Boy Out of Context

Comedy/Tragedy

I know those masks are supposed to be used in theater, to show the division between comedy and tragedy, but I have come to believe that they actually have their roots in a mother, attending an ancient school performance, unsure whether to laugh or cry. 

I didn't like the movie School of Rock, but I remember the one scene that had made me laugh - where he tells the kid that since he's the lead guitarist he has to look a little crazy.  That was all I could think of watching Julia at her performance.  She was that guitarist.

I've been attending these shows since Max was three and they have all had one thing in common: they are painful.  The school is preschool to grade 8 and all of the classes attend and perform in what is an astoundingly small cafeteria.  Cram in a few parents, not that many, because they inexplicably do this during the morning, and it's a mess.  What I have always failed to understand is that there is never any plan for where all the kids are going to go, so the smallish group of preschool parents kept getting shuffled around while our kids stood on stage and watched class after class file in and slowly lost their shit. 

There were a lot of kids crying up on the stage before this started.  Julia kept getting into a panic because I had to keep moving around to make room for the students, but there was a teacher comforting a sobbing kid right behind her, so she would find me and point me out and Julia would settle.  I was impressed she didn't cry, although she didn't really participate, either. 

And when it was over she was thrilled with herself and I congratulated her and she told me that 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 and I say, Kindergarten, HO! 

Because then we could consolidate this down to one show/year.

Max's program was also an all-school affair, but it is in the evening and out the in the courtyard so we're not all on top of each other.  Max, my love, my first-born, my adored, was charmingly completely backwards on every dance.  My fault.  I am less-charmingly completely backwards at Zumba.  But the music teacher is fantastic and overall the show was great (there was a blip at the bands; Julia started claiming she was tired and needed to go to bed even though it was an hour before bedtime). 

Three days left of school for both of them, which is also comedy/tragedy.  I thought Max would be excited about his summer camp, which sounds like so much fun I'm sorry that I can't go, too, but he is prone to starting to weep about missing his friends and teacher already.  Luckily several of his friends are taking the first week of camp with him and then we've thrown in tennis and swimming for both of them.  Summer 2012: exhaustion and popsicles.

The socks didn't actually kill me

I can share this now, because I finished them and mailed them and last I saw they were on my sister's feet.

I think that teeny tiny cables was probably a mistake for my second ever pair of socks, but after blocking them they looked much better than I had feared.  Originally, I bought three skeins of yarn in different colors thinking it would be superadorable! for my sisters and I to have coordinating socks, but now I'm thinking we'll just have socks made from the same type of yarn.  I'm not going to tackle this pattern again anytime soon, or that will be the end of socks and I.  In the meantime, I've picked up a crochet hook as a stress reliever.  Crochet, so welcoming, so forgiving.  So QUICK. 

At my last doctor's visit she had mentioned that I might be someone who tends to be anxious, which I don't think is completely off-base, but the only time I felt that it interefered with my life to the point of needing medication to deal with it was shortly after Julia's birth.  At that time I was going through this weird anxiety/paranoia stage where anytime I was out with the kids, which was a lot since I recognized I needed to get out, if I made eye contact with a stranger I would fixate on that person the rest of the day until I was convinced that they were going to follow me home, lie in wait, and then murder the children and I in the night. 

It was really annoying.  It stopped as soon as I started the whatever they put me on and I went back to more normal interactions with strangers. 

However, with what all has been happening around here lately, I've felt that weird anxiety creeping back in.  There's that one story, and I'm going to spare everyone the link, but they keep mentioning the suspect has a link to Arizona, and when I first started reading that, I immediately turned that into, "Headed to Arizona.  To your house." 

It's taken a couple of days, but I'm starting to come around.  Of course last night we had a helicopter with searchlight over our house for about a half hour.  That was...not relaxing. 

As my neighbor said this morning: Does it just seem like there's a lot of weird stuff going on around here lately?  Indeed. 

