School's out for Summer-- sort of.

Ever since the school district recommended Michael attend Special Education Classes, they also recommended that he attend Summer School. Poor guy hasn't had a break since he turned 3 years old. However, this is just a small sacrifice for a brighter future. Now that summer is here once again, we are trying to cram a few activities before his Summer School starts back up again. This time, we are doing swim class!

I'm not a swimmer. I never learned. My parents never really took us 4 to the water parks or beaches to enjoy the summer. We mainly stayed indoors and just--laid there. Now that I am a parent, I want Michael to learn to swim. It's a very important skill to have. Now that summer is here once again, we signed him up--and he's loving it! He's a slow learner so I think we may have to re-sign him up for another class or private lessons after his current session ends. That's okay. I'm sure he wouldn't mind jumping into the pool every day after school now. Who wouldn't with this 100 + weather we've had here all week--and it's just starting!

Now that he's learning to swim, I too have signed up for classes. I'm a little intimidated since the swim instructors are either high school age or just graduated high school. Oh well, it's only for two weeks and it's a something I have always wanted to learn. I just hope I am not the oldest student in my group, which is quite likely since the class is for 12 and older. My being the older. Ha ha! I'll write about my adventures when it comes.

Our New Normal.

I'm up at about 6am Monday through Friday. I stagger over to the kitchen and grab our coffee grounds to add to the coffee machine. Three times out of five, I clumsily end up with about a third of the grounds on the countertop versus the coffee filter. Six in the morning for most isn't too early, but for some reason my body doesn't like it.

After the wonderful smell of coffee starts to drench our morning air, I can feel my senses start to wake up. This is when I head on over the bathroom and try to deflate the morning mess of a puffy face that I have going on. A shower would do much better, but I'd have to wake up much earlier than that--let's face it, I suck in the mornings. 

After I wake up a wee bit  more and finish my morning ritual in the bathroom, it's time to wake up the 5 year old child. If you think I can't function, ha! I try to wake him up and make sure he's fully awake before we all rush out the door. However, I still have to gather his outfit for the day before heading to my mom's. 

Everyone is up by 6:30 and trying to get themselves in order before the clock hits 7am. Most mornings we just blink and viola--it's 7am is here. Out the door we go!

My mom has started to handle Michael's morning routine since Stevan's injury. I drop Michael off by 7:20am (the school bus picks him up from her home now) and head back into traffic. It's a lot easier getting "there" versus my getting home. By 7:45am, I've already dropped everyone off and I'm starting my route back home--which most days means that I don't get to leave my car in the drive way until after 8:30am. 

This is a new normal for us. It's just temporary since the school year will be ending and then we start a new normal. Since Michael does have Autism, all of these changes will be really hard on him. He's capable of handling daily transitions (random trips to the store, family outings, etc.) just not major shifts in his daily schedule. 

We've already started contacting a plethora of ABA agencies and all of them have wait lists from 1 month to 6months of just waiting. I'm hoping our number one choice calls back soon to say we are next. 

Our daily routine right now is just a temporary one until September, I hope. Hopefully by then Stevan will have mobility in his right knee (so he can drive to work and I can drive Michael more calmly to school as opposed to stressed out for traffic.) and we have started ABA therapies for Michael. But for now, we are hoping we can help Michael with all of these new changes. It's not easy but we will try.

And just for fun, so it's not all texts.

Welcome to my life.....

"Hello! Is there anybody out there?"

That seems to be the common phrase around this ole blog of mine. There really isn't really an excuse as to WHY I have been gone for so long. But what's new? I just post whenever I get a little nudge in my head that says, "Hey!! Remember that blog of yours?" or whenever there is a wee bit of downtime from the every day life. Around these parts, a ton has been happening and yet nothing has been happening at the same time. It's like little waves of "happenings" happen and then its just--nothing. But isn't life like that anyways? Let's go back a few weeks....

The Friday before Easter, my husband had a rematch. For those of you who don't know or are new, my husband is an amateur boxer (a license to fight during shows, but not get paid.) as a hobby. A few weeks prior to that, he had a match with the same guy who he lost to. The Easter fight was the rematch to that guy. However he "technically" lost that one. During round 2 of the match (3 rounds total) he stepped back to avoid a punch and slipped. The slip caused a dislocation of his right knee which landed him on a ride via the ambulance to the ER. During his little stint at the hospital we learned that he tore 3 out of 4 ligaments on that knee. Bad. All bad. He had an operation to fix one of the 3 ligaments but still needs 2 more surgeries to fix the other two and tons of physical therapy. So for the past 3 weeks, I've been running around like a chicken with its' head cut off. Everywhere. Which also meant that my son has a new schedule for the mornings. But wanna know what the silver lining is---I'm not working anymore. I haven't since New Years. That's another story for another post. But that was our silver lining this year--my being a stay at home mom/chauffeur t o my husband.

As for our little boy who no longer is a little boy if you ask him, he's doing great. He just turned 5 a week ago and it's such an amazing yet bittersweet feeling. I love that he's getting so big yet miss his being so small. He's still in pre-k and will be "graduating" to Kindergarten next year. Michael isn't quite ready to transition to General Ed Class yet and we are so hoping ABT (Applied Behavior Therapy for his Autism) will help with his Social and Sensory issues. He's so smart and I know with a little more help he will get there. This kid will be making changes in this world, just watch.