Tori's gotta have some strength........

******Warning******Really Long Post!!!!

Duncan and Brett were at soccer practice this evening, and the girls were eating their dinner. I was looking in Samantha's backpack for homework and the little stinker hasn't turned in homework from Monday!! She did this last year, and she's continuing the habit. I'm going to have to come down hard an this little Monkey...

Now for the explanation for the title of this post, I grabbed Tori's backpack to clean hers out. Yesterday she opened it and papers busted out, so I was going to empty it of all the unnecessary stuff. Her backpack was actually pretty clean. I had told her it was too full last night, but didn't expect her to actually clean it out! So I was going to zip it back up, but decided to see what homework she had as well. She only had a word search from Braille class, but she had an assignment that she got 42% on.

I called her over and said, "What is with the 42%?" She was very upset, and himmmmed and haaahhed for a while. It was about syllables and I looked at it and I could tell she was really confused about the assignment. The example was Titanic=Ti-tan-ic. One of the words she got wrong was huge, she put h-u-ge. So we covered the subject, and made sure that she understood what the assignment was supposed to teach her. She was able to tell me all the right answers.

So, we talked about not getting so frustrated, and to take deep breaths when she's feeling overwhelmed. I also told her that if she is confused about an assignment she needs to ask her teacher to explain it one more time, because she isn't understanding it. She said, "Well the teacher said we could use a dictionary to help with the assignment, but I couldn't find the words." My motherly instinct kicked in at this point. I asked her how big the dictionary was. She held up her hands and showed about the size of a regular paper back, which my guess is about 4"X6".

I asked her if she had let the teacher know she was having trouble reading the dictionary. She said no, but she was having trouble reading the dictionary and the Magic Tree House books. If you don't know the Magic Tree House books are what they start reading with in 1st and 2nd grade. At this point I felt a little sick, because nobody wants there babies to struggle.

I told her that she needs to be brave and tell her teacher her problems with her vision. To which she replied, "We're not supposed to get up or talk during testing or quizzes." I let her know that this wasn't an option. If she was having trouble seeing, she needed to let the teacher know. She seems intimedated by this teacher. I've heard she can be really strict, and yells quite a bit. I advised her that I want her to learn to take care of her issues so tomorrow I want her to tell her teacher about these problems. I also told her to tell her Braille teacher these things, since she will probably have more access to larger print books. I let her know that if her teacher gives her a hard time, she will have a very angry Momma to deal with who knows what the teacher can and can't do to help her. If neccessary I will go into her teacher and make a big stink. I'm sure Marcia, the girls Braille teacher will get real ornery too!

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those Mom's who think there kids are perfect. I let Tori know that if she is misbehaving, not doing her work, or any other number of things she would be in trouble! However, if this problems are caused by not being able to see the words on a page. That is were I am going to get huffy. All kids should have the same opportunity to learn, we just need to figure out how to make that work for Tori.

When I told Tori this she giggled. Not only did she giggle then, but she giggled and chattered non-stop through her bath. And she wouldn't stop talking when I was helping her with her word search. I think this is something that has been bothering my poor girl for a while. I hope the next few days will prove to have had the weight lifted from my babies shoulders.

Gotta Love the Neighbors!

I put Jason down for a nap and was getting some work done, when there was a frantic banging at my door. I could tell by the light touch that it was the next door 3 year old. I ran upstairs to tell him Sam wasn't home, he looked at me and said "NO, my Daddy at work and my Mommy gone!" It took me a minute to figure out that he thought his Mom had left him. I said, "I'm sure your Mommy's home. Do you need help getting back into your house?" He said yes, so I walked him home.

He opened the door without any help, but said "See! They are gone!!!" I said "I'm sure your Mommy or Daddy are home." He looked at me teary eyed, "Daddy at work, Mommy Gone!!" So I said, "I'm sure your Mommy's home, I'll stay right here in the door way while you look around for Mommy. She could be laying down, or maybe she's downstairs. Why don't you go look downstairs." So he ran to the top of the stairs and yelled for his mom. To which came an immediate response. He looked at me with a smile and said, "She is downstairs!" His mother came up to see who he was talking too, and I explained that he thought she had left him.

It makes me chuckle, and also is another reason that I'm greatful that I stay home with the kids. Because if I wasn't home, who would be here to rescue the neighbor boy for desertion? =)

Today's craziness

Tori's class has been reading The Wizard of Oz. The idea was to read the book and then watch the movie and see how different they were. They also learned that a book usually has more to it then the movie. For watching the movie they were supposed to dress up like their favorite character. Tori wanted to dress up as Toto..............Uh-huh........

So here is my interpretation of Toto. Notice the lovely green glasses for being in the Emerald City. We also found some flowers that resembled poppies so I went to town with those.