But the children are mostly unaware, at least of anything that they don't need to know about.  Right now I've decided to distract them with a major project to keep us busy and occupied in the heat of summer. 

Slightly over thirty years ago, for my tenth birthday, my present was a dollhouse.  I loved that dollhouse.  For whatever reason, I couldn't tell you why, I never got to paint or decorate the thing.  But I did play with it. 

Eventually, it went into storage in my parent's attic but I took it with us when we moved here.  When we had an office I kept it there and I did start to decorate it, along with wiring it for electricity.  And then we adopted Bastard Cat. 

A kitten in a dollhouse is like a tornado that never ends.  He ripped the hell out of everything I had done.  All of the light fixtures were torn out.  Furniture broken.  Small pieces lost. 

Then we were trying to get pregnant.  And then we were pregnant.  The dollhouse went into our shed. 

About a month ago I hauled it out along with whatever bits and pieces of furniture and things I could find.  Max and Julia both went insane.  Max wants the whole thing completely done NOW but I am trying to make this a project that will last, something we can enjoy together.  Plus, summers are really long. 

It really needs a new coat of paint and when I made that suggestion to Julia I meant to repaint it white, but she felt pretty strongly about pink.  I finally managed to dig up some pictures of some plantations painted pink with grey roofs and white columns, so that's what we finalized.  Not that historically accurate.  But the family that will live there is Victorian and the furniture is all wrong for the period anyway.  We're going for loved, not correct. 

Needs some work!

A lot of work.

We'll see what color her kids want to paint it.

And I keep hitting repeat

Peat peat peat peat peat.

That is Julia's new favorite song, meeting all of her requirements (1. female singer, 2. pretty, 3. young) and my one requirement (mostly dressed in the video) so we've been listening to it a lot.  I tried to distract her with some Arrested Development (the group, not the TV show) this afternoon and I almost had her by pointing out that there were women in the group, but eventually we had to switch back again.  I'm aware it could be a lot worse, so I'll take my Selena Gomez and keep my mouth mostly shut.  The song is catchy. 

About a week after the little girl was taken, someone broke into another house and assaulted three little girls who were visiting their grandparents.  So then!  Moving right along!

We have about three weeks left of school and Max is getting antsy about finishing.  He bombed a spelling test, for which we had to have A Talk, as he clearly didn't even try.  His summer camp starts in June, with the first week being Master of Disguise and the second week being Foresic Science.  I can't completely blame him for wanting to be done with school and in camp; I'd sort of like to be done with work and in his camp, too. 

His camp is new this year and it's at the University.  While I generally hate everything about Paul's job (everything being: Tucson) the major perk is the university and some of the cool things offered.  Let's not discuss how much the camp costs, but I thought it was brilliant the whole thing had to be prepaid.  I worked some extra hours while my boss was on vacation and that paid for the summer for Max.  I'm hardly irritated at all about the weekly rate anymore. 

Julia will be staying at her preschool for their summer program and we have yet to get word on next year.  She came out of the bedroom about an hour ago, though, and said, "Four cats and two dogs?  Makes six pets." 

I really want to see the kid in kindergarten.  I'll volunteer to go in and play with her myself, WHATEVER.

Personally I have been attempting to deal with my stress in knitter fashion, by knitting socks.  But I can't figure out why people think knitting socks is relaxing, because I can't remember the last time a project has had me so stressed.  Anyone care to explain, because this second sock may kill me. 

 

Stay with me

I almost lost Julia today.

We were running an errand.  Or had run.  We were done and were leaving.  She said she wanted to go down the escalator by herself and I swear she's done it dozens of times.  She was holding on to me, until she wasn't.  I was already going down and she hesitated.  And then she panicked when she saw me moving away. 

Her scream, "Mom!" was piercing. 

Everything ran through my head, from going down and back up, trying to grab her and pull her with me, but the scream decided it and I turned and ran back up the escalator.  It was a narrow one and the skin of my right leg is shredded. 

