Saturday, September 28, 2013

Updates

Oh hey, it's been a while. Things have been good, busy, the usual.

Well not the usual because we got Tycho into school so everything is actually completely different.

That first day was really hard. Really, really hard. I was so nervous about day two, but day two was... so much better? I mean, of course it was better, it would be hard to get worse, but it was a lot better, and every day he has been at school has been a lot better than the last and he is getting the routine down much faster than I thought he would.

Still ironing out some kinks, of course. His behavior is still erratic compared to the other kids in his class, and we are maybe switching his classroom so he'll be around kids closer in age or something and blah blah blah, but we're definitely secure in the feeling that this was the right thing to do, and Boyer was the right choice for a center, and that he is going to like school.

It helped that he all at once took interest in the other kids on day three. It helped immensely with transitions that THEY were all going and WHERE are they going and I want to go TOO. Perfect. And then lots of adorable boy-hugs, which usually turn into crashing on the the ground piles of arms and legs, but who doesn't love that.

Tycho is talking up a storm all of the sudden. It's hard to know, really, if a couple weeks of school and therapy are actually making a difference, or if he's just a late bloomer and he would be all chatty right now regardless, but I don't care. It's is wonderful. He's still not like, caught up, or anything, not even close, but more and more I feel like I am actually communicating with him and he is understanding me and he can tell me what he wants and we are once in a while on the same page and it makes everything so much easier and thank goodness for that. He has all these words and he started (finally!) saying "please" instead of signing and "peese" is my favorite thing ever, and he's starting to say rudimentary sentences like "want candy" (waaan cineee) with like, verbs and stuff and omg omg omg.

I just want to squeeeeeeeeze him.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

School

 I really need to learn to manage my expectations.

I was so sure that Tycho was going to love school, and I still think he will, eventually, but he definitely didn't love his first day.

We got to school early to put together his ISFP (Individualized Family Services Plan, like a IEP for the birth to three crowd), and that was fine because there were six of us to pay attention to him and he had a car ineach hand and that was fine. But every single transition after that was a meltdown of epic proportions and he wouldn't help clean up and he wouldn't give up his toys and insisted that every single car in the classroom was MYYYYYYYYYYYYY and stole things from other kids and wouldn't sit still and was generally just as poorly behaved as possible and I know it will get better but it makes me want to never go back.

By the time we left he was so angry that I had to physically hold him down to get him strapped in the car and he screamed 15 minutes of the ride home until he passed out. He took a good long nap, but he has been pretty much screaming hysterically on and off since he woke up. I'm about at that point, too.

This is way too hard.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Thoughts

I've been having trouble sleeping lately. Actually, that's not true. I've been sleeping just fine, once I actually get to bed. But the getting to bed part has been difficult as of late. There has just been so much going on in my head that I am finding it hard to even wind down and relax enough to realize that I am tired. 

It's hard to explain. This whole thing with Tycho and early intervention has done a number on me, but not in the way you might expect. 

I'm not sad about him being behind. I mean I am, but not in a way that keeps me up at night. It is what it is and he is who he is and I'm okay with it and I have been okay with it for quite a while now. And even though parenting him might be harder than parenting the average two-year-old because of the difficulties in communication, that is frustrating, yes, but it doesn't weigh on me. 

Early intervention itself is scary, though. A whole world of unknown that I never imagined I would need to navigate. We never pictured ourselves as parents to a special needs child. I still don't really think of Tycho that way anyway, but I guess right now he kind of is, as his needs are greater than average right now. Looming over us is the enormity of the responsibility of being his advocate through all of this. Of making sure his is getting the extra he requires in a world that he won't automatically fit into. 

Who knows, really, at this point if this is temporary or if its something larger that will last us into his school years. But my one great hope here is that this delay is just a delay and not something bigger and that in a year or three you'd never know the difference and that we won't be dealing with IEPs in high school. 

Whatever it is, is of course fine. He is my son and nothing in the world can change that. But I feel so unprepared to be the kind of parent he needs right now, that he might need in the future. I knew that being a mother wasn't going to be easy, but I didn't know it was going to be this hard. 






*and then he interrupts my 1am blogpost with a faint wail of "mama" and when I go  into check on him he wordlessly hands me his blanket and crawls back into bed so I can tuck him in again and this is all too much and I cry. 

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Game Over?

Another thing that happened? After yet another 35-day cycle, I got my period. Again. And so we're done trying to make another baby. For now, anyway. We're going to be taking a trip to see my sister in France next summer, so this cycle was the cutoff and now I have to figure out how pregnant I am okay with being when we go and figure out what conception date matches and then we can try again, probably in December or January.

I am NOT HAPPY. I went off birth control back in January, and I never imagined it would take this long for me to get pregnant again. I mean, it's partly the fault of crazy schedules and my cycle being all over the place, and it's not that there's any real underlying problem or anything, but still. It's been nine months. This should be easier.

I am mourning the two to three-year age gap that we were planning on that is now impossible and I am upset that my sister won't get to meet her new niece or nephew until who knows when the next time she will be in the states is and I'm not looking forward to having to use contraception because bleh.

Also if I do get pregnant right when we start trying again I will have the least ideal due date for taking maternity leave while working in retail and I will make my boss hate me. Awesome.

Grump grump grump.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

We're in!

Oh dearest blog, I am having some emotions here.

We had Tycho's group evaluation yesterday. God, yesterday seems like a million years ago. Anyway. We took him to the clinic and had Tycho play with an educator and an occupational therapist and a speech language pathologist while they asked us some questions. This was the big one, where they decided whether or not we qualified for services and I was so worried that he had picked up just enough new skills in the couple weeks since our home visit that he would still be behind but just barely not qualifying.

Well not to worry.


When they went over results with us, the therapists all spoke so softly, as if not to break our poor little parental hearts, and I almost had to laugh, because we've known we've had a problem since maybe January and I'd already gone through the whole emotional roller coaster and landed squarely in acceptance. Or so I thought.

But after we got home and I put the babe down for his nap I sat down with his results and cried. Because, I mean, look at those numbers. I knew he was behind and I was okay and I am SO excited that we're finally moving forward to get him help and get him to where he needs to be. But I hadn't really had it all quantified so neatly before me. In five out of seven categories he is in the very bottom percentile and that really shocked me and awoke my angry inner mama bear and... I don't know.

I am feeling very emotionally fragile and weepy coming out of our evaluation. Really, I'm pleased with the results. Not only does he qualify for speech and occupational therapy, but he also will get to participate in their classroom services, which I really think he will love, and I think the structured learning environment will be amazing for him, and I'm so glad we're finally getting started but I also just feel like I've had the wind knocked out of me.

Parenting is hard in a way I could never ever have imagined or prepared for.

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