So much spinning around in my head. School starts this week. So my monkey boy starts Kindergarten. Tomorrow is a gradual entrance day, so we go part of the day. (yes me too). Then Friday is his first full day, so the whole family will be there to watch him get on the bus because it’s Ken’s Friday off. Not sure how I feel about this full day Kindergarten. Actually this whole every child left behind program still gets on my nerves, even 8 years later. They put so much pressure on kids so young. When do they get to be kids? They need to know the stuff we learned in first grade before they even get into Kindergarten. The school year gets longer and longer, I mean if you’re going to go to full year schooling then do it already. Just break up the year so that there are three, 1 month breaks between sessions. I think that’s reasonable. They keep making the year longer so you know what I have no trouble taking my kids out of school to do things I think are important for family or culture. I know my mom worked around the various in-service days and breaks to do thinks like take us to DC to visit the museums, and on family trips to places we’d never been. I feel it made me a more rounded student. I graduated in the top 10% of my class. Heh, by my last semester I had 3 study halls because I’d taken all my required classes and then some, so I usually had no homework to take home because it was done in school. I spent a lot of time wandering the halls camera in hand. (It’s good to be on the yearbook committee/staff)
Of course that’s all beside the point. I know my husband will be laughing at my Friday as I start crying because my big (little) boy gets on the bus. Though I think October will be even worse because then the munchkin will be doing the same thing 3 afternoons a week. Hopefully I’ll be able to be productive in those few hours alone in the house. Maybe I’ll even get to the gym twice a week. Or maybe I’ll paint the spare room so we can move the boys in there before November. Man, getting back into a school year schedule is hard. We’ll actually have to go up to visit my mom at Thanksgiving instead of a week or two earlier, like we have been the last five years. I guess that’s fair, Thanksgiving with my mom, Christmas with Ken’s family.
The weirdest thing happened yesterday while we were at our final playgroup picnic of the summer. I had two different people asking me how much I charged for my photography services. The little girl I took newborn pictures of back in Feb is going to be Christened and her mom wants pictures of her in her gown. Another friend was asking for someone else, her friend had just spent a boatload at Picture People for portrait of her twins and older daughter. I made sure Dawn knew to tell her that my photos weren’t going to be standard portrait style photos, they’d be closer to a lifestyle portrait. She made be asking for a digital page as well. Going to have to figure out pricing for that now since I’ll have to cover the cost of a professional use license on any of my scrapbooking kits I use.
Hmmm what else, oh yeah I saw a commercial while at my mom’s that really pissed me off. The whole immunization thing just pushes my buttons now. The commercial was for an organization that wants to make all kids get all their immunizations by age two. From all the reading and research I’ve done my feeling is age two is when we should just be starting to give our kids immunization and most certainly they shouldn’t be getting 6 different vaccines at one time. I don’t know how the medical community can say that bombarding our babies with that many things at once is going to be good for them. Ok I’m going to stop because I just make myself mad all over again. I’ll just say that I’m not against vaccines at all, they are important, it’s the stupid schedule they have set up that really grinds my gears.
On to better things Quin has become so much more responsive this summer. The only thing I wish I could change would be the speed with which his brain rewires itself. I can see how frustrated he gets when trying to vocalize. He really has to work hard to consciously get even simple sounds like ahahah, eeee, oooo , mamama, bababa, brbrbrbr out when he wants to. He makes all of those sounds unconsciously when he is playing but when he’s trying during speech classes, I can see the frustration in his face. He watches everything so closely now. When ever we play Here Come the ABC’s by They Might be Giants, he watches my mouth as I sing and I can see him trying to form the same mouth shapes. So it’s a start. His imitation skills overall are becoming much better. He does the motions now for several song games, and I’ve even seen him trying to copy Alex and his silly duck walk. Alex has developed a fascination with shaking his butt at people (mostly me and Ken) when he’s dancing around. I do have to gate Quin into his room now at night. Opening the door is now fully mastered, he’ll spend a good 15 minutes opening and closing his door once I’ve tucked him in for the night.
It’s funny while we were at my mom’s Quin tried a couple time so throw a temper tantrum. My mom just shook her head as I tried to keep from laughing. He is no where near the master of the tantrum that his brother is. I swear sometimes I was given Alex first so that I would think dealing with Quin’s Autism was easy. Okay that’s all I can think of at the moment. Other than hoping next year’s Adobe crop doesn’t fall the same weekend as Blogher. I’m hoping after the big consignment sale next month, I’m selling all the baby gear, I’ll have enough to pay for Blogher, and Christmas presents. A weekend up in NYC would be a nice treat for me.