Women did what women do, what I would have done.  They congregated immediately.  Everyone made sure we were both okay and one of them helped us both out all the way to the car.  Julia's comfort blankie had headed down the escalator without us, and, not even kidding, another mother sent her son backwards up the escalator to return it to us when she heard Julia sobbing for it. 

Paul was out of town last weekend and I woke up Saturday morning to the news that a child had been taken from her bedroom in the night.  My major in college was forensic science.  I'm jaded.  I know what's likely and while there are a ton of things I worry about with my kids, kidnapping has never been one of them.  Losing them in a crowd?  A realistic worry, which is why my kids have been taught to find a helper should they become lost - a woman. 

I am completely torn on this situation.  I certainly don't want to believe that parents could hurt their child.  I also don't want to think there's a monster, a true boogeyman, lurking about my city.  There is something about this situation that is ringing true to me, and I've found myself unable to sleep.  On Saturday I tried to get both kids to sleep in my bed but the fought and both took off in a huff to their own beds.  I woke every hour or so to nightmares.  In my nightmares I would hear Julia scream for me, exactly as she did today. On Sunday I exhausted them during the day and managed to get them both to sleep in my bed. 

I'm still not sleeping well. 

This afternoon, Julia at first could remember only that she saw me going away from her.  I came back, I told her, over and over.  I will always come back.  I would never have left you. 

Max and I have had a lot of talks about what to do if he should ever be separated from me.  We've practiced who to approach and what he should say.  We've talked about the the benign form - lost in a crowd.  We've talked about the worrisome form - when to scream, when to fight, even if it's an adult.  But we always end with the same message: Stay calm, I love you and I am looking for you. 

All of my thoughts with Isabel and her family.

 

While we were sick

In the midst of our family flu outbreak, Max turned 7. 

It was dumb luck that I had bumped up his birthday party to a couple of weeks before his actual birthday.  After last year's fiasco: invited the entire class to our house with the intention of an outside party only to have it POUR, Max and I came to an agreement about this year.  First, the party had to be somewhere else, and second, he had to pare down the guest list. 

He decided on the Children's Museum.  We had never been to a party at TCM so I wasn't sure what to expect but it was all fairly easy to set up over the phone.  They gave me a target number for the guest list, we took the bigger party room and picked the craft the staff would do with the kids.  Two hours.  How much could go wrong? 

The first problem cropped up with the guest list, when Max found himself unable to pare it down at all.  I don't have anything against anyone in his class, really, but there were kids in other classes that we wanted to invite so I didn't want to hold us to just his class.  In the end, it kind of became a mess, and I finally gave up and invited the whole class (minus the three students whose parents who had refused to give any contact information in the directory...and I do mean ANY contact information). 

And as soon as I sent out the invitation via email I realized there was supposed to be a limit because of the room size and then I spent the next two weeks in a panic. 

In the end it worked out fine, though. 

I would not say that I had any fun, but he did.  And I am planning on refining the rules on the party for next year.  We should have it down by the time he's 16, I figure. 

His actual birthday was on April 5 and by then Max had recovered but both Julia and I were sick.  Our original plan had been swimming and lunch, as Max and Julia both started spring break on that day, but we changed our plan to survival instead.  I can't remember exactly what happened.  I vaguely remember Paul calling and telling me to let him open some things so that I could get some rest.  And I remember taking a lot of ibuprofen so that I had enough energy to make a cake.

He actually let me off easy on the cake this year.  The challenge was only that I felt like hell while trying to bake and decorate it.

A checkerboard cake is much easier than a Barbie cake, FYI. 

The really nice thing about having a seven year old is that he answered the phone himself all day while Julia and I were puddled on the couch in misery.  He accepted congratulations from callers, probably discussing the relative merits of wrapping paper (reusable and recyclable = good, and he's not beyond lecturing anyone on this point). 

