and then what happened?

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August 03, 2005

a different day

Yesterday was an unusual and unexpected treat for me.

We had a meeting with the School District about placing Little Bear (our kid)into special needs pre-school in the fall when he turns three.

I haven't told the story before here but Little Bear has cerebral palsy. He gets lots of therapy to help him out but he needs much assistance. Considering that I had an emergency C-section three weeks before his due date and the fact that he almost died the night he was born, we are lucky that he is alive. He has taught me more about life than I ever thought possible.

Anyway, I decided to take the whole day off work because I had heard that this session with the school district would be quite demanding and I wanted to be prepared.

Because I was home in the morning I got to go with Grumpy and Little Bear, to Little Bear's swim class at the Ballard pool. I met his one-on-one instructor, James, who is awesome. I got to watch LB practice trying to kick and splash and he had a good ole time. He loves the water. He even got to sit in the hot tub afterward. I'm so glad I got to go. I grinned from ear to ear the whole time.

Then we had to head straight to the meeting with the School District. We met with a nurse, psychologist, physical therapist and speech therapist. They tested LB on all kinds of skills and asked us a billion questions. We were there for four hours.

We had a twenty-minute break while waiting for their final report so we walked down to a duck pond a block away. I saw something I have never seen before. Swimming alongside the ducks were two beautiful black-necked swans. I've never seen anything like them before and something about them made me want to smile and cry at the same time. I think maybe the intensity of the day made me more emotional than usual. I am the girl with her heart on her sleeve.

I had been expecting these School District people to be stern and uptight. Instead I found them very caring and interested in all of us. Both the nurse and psychologist told me they cried when they read a statement I had written on the back of one of the questionnaire forms we had to fill out and send back to them before the meeting. The questionnaire was all questions like can your child... walk, talk, throw a ball, crawl, sit etc... I had to circle no to so many of those that I was frustrated because I thought it made him sound like a lump.

So on the back of the sheet I took it upon myself to write all about how motivated, funny, loving, outgoing and curious he is. I wrote about his love of the water and how he will commando crawl around the house opening doors and calling out to me and how he loves to lower his eyelashes and flirt with women. And how even though he can't talk he knows so many words and understands so much more than people realize. I wrote about how he is so much greater than the body he has to work with.

After it was all over we were told that Little Bear is eligible for special needs services until he is 21. He will start preschool in the fall and he will be in a small class of about eight kids with a range of special needs. I'm excited for him.

To end off a pleasantly surprising lovely day we took Little Bear to Toys R Us and bought him Tonka Trucks (he LOVES construction equipment), finger paints and an Imaginarium train set. We tried to get him a kite but they were sold out.

While we at the mall we also found a great deal on very cool Titanium wedding band for Grumpy. I told him if he loses this one (he's lost two in 6 years – I know!) then I'm getting the next one tattooed on him. Since he turns 30 on the 9th, we're calling this ring his birthday present.

Posted by bugg at August 3, 2005 06:19 PM

Comments

Posted by: melanie at August 3, 2005 10:23 PM

Posted by: Chastity Edlefson at August 4, 2005 07:03 AM

Posted by: ms bees knees at August 4, 2005 10:48 AM

Posted by: bugg at August 4, 2005 12:18 PM