Back To School- 2012

Today was Etta's first day of the new school year! Like last year, she is in an Early Childhood classroom in the public school system. She goes for three hours a day, four days a week. The EC program in our county is so great! It is an "integrated" classroom (with typically developing kids in the same class as kids with developmental delays). The class has one lead teacher, two para professionals (assistant teachers), and an occupational therapist and a speech & language pathologist (who spend every other day in the classroom. So, while her IEP may say that she gets Speech for 30 minutes, twice a week, she actually has an SLP in her room for the entire class day twice a week. Same with the OT). Etta also sees a physical therapist a couple times a month.

We've had some big changes this year, and I'll be honest, I had a lot of anxiety after we left her Open House last Friday. We were SO sad to see her teacher, Ms. Mandy go at the end of last year (but, we totally "get" that she was moving on to bigger and better things). The school had three EC classes last year and now they have four. E's new teacher is Ms. Amy. She seems nice, but I didn't REALLY have an opportunity to get to know her and poor thing has some really big shoes to fill! We also lost Etta's para pros from last year, but I was anticipating that possibility. I was SO glad to see Ms. Pam in her room this year. Ms. Pam wasn't one of Etta's paras last year, but she was one of the paras during this summer's Extended School Year. Also, Ms. Pam has been with the program since it opened in 2007. I was keeping it together during Open House until I opened her information folder and realized that we ALSO lost Ms. Kristi, her SLP from last year. Etta absolutely LOVES Ms. Kristi and her new SLP wasn't there that day for me to meet. Poor Kristi and Kristen (her para from last year) had to comfort me in the hall when I finally broke down.

I know it'll be fine! And I'm sure all of the new staff are wonderful. We just had such a great experience last year and there were a lot of changes! (Also, I'm not sure that I like the idea that we wrote her IEP for this year with her teachers/therapists from last year. Considering calling a meeting just to make sure everyone is on the same page.)

So, we went to Open House on Friday and Etta had a great time exploring her new room. She really seemed to enjoy the Dramatic Play center.

Today was her first day!

And guess who came to get her out of the car at drop off.... Ms. Kristi!! Yay!

"bye, mama"

While she was in school, D and I went to the pediatrician for some spots that didn't go away after his last round of antibiotics. Dr. Hood feels that it is just a virus that needs to run its course. He's not running a fever, his ears and throat look good. She ran a strep test, just to be sure (negative) and she gave me a prescription for an antibiotic ointment but told me to hang on to it for a couple days and told me what to watch for before filling it.

Then, we drove back to The Hill in a monsoon so we could pick Etta up from school.

Her para, Ms. Pam went out of her way to come over and let me know that Etta had a great first day! Yay!