there he goes! *sniff*

my last one headed off to school today (wahhh). mr was very excited and yelled school day!!! as soon as he woke up. we couldn't find one of his shoes, doh! but duh mom, OF COURSE one shoe would be missing on the first day of school. that is totally my bad for not expecting that. i should have planned that out last night. responsibility blah, i know better. but i didn't stress (or make it stressful for others, my specialty), i just had him wear his old shoes. no biggie!
i did send my picture with him in a special pocket just in case he misses me. i'm still amazed that he thought he might (as he never has before). but school's a big deal for him, so hopefully he'll miss me just a little before gets lost in all the fun. cj was being a very good big brother and giving him tips and said he'd be sure he got to the right place. he freaked when he saw the bus. i'm so glad i got a picture! they jumped up and down and hugged and ran for the bus. it was so cute. *sniff*

aw, some love from my "little" one

as i was tucking mr in, telling him about school (starts tomorrow and he’s been very nervous and acting crazy - refer to the poop post), i said he could take a picture of me if he wants.
he said yeah!
i said if you miss me anytime, you can look at it and know that i love you so your heart will fill up with love.
and he said when I look at it, I’ll probably hug it.
awwwwwww!!!!! : ) coming from a kid who once said (very earnestly, not out of anger) i hate you and i don’t want to live here. gotta love it!! so if he can get there, so can em! now i need to print a picture. (time lapse) found one and i put a note on the back for him. hope he doesn't need it, but part of me wants him to look at it all day! :)

child #1 is off to school, child #2 has started homeschool, and child #3 keeps pooping...

cj went off to the 3rd grade today (sniff), while em started her homeschooling, and mr had a meeting with his teacher (the poor guy).
em enjoyed her day. it was very relaxed and fun and we just introduced her to a bit of what she'll be doing (which isn't much!) yesterday she was grilling me with nonsense questions about a bird in the yard (refer to RAD list), so today she interviewed said bird and wrote its life story in her journal. later after she gets used to me being her teacher (and loving her even if she makes a mistake), i'll tell her that twila is not spelled twilla and leaves isn't spelled levse. :) she also helped at the store by using the calculator to add or multiply prices.
we met mr's teacher and gave him a brief warning/intro to RAD. thanks to laura for this great, short fact sheet! he hadn't heard of RAD, but was willing to work with us. i was hoping to save him the frustration of dealing with a child who's smart one minute and dumb the next, but how can a non-RAD exposed human really get it?? you RADical moms know it seems like it's on purpose, like they want to be in trouble (i used to believe that), but it's a fear reaction. he really can't think under stress, he'd love to be able to! anyway, mr's first full day (they go all day, every other day) is friday. i think he's more stressed than we realize because he's pooped his pants twice in two days! he never does that and said it was an accident, but it's one of those questionable accidents. he's still in diapers, only at night (where i swear he pees all night long! he's a deep sleeper.) but we've not had any kind of potty issues forever. so that and other random odd behavior makes me think he's a bit nervous, though he won't admit that. probably doesn't even realize it. he has a hard time with sad and mad, not sure he understands nervous!
while at school, we visited cj at lunch where many of the girls begged me to let em come back to school and keep cj home! :) she was really happy to see her friends again though, and very sad when we got home. did ya catch that????? em was sad! (only a RADical mom would say yay!) so as a good mom, i helped her "feel her feeling" (which appears almost rubbing it in, but isn't) and then we celebrated that she had a feeling.
tonight as i was tucking her in, she said mom i want to go back to school. so i said sure, of course you will, next year for 4th grade. she said no, i want to go now. i said well honey, you can when you're ready, but you need to be good at this. and i rubbed noses with her, to which she got nervous and did her crazy giggle. i said you need to get used to having a good mommy and be able to relax on my lap and when i do this. and rubbed her cheek gently, to more uncomfortable giggling. and i ended with a positive, but i'm sure you'll get there. you can do it! of course, i guarantee she'll be sleepwalking down here soon. it's every night lately, but always, always after any hard night.
so, a pretty good first day of school at our house, except for the poop. :)

open house

look closely, this is the deceivingly sweet face of a boy who will be driving his kindergarten teacher mad! we had open house tonight and they had a ball seeing old friends. i chose to just meet n greet his teacher (i hadn't met him yet) and i'll fill him in a little more tomorrow. i heard him tell another parent, (who just said she's afraid her son won't sit down) oh that's fine, they'll all get used to it and be just fine. i'm thinking, well maybe not *quite* all of them! i do know he's (usually) good at church, although his teachers there are aware of his background and are just amazingly sweet. i'm hoping school goes well, but i know he'll be frustrated because he won't get all the concepts or be able