And he was kind, although disappointed, when he realized I had forgotten to put up any decorations in the house. 

There's no other seven year old more deserving of my first ever knitted pair of socks. 

(For the record, my pediatrician laughed when I said we weren't doing flu shots again; apparently she never gets one herself.  Nothing to be done about the tamiflu except apologize.  I still can't watch the video of Max's opera because I get angry with every coughing kid, as I STILL have a bad cough, apparently due to damage to my lungs?  NICE.)

While we were sick

In the midst of our family flu outbreak, Max turned 7. 

It was dumb luck that I had bumped up his birthday party to a couple of weeks before his actual birthday.  After last year's fiasco: invited the entire class to our house with the intention of an outside party only to have it POUR, Max and I came to an agreement about this year.  First, the party had to be somewhere else, and second, he had to pare down the guest list. 

He decided on the Children's Museum.  We had never been to a party at TCM so I wasn't sure what to expect but it was all fairly easy to set up over the phone.  They gave me a target number for the guest list, we took the bigger party room and picked the craft the staff would do with the kids.  Two hours.  How much could go wrong? 

The first problem cropped up with the guest list, when Max found himself unable to pare it down at all.  I don't have anything against anyone in his class, really, but there were kids in other classes that we wanted to invite so I didn't want to hold us to just his class.  In the end, it kind of became a mess, and I finally gave up and invited the whole class (minus the three students whose parents who had refused to give any contact information in the directory...and I do mean ANY contact information). 

And as soon as I sent out the invitation via email I realized there was supposed to be a limit because of the room size and then I spent the next two weeks in a panic. 

In the end it worked out fine, though. 

I would not say that I had any fun, but he did.  And I am planning on refining the rules on the party for next year.  We should have it down by the time he's 16, I figure. 

His actual birthday was on April 5 and by then Max had recovered but both Julia and I were sick.  Our original plan had been swimming and lunch, as Max and Julia both started spring break on that day, but we changed our plan to survival instead.  I can't remember exactly what happened.  I vaguely remember Paul calling and telling me to let him open some things so that I could get some rest.  And I remember taking a lot of ibuprofen so that I had enough energy to make a cake.

He actually let me off easy on the cake this year.  The challenge was only that I felt like hell while trying to bake and decorate it.

A checkerboard cake is much easier than a Barbie cake, FYI. 

The really nice thing about having a seven year old is that he answered the phone himself all day while Julia and I were puddled on the couch in misery.  He accepted congratulations from callers, probably discussing the relative merits of wrapping paper (reusable and recyclable = good, and he's not beyond lecturing anyone on this point). 

And he was kind, although disappointed, when he realized I had forgotten to put up any decorations in the house. 

There's no other seven year old more deserving of my first ever knitted pair of socks. 

(For the record, my pediatrician laughed when I said we weren't doing flu shots again; apparently she never gets one herself.  Nothing to be done about the tamiflu except apologize.  I still can't watch the video of Max's opera because I get angry with every coughing kid, as I STILL have a bad cough, apparently due to damage to my lungs?  NICE.)

"Rising and shining!"

When Julia woke up and said that, a week ago last Sunday I think it was, I thought this was all going to be okay.  Of course, that's not how any of it turned out, but I was still optimistic then.  Now I've replaced that optimism with some blind fury.  The good thing about generalized anger is that I'm mostly angry at the situation, kind of angry with a few people and I can't even put an actual face to all of those people.  It's keeping me from actually blowing up at anyone. 

Back up. 

It all started a week and a half ago when Max started complaining on Friday morning that he wasn't feeling that great.  I wasn't feeling that great either, so we both stayed home.  There had been something nasty running around his school, so I wasn't taken by surprise.  On Saturday Max seemed to feel better and I felt worse and we tentatively kept our plans to have our sitter come so that Paul and I could go to a movie.  Sunday morning came, though, and we had to cancel.  Max was still running a fever even though he seemed to feel pretty well.  By Monday his fever started going up and he really felt awful so I ran him into our pediatrician's office.

