niece, who is a month old now!

Alex’s first lost tooth:

Other random kidness:

Ryan playing checkers with his friend:

Ryan’s monarch butterfly painting at school:

So, if I don’t blog for the rest of the week (or month!), have a great week (or rest of October!).

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As of today, it is T-24 days until my first day of classes. I am both incredibly excited and incredibly nervous. I don’t think I’ve been this nervous before. Or at least not in a long time. And I can’t really say it’s a bad kind of nervous. More of an excited nervous. Does that make sense? Either way, there are butterflies in my stomach something awful! I don’t think I was this nervous on my first day of college 10 years ago!!

All-in-all, though, my classes aren’t incredibly hard. Well, ok, they may be, but I’m only taking 12 hrs since I have to work around Alex’s afternoon kindergarten schedule. They are all political science classes, so they could get a bit heavy. I’m hoping I can mix it up a bit next semester. Once I see my advisor, I can schedule my classes online and I don’t have to wait forever to get an apt. like I used to have to do. Thank you, internet!

The hardest part, so far, is trying to find a job. I’m hoping to find one on campus so that I can save on gas. There are a few listed on the job board. I just need to find out if they are still available. It’s going to be a crazy semester for me, I know. However, the craziness that our family will have to deal with for the next three years will be worth it in the end. Once I have my degree and we’ve got a dual income, we can finally buy the house we’ve been longing for and start saving for college for the boys and retirement for us.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Oh, and happy birthday, mom!

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No, I’m not talking about some sale in a store somewhere. I’m talking about my house! Manic is certainly what it is with 6 kids running around. My blog name is holding true today! I have been babysitting for a friend for about 4 months and today, because the kids are all out of school, I have her two oldest. I don’t usually have them, since they are also in first grade, but on the occasion that they are off of school, I get all three. So, today I have three boys and three girls in the house, including two sets of twins (yes, her two oldest are twins, as well).

I have a ton of things I’d like to get done today, especially since the landlord is coming on Thursday to inspect our half of the duplex. I’m finding that it’s increasingly difficult to get anything done when the four older ones want to follow me around everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I love that they are interested. I just wish they were interested enough to actually help. Fortunately, they are all pretty well behaved. Of course, there is craziness in numbers, but they are keeping the crazy to a minimum today Mostly they just want to role play, which I am fond of, so that’s helpful.

At any rate, I must get off of here and attempt to get something done. I really need to pull all the Christmas decorations down and check the lights. The tree has been up for a week in anticipation of my dad coming out last weekend, but he wasn’t able to find a hotel room (anyone surprised by that? I told him!). It hasn’t been decorated or anything and it needs to be done, along with the rest of the decorating. I love this time of year!

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Christmas, Holidays, blogging, life, the kids | 1 Comment »