Catching Up with KCC
Wait, it's the end of May!!
*big sigh of relief* Yes, it's the very last day of May. I've been rushing and running and nearly weeping from exhaustion, but now I can breathe, at least a little. School's out for the summer!
Can I get a "Hallelujah!?"
The end of this school year was a bear. I know for a lot of people it feels like they drag across the finish line, so it's not just us. Yet this year was my worst year yet. Four kids in school is seriously draining me, and when end of year projects, parties, and ceremonies collide, it feels like I've jumped on a a crazy, tilting carnival ride that won't let me off.
In honor of my seasick month, I thought I'd just post some random highlights from May:
B has been a blue, blue girl. If you know B's personality, this will make total sense. B has been dreading the end of the school year since April. She didn't want to say good-bye to all her friends. So she decided she wanted to make every single one of her classmates a gift (a particular kind of crafty gift). I was heartless. I told her no because I could barely keep up with the basics, let alone throwing in a craft for a class full of kids. But B went to Grandma, who aided and abetted her in this plan. B did extra chores to earn the money, and then Grandma bought the supplies. But of course, Mom didn't get off the hook...the last weekend before school was out, we cranked out a couple dozen snowmen. (Even Terence had to help out there at the end.)
K insisted on keeping me on my toes by fainting on me one night. I wasn't sure what had happened; at first we thought it must have been a seizure. We had to get him into the doctor the next day, who after checking reflexes and eyes and all kinds of stuff, decided that K had just fainted, which was a much better diagnosis than a seizure. Still kind of odd, though the doctor said not to worry. We're supposed to keep an eye out for it happening again, just in case.
*big sigh of relief* Yes, it's the very last day of May. I've been rushing and running and nearly weeping from exhaustion, but now I can breathe, at least a little. School's out for the summer!
Can I get a "Hallelujah!?"
The end of this school year was a bear. I know for a lot of people it feels like they drag across the finish line, so it's not just us. Yet this year was my worst year yet. Four kids in school is seriously draining me, and when end of year projects, parties, and ceremonies collide, it feels like I've jumped on a a crazy, tilting carnival ride that won't let me off.
In honor of my seasick month, I thought I'd just post some random highlights from May:
B has been a blue, blue girl. If you know B's personality, this will make total sense. B has been dreading the end of the school year since April. She didn't want to say good-bye to all her friends. So she decided she wanted to make every single one of her classmates a gift (a particular kind of crafty gift). I was heartless. I told her no because I could barely keep up with the basics, let alone throwing in a craft for a class full of kids. But B went to Grandma, who aided and abetted her in this plan. B did extra chores to earn the money, and then Grandma bought the supplies. But of course, Mom didn't get off the hook...the last weekend before school was out, we cranked out a couple dozen snowmen. (Even Terence had to help out there at the end.)
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| I wish you had a better view of all the dirty dishes behind the snowmen. It would really make this a pinterest worthy display! |
Speaking of K and mishaps, he and S decided to cover themselves in brown marker one night. In the morning I told him he needed to go wash the marker off his face. Since K has regularly had to clean marker off walls using a Magic Eraser, he thought he should scrub the marker off his face with one. I was outside when all of a sudden K rushed out and cried, "My face is burning!!" Sure enough, he had given himself chemical burns on his face. He's OK (though he's still got a little bit of scabbing from it) and hopefully learned a valuable lesson: Magic Erasers are for walls, not for skin.
I also had to learn a lesson (again!!) about burns-- sunburns, in my case. I spent two and half hours outside during the early afternoon to volunteer with B's class for their water day party and ended up with a painful sunburned face and chest, plus heat exhaustion. I spent the rest of the evening nauseous and with a roaring headache, besides functioning like a heat lamp for anyone near me. Next time, I will make SURE I get sunscreen on, no matter what. (B was perfectly fine, no sunburns or heat illness for her. I envy her lovely skin tone! All the time getting wet must have helped her stay cool too. I just stood around in the heat.)
J's IEP annual review came and went and I had to do it by phone this year (since that was when I messed up my ankle and had to get in to the doctor that day). He is being moved out of the writing resource class and will have an aide if he needs one during regular class time next year. At first I was concerned about that, since he didn't meet the benchmarks we had set for him in writing, but then I learned that the writing resource group only works on grammar rules, which J has no trouble with. It's writing coherently and with details that he struggles with. So we'll see if an aide can help him do this next year without having a meltdown. He's due for a complete re-evaluation next year to see if he still qualifies as "high-functioning autistic." That should be interesting. Labels. I hate them, but sometimes they are so useful, too. It certainly helps people be more patient with J's quirks.
My open phone memory dropped down to a measley 12% by the end of the month. I couldn't even manage to consistently send or receive texts. Terence tried to get rid of apps and open things up but had no success. (He also had no success convincing me to get a new phone-- yes, I've been eligible for an upgrade for awhile now, but I hate getting new phones. As I get older I'm finding myself more and more resistant to getting new technology. I recognize that it's rather silly of me, but I can't seem to change it either.) Anyway, I found part of my problem the other day. S had been sneaking my phone to take pictures. I found hundreds of shots clearly taken by the 3 year old. Hundreds.
Awww, S! Anyway, it freed up quite a bit of memory to get her photos off. I found the same kind of stuff on my digital camera, too. Maybe I should get her a camera for her birthday. . . .
M finished her year with a bang. Huge time consuming projects, including having to shoot a commercial for a business that she and a partner planned and had to pitch to their social studies class. Another class had her researching three different colleges and making a detailed budget for attending each of them. In the end she decided she wants to shoot for BYU-Provo. A girl after my own heart. CAC made her number 2 spot, with Harvard coming in 3rd. One heck of a disparate list. (Oddly enough, Harvard came in cheaper than BYU. Apparently we are the poor of the poor in Harvard's book because our expected contribution was extremely reasonable.) We'll see what she thinks in a couple more years!
Anyway, I'm happy to send off the month of May. Now I'm hoping to have enough downtime to relax, do some fun stuff with the kids, and finally finish the draft of the new novel (as soon as I have a working computer again-- did I say that I hate new technology? Terence is trying to find a motherboard to fix my old Windows XP Dell . . . for the third time. Thank goodness for a computer-hardware-savvy husband!) So forward bound into summer! Bring on the desert heat!! We do have some exciting milestones coming up. I will try to keep up the blogging so stay posted!
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