I didn't want to have her wear a collar and leash like she wanted to, so I got her a bandana and wrote TOTO on the bottom. It worked.Then we wove her hair with the remaining "poppies". She has so much hair!!!

Then later this morning I had to attend the girls IEP conferences. If you don't know what that is, it's an Individualized Educational Plan. My sister Kristen watched Jason for me and Samantha got to sit for two of them. First we discussed Tori, and our concerns for her. Miss Palmer came to the conference and Marcia, the vision teacher and IEP fasilitator, ran through everything that Tori will need in the classroom. Since Tori can see ok, there wasn't much to worry about. She just needs to be within 10 ft. of the whiteboard, her papers need to be crisp clean copies, instructions written on the board need to be in print and not cursive. We also discussed that fact that she might struggle with "bubble tests". I told them not to make any changes with this as of yet because I want to see if this is a concern, but I have been told that they could prove difficult in the future. So I've advised them that if she takes a bubble test and it shows a lot of wrong answers to let me know, and then to check to see if this is an accurate representation of what she knows.Marcia did some testing prior to the IEP and she has determined that Tori has some fine depth perception problems, and she has some contrast problems. That would be helped a lot from print and not cursive as well as the clean copies. Obviously sitting in the front of the class is going to be an ongoing need for Tori, not surprising. The one thing she told me that concerned me a little is that Tori's hearing test in one of her ears had to be taken up to 30 DB's. I don't know if she just had a cold or if something more is going on with her. We'll have to do some more testing on her at her next well-check and see if the findings are the same. The loss wasn't bad enough for us to jump on anything as of yet. Tori will be taking Braille classes 4 days a week for 30 minutes a day.

Then it was Samantha's turn. One of the only nice things with the girls is that once one IEP is done both are almost taken care of. Samantha has also had the testing done prior to the IEP conference and she has some fine depth perception problems, but she was unable to do the rest of the testing because she is so young she couldn't complete the tests. My only concern with Samantha is that she falls down a lot. The occupational therapist said that she didn't see any problems with her ability to manuver the classroom, but I advised her that I'd like to have Samantha evaluated out on the play ground. I don't know if she is just being a little girl or if she is really have peripherial vision problems and doesn't have time to look at what she is doing when she is running around. The OT said she would come and watch her at recess sometime soon and let me know what she finds. Samantha will be taking Braille classes twice a week for 20 minutes a day for this year, and 4 days a week for 30 minutes a day next year. With Kindergarten's short schedule it made more sense to have her taught only 2 a week right now.


They sent me home with a Brailler. We can now make raised bumps on paper!!!!! Of course I don't know how to read it so I've gotta throw away all papers that were played with just in case I've typed up some naughty words.

Then my little boy isn't quite so little. Duncan is having his first "real" sleepover with his buddy. By "real" sleepover I mean not at Grandma's house. We'll see how his night goes and whether he is going to come home really grumpy or some what normal.

Late nights....

I was up til 1:30am reading the 4th Fablehaven book! I love these books, because I can actually finish them. With how crazy my life is, finishing a book is a hard thing to accomplish. So I've started looking for young reader books that grab my fancy and then take 4 weeks to read the darn things. I highly recommend the Fablehaven books, they are fun and easy to read.

Now with that, I woke up looking at my cute sleeping baby in the middle of my bed and listened to the other 3 playing with the toys the Easter Bunny brought them. In the back of my mind I was thinking, "They should be getting ready for school, but Jason is still asleep so it can't be too late." Boy was I wrong! Jason finally sat up and greeted the world with his sweet smile and as I sat up I spyed the clock and it was 8:30am. The kids were late for school. Duncan was dressed and ready to go, but Tori still needed her mass of hair brushed and her contact put in.

I think that Duncan had decided it was his turn to stay home, because he told me he had a soar throat. I advised him that he could stay home, but that he would babysit while I worked, take a nap, not go to karate, and not play with any friends. He went to school. However I had to check the monkey's in because they were so late. So on the check-in slip where it says "reason for late" I put "Goofing off". You should have seen the look on his face. Priceless.

There also was another reason for my being a stay at home mom today. Tori called me about 1:45 pm and said her contact fell out. So I loaded up Jason and the contact solution and ran over to the school. I get over there and her contact is drying up. I soaked it with solution over and over but the edges stayed crinkled. I put it in but she said it was hurting, so I had to run home again. I had to get her glasses with one lens missing since her prescription is a huge difference then before, and the contact case. In between all this I had to call the Moran Eye Center for the 15th time to try and get her in to see Dr. Vincent the contact specialist who's office has not been helpful in getting Tori another contact. So I yelled and threw a fit, and they have finally gotten her an appointment for tomorrow morning.

I then was late for Jason's audiology appointment to get his ear mold redone. He was a pill, I was frazzled and I'm sure the audiologist thinks I'm a complete moron!!! Oh well, the things got done today that needed to get done.