Adjusting

*Watch for a post in the next few days of pictures of our new house! :o)

Following up from my last post, I decided to talk to the principal about being able to volunteer in the classroom.  I just was too frustrated that my teaching skills couldn't be utilized to help the class and that I couldn't be in there once a week to get a glimpse into Caleb's learning environment.  I was nervous about "going over the teacher's" head simply because I didn't want to ruin the teacher/parent relationship.  It took a few days for the principal to get back to me, so I assume that she talked through my note with Caleb's teacher.  She finally called me back and told me that she stands by what Caleb's teacher told me about being in the classroom.  She said it was school-wide policy that parents couldn't be in the classroom for confidentiality reasons--I can't know the skill levels of the other students in case I decide to share that information.  This frustrated me, because as a teacher, I know how to keep student scores etc. confidential.  I would have been more than happy to sign a contract of some sort for legal reasons pledging my silence.  I don't even know a single parent from the classroom that I would be able to talk to anyone or share information!!  I mentioned that all my friends in surrounding schools were able to volunteer in the classroom despite this "confidentiality concern."  But it was all to no avail.

So I "volunteered" at Caleb's school last week by sitting in a workroom, writing out student names for an upcoming project all by my lonesome.  I've worked out the volunteering time to back up to Caleb's lunch, so after I work for an hour, I get to go sit with Caleb at lunch once a week.  He was so excited to see me! (I know one day it won't be so exciting to see his mom at school.)

We tried being a car rider for a few days but found out it only saved us 10 minutes in the morning and less than 5 minutes in the afternoon.  The car rider line is SO long that no matter how I timed it for the few days I tried, I couldn't pick up Caleb any sooner than 3:30, 25 minutes after school let out.  (Not to mention that car rider was a HUGE waste of my time sitting in that long line two times a day, but I was definitely willing to do it.)  Because the location of the school is on a busy street, there are no walkers or bikers, so everyone is a car rider or bus rider.  Caleb said he hated waiting in the hallway after school for his name to be called and that he liked being a bus rider better...so we went back to the bus.

One thing we've really concentrated on since school started is making the weekends SUPER fun so Caleb has something to look forward to all week long.  This past Friday, Matt made arrangements to come home from work early so that he could pick Caleb up from school at 2:45.  We will not be making a habit of picking up Caleb early from school, but I had received a coupon from AMF bowling for $5 all you can bowl (shoes included) until 5pm.  What a super deal!  Caleb LOVES bowling and that was an activity we did semi-frequently this summer because I signed up for a free summer bowling program through AMF.  (The deal was you paid for shoes and got two games free.)  So Matt surprised Caleb, and they spent two hours bowling together--the bowling alley was completely dead so they let Matt bowl for free with him.

While I went to Time Out for Women this past weekend, Matt planned a really fun Saturday with the boys full of fun activities: fishing, going to a park, flying some helicopter toys that you shoot up real high in the air with a rubber band, and lunch at Burger King.

The previous weekend we practiced some baseball to gear up for Caleb's first baseball season starting in a few weeks.  Caleb's really excited and will do super great!  Then we all went out for ice cream.

Week 4 of school is almost complete, and things are finally starting to improve.  Week 3, the complaining about school every day started to become every few days.  Just yesterday, Caleb got off the bus and told me that school doesn't seem so long anymore.  My anxiety level has been able to come down this last week from worrying about Caleb all the time! I love being able to meet him for lunch once a week, even though I can't see him in the classroom environment.  I think he's having trouble making friends still, so I'd like to somehow set up play dates with a few kids from his class.  School fills up the weekdays though and Saturdays are always so busy.  When is there time for play dates anymore?!?

Carter and I are adjusting to the rhythm of life without Caleb during the day.  Carter is starting to play independently better, whereas a few weeks ago he couldn't handle playing or even watching a TV show unless I was right next to him.  (He was used to doing everything with Caleb.)  It was obviously difficult for me to do anything around the house like that, so we've been working on it.  Just recently he's started making voices when he plays with things like cars, so he's using his imagination better to be able to play by himself.

I just finished up project 1 of my goal projects this school year: I turned the 2007-2008 year of my blog into a book so that I could have a hard copy of this journal.  I'm going to do one book per year from here on out; that means I have 4 more books to make still...very time-consuming formatting pictures and text, proofreading, etc., but I can't wait to have it all done!  I'll take a break before starting the next year in order to do some indexing, another project goal I've set for this school year.