I did not see my regular doctor and I have not had a good experience with the doctor I did see (this is the doctor who rebuked me so thoroughly the first time I brought up a concern with Max's development that it was two years before I mentioned it again; additionally he gave me a very hard time about wanting to space Julia's vaccines after she had a reaction).  He diagnosed Max with the flu (expected) but ruled out any secondary bacterial issues, which is why I had brought him in.  Important note: we specifically discussed that Julia, who was with me, was not showing any signs at this point and may or may not stay in the clear. 

He also said the flu shot probably kept Max's disease more mild.  I'm not sold.  I usually don't do the flu shot because I think it's crap but I caved this year.  After this year, I go back to my original hypothesis: it's crap. 

By this time, however, Paul is sick.  I've been feeling generally crappy this entire time, but I'm sort of functional.  Julia is a ray of sunshine.  Max's fever finally breaks on Wednesday, just in time for spring break to start on Thursday.  Whatever, I figure at least on Thursday we'll get out of the house at least.

By Wednesday afternoon I'm running a fever and Julia is starting to cough. 

And this is the point when I hit the internet, because just what is the damn incubation period of the flu virus anyway?  Three to five days, I find.  Friday minus three...Tuesday.  What happened Tuesday of that week?  Oh, right. 

And suddenly, I can't remember anything about the opera.  I just remember every kid up on that stage hacking into their costume.  How many of those kids were loaded up on fever reducers and sent in, I started to wonder?  On Wednesday, actually, I was still cutting the other parents some slack and figuring that it would have been very hard to disappoint a kid who had been working all year for this one day.  By Friday, I was a lot less fucking generous in my thoughts. 

Continuing on, only Julia's a lot more sick than Max (see flu vaccine, crap) and on Friday night her temperature shoots up to 105 so we go into the ER.  They clear her of any secondary bacterial, spend several hours getting her temperature down, and confirm the flu.  And this is where I lose. my. mind.  Tamiflu.  Okay.  Maybe I should have known about it, but we're flu novices.  You know who should have known about it?  THE PEDIATRICIAN I SAW ON MONDAY WHO KNEW I HAD A DAUGHTER WHO HAD NOT YET GOTTEN SICK BUT WHO MIGHT START GETTING SICK, THAT'S WHO.  He never mentioned it, and the ER doctors just said it was too late now and it's days later and all danger has passed and I am telling you that I am still on a fucking warpath about this. 

Max's annual exam with my regular doctor is tomorrow.  We're going to be talking.  She's going to retire soon and I have the name of my next pediatrician because I am not even. ever. 

So MAD!

Going back.  Remember last Easter weekend?

 

Side note: we had the same ER attending this time, too.  He asked what we were planning for next year.  I would probably really enjoy his sense of humor if every time I saw him my daughter wasn't seriously injured or ill. 

But this meant that she missed her egg hunt this year, too, and this year there were pony rides and I absolutely could have given her something to take the edge off and taken her anyway but I didn't.  We watched Max and Paul go and I held her while she cried and I'd probably feel morally superior over all of the opera parents if I wasn't so busy coughing up large portions of my lungs still.   I imagine once I feel human again I'll stop being so angry at everyone besides the pediatrician.  That fury is going to linger. 

Everyone's fever has finally broken so while we all still sound terrible (Paul excluded, he has completely lost his voice and is now silent) we're no longer contagious and are back to school and work tomorrow.  I'm starting to go through and clean sheets and such.  I feel like the whole house needs to be dipped in a vat of bleach.  And in case you hadn't heard, apparently we're having a late flu season. 

 

To and Fro

Yesterday I pushed Max on a swing.  Something I've done a thousand times, right?  Except that I haven't. 

