Re: Quarantine Journals - Status Quo, IEP

PS when I asked Oliver what he loved about Sissy he said he loved that she goes to school on her IPAD. He loves having her here. ❤️

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 12:18 AM Tania Cardenas <taniamc@gmail.com> wrote:

There wasn't anything particularly notable that happened today. I went to bed well past 3 AM and then got up at nine, with a headache and a big thick blanket of exhaustion. Throughout the day I developed a headache that got worse and worse towards the afternoon, but got better after dinner. 

Richard remembered about 15 minutes prior to the start time that we had an IEP zoom meeting for Penny.  We got the kids settled and jumped on the iPad to talk with her speech teacher and her regular teacher and the assistant principal, but really, honestly, not about anything in particular or anything useful. I expressed some concerns which I don't actually feel like were heard or addressed, and pointed out the fact that speech is really hard to incorporate into the day without making it seem like a tour since it's no longer taking the same time out of her day that it was before. She used to miss part of school to do speech, now speech is it just more work time in addition to everything else. It was good all get on the same page about how I'm not going to force her to get involved in it, but if she has time and she wants to, that's fine.

Penny's teacher and Penny's speech teacher both had nothing but wonderful things to say about Penny. They said that she's in the 90th percentile in almost every aspect of her education, and pointed out how impressive that is within the Coppell school district because they tend to get such high test scores. She is performing extremely well across the board, a joy to have in the class, and her teachers just love her. That's of course wonderful to hear. But certainly not news to me!

Penny felt a little nervous about me having the meeting... Worrying what it was about and how they could even have anything to talk about when we haven't even seen her speech teacher in Montana months now. But I reassured her that it was all positive things, and told her that if she wanted to come say hi to her speech teacher and everybody else of the end of the car she could. She was very excited to come in and wave at everyone, though she really didn't have anything to say. They were really really big smiles just seeing all of their faces.

Other activities of the day included Lego building. Penny built a new deposit for all of her to play with, and he was deliriously happy to enjoy it. She started working on her own LEGO set, but I think was a little overwhelmed by the process.

We did a little bit of coloring, and we had several family dance parties in the living room which brought huge smiles to both kids faces.

 Oliver wasn't really wanting to play much with Penny today, and I think between the lack of sleep and him being grumpy, she was really feeling a little down. She told me that she thought he hated her, and we talked about how he's just going through something and having some feelings and that it he loves her more than anything. So, with tears in her eyes we all sat down to have a delicious dinner, and I suggested that we go around the table and say something that we appreciate or love or have enjoyed doing with the other people at the table. And he was nervous, so Richard started and we went around the table talking about things that we have enjoyed our appreciated. By the time I got to Penny, I could tell that it was really helping, and she asked us to do another round. Honestly, I felt like it helped all of us. Just to sit there and talk about each other and really recognize and see what the other people in our family are doing and letting them know that all that effort is seeing and appreciated. So, that seemed to help us get off on a better flight for the evening.

We then all packed up the wagon and some butterfly nets and went on a walk. It was about 55° out, and I got quite cold through out the duration of the walk. Of course it was like 90° a day ago, and I believe it's going to be cold for a couple of days and then it's going to be back up to 90°. I'm actually grateful that all the plants that we bought and seeds that we started haven't actually been planted outside. I grabbed her so I can grow light and move everything inside so it still getting a little bit of UV therapy while I wait for Texas whether to simmer down.

My dad pointed out that severe storm season is really starting up, suggested that I take some water bottles and put them in the freezer so that if we lose power, the freezer box will act like an ice chest and give us an extra day or so padding on food spoiling. Man, I truly had not considered that scenario and it would be devastating for so many people. Everybody's trying to stock up on food, and if you end up losing everything in your freezer and fridge, we're all going to be desperate for something all at the same time.

We took a pretty big loop around the neighborhood, and the kids took turns walking or sitting in the wagon. Penny caught a bug in her net, and Oliver really enjoyed seeing some lights that the neighbors have put out. We looked at all the bird names on the street signs around us, and then looked up those birds and tried to spot them as we were walking. That was actually a ton of fun!  What was not so much fun was seeing one of our neighbors walk out of their house and straight across the street and into someone else's house.

When we got home, we did a couple rounds of hide and go seek, and then everyone was tucked into bed.  

Last night, when I was talking to Amy, it was brought to my attention how devastating this entire scenario would be for children whose parents are divorced. Aurora hasn't seen her brothers or her dad in months. Mia lives with her grandmother, and so of course they're trying to reduce exposure, so she's just over there isolated by herself and missing her dad. That's devastating news to me, and it's easy to focus on your own situation and not have it occur to you how

hard some other people have it right now.