I used to put Max in those baby swings and he liked them well enough, but by the time he was about three it was clear that swings were something he couldn't tolerate.  He was afraid of them.  He didn't like the motion.  And it shouldn't be that big a deal.  Really, how often does swinging actually come up? 

But having a five or six year old who won't go on the swings with his friends, or if he does, will only hang off them on his tummy, is noticeable.  Parents don't say anything, at least not to our faces, but kids commented on it. 

Julia, on the other hand, is a swing maniac.  Higher and faster.  Fearless. 

I was pushing her while Max was digging nearby and then he just casually walked over, hopped up, and started demanding that I push him, too.  And then push him higher.  Eight big pushes!  Touch the moon!

There are a lot of moments in raising an ASD kid, or at least I'm finding in raising my ASD kid, that I want to grab him and scream, "Can you believe what you just did???"  And I can't since I like it when he's still speaking to me, so I have to keep it to a meh, "Oh.  You're swinging now, huh?"  No bigs. 

Today was the long-awaited class opera.  Written and composed by a bunch of first graders.  It was wonderful.  Poor Max has been plagued with stress-induced headaches and tummy problems for the past couple of days and while he did hit his cue and deliver his one line, he refused to sing for pretty much the whole thing (any disapointment I might have felt for his small role was mitigated once I realized that...the casting director knew what she was doing).  His future is not on stage, but I was still just as impressed that he got up there and through every show despite his obvious discomfort. 

Plus, he loooked great in the suit.

Next year is apparently going to happen

It's not easy, composing an email that makes it clear you're sort of tense about a particular teacher while not wanting to be openly insulting.  I aimed for a, "I just want your opinion on what you think is best" tone, while, "of course I totally respect the school's policy of not accepting requests" because who the hell wants to be known as THAT mother?  We have THAT mother in our grade.  I'm not her.  I don't want to be her.  People are inviting me over for drinks, and I like it. 

The rumor mill was spinning, though, or as I phrased it in the email "playground scuttlebutt" and I finally got confirmation.  The Teacher will be teaching second grade next year.  And here's the rest of the story: they're giving her the same class, minus anyone that requests otherwise. 

I felt like The Teacher might want to keep Max because he's an easy kid.  I felt like I might want to move Max because MY PRECIOUS WAS EATING HIS SHIRT LAST FALL.  But the woman I emailed is objective and she adores Max and she feels this is a good choice for him.  It also removes the secondary stress (which kids will be in the class) since mostly they're a great group.  Max is - obliviously - in a bit of a crush triangle right now, so maybe we'll get to see how that plays out.  Or maybe the girls will have moved on over the summer. 

Julia had her maybe-she-is-going-to-kindergarten open house.  I'm still grateful the evaluation is a couple of months away, but the uncertainty is getting really annoying.  We're in this constant state of Maybe You're Going to School Here!  Or Maybe Not!  Whichever is Fine, Really (but pleaseplease don't blow the evaluation, really prettyplease).  She doesn't know there is an evaluation because I don't want her worrying about it.  She was worried enough about the stupid open house.  I knew what to expect this time, from our experience with Max.  They show us into the cafeteria.  At Max's they started with the school nurse, she talked endlessly, and then they sent the kids into the other room to play.  Max took off without looking back while I cried.  Now, with Julia, I told her exactly what was going to happen and she spent the two weeks leading up to all of this sobbing.  Drama.  When it came down to it, she ran up to the teacher without a backwards glance.  Julia and I and the teenage years: KABLAM.  

I was very proud of her and was zoning out while listening to the new nurse give her spiel.  And then the secretary came flying into the room making frantic gestures at the principal.  Our principal has this wonderful, soothing voice, and she took the microphone and said, "So, I'm going to tell you what's going on now.  We're going to be going into a lockdown situation." 

They herded us into the room with the kids.  And they played and we discussed police stories (I think the winner was the PTA president who had someone knocking on her kid's window in the middle of the night; turned out to be a kid trying to find his girlfriend's bedroom...HA!).  The principal came in with her soothing voice and explained that the police were chasing a suspect and the school happened to be in the middle of the quadrant but TPD was at the school now, "And isn't that great?"  They let us go after about 45 minutes and Julia assumes that all kindergarten open houses come with police officers waving at the corners.  She's very excited about the whole thing. 

So for the sake of Julia, and me, because I can't take another one of those open houses next year, any advice for getting her through that evaluation?  Yes, I am completely willing to cheat the system.  And this is my reminder to myself to make sure that girl knows how to use a pair of scissors because I know that's on there.

Max seems to figure a few things out

There are three classes in Max's grade level and two in the year ahead.  The plan, next year, is for one of the current first grade teachers to move ahead with this class to teach second grade.  This, obviously, presents a potential issue for me.

I asked Max which teacher he'd like to move, fully expecting him to say The Teacher, as Max has a fierce loyalty towards the important adults in his life.  To my shock, his preference was one of the other teachers. 

Things for Max seem to be going really well right now.  He handled reading exactly like I did - a little slow at first but once he learned the skill he took off with it and now is way past his expected reading level.  His writing, the skill we've been fighting with him the most over, is finally nearing legibility.  His spelling is quite good, mainly because I'm a demon perfectionist when it comes to spelling (he missed February on his test and I made him spell it daily for two weeks until he had it cold...evil, yes, but poor spelling is a major pet peeve).  Science and math continue to be intuitive for him.  He's designed a nice experiment for next year's science fair and it will need our summer heat so I'm glad he thought of it early. 

Speaking of science, should you have a like-minded child, I would recommend this:

That's the Snap Circuit kit we got him for Christmas and he built a spin art machine with it.  LOVE THIS THING. 

Julia drew on her nose, like Rudolph. 

Socially, Max is doing well, too.  For the most part he's always gotten along okay with his classmates, even if he hasn't always understood them.  What seems different to me now is that he's talking about one or two in particular.  More like best-friend-ish, and that's reasurring to me that he can form those types of tighter bonds.  We're still having playdate issues - Max has never gotten an invitation over to someone's house.  It's a puzzle, because we get a lot of half-invites that never quite materialize into an actual date.  It's frustrating for very-literal Max who hears "Oh, we should have you over next week!" and ends up with his feelings hurt when it never actually happens.  For a long time I stopped hosting, on principle, but we had a kid over this past weekend and I was reminded that I actually like having kids over.  Max was so happy.  And I made Julia play with her dollhouse with me to keep her out of their way (double win!). 

When Max said that he hoped the other teacher moves next year it made me think that part of the reason things have settled down now is that he has realized that he was not really the cause of the problem.  I'm left with mixed feelings.  I'm glad for Max, that he overcame so much this year and has really triumphed.  On the other hand, part of me is wrapping him behind my back and snapping, "He's not even seven yet!"  He's just a little kid, but he's quite self-aware.  I need to remember that.

My pride in Max aside, I've been getting increasingly tense about what exactly is going to happen next year.  Let's just say that while I really, really love this school, none of the options next year are looking all that great.  And I don't think Max's choice is going to be the teacher moved because of the riots that would start since everybody would want their kid in that classroom.  I decided to deal with my stress constructively over the weekend, by tearing apart Julia's room.  It helped my mood not at all, but she liked the end result (the during does not bear talking about, but suffice to say there were some...tense...conversations, of particular note one between me and my son when I was trying to move a heavy piece of furniture across the house by myself and he advised me to avoid the large house he had built out of books right in the $#%$@@#%@$ doorway).

  It finally occurred to me today, however, to talk to the woman who led Max's IEP last year, either informally, or if necessary to call another formal meeting to discuss next year's placement in light of what happened this year.  The school, understandably, doesn't take teacher requests from parents, but damn if I'm not going to use any influence I can find if it prevents a repeat of this year.  Squeaky wheel has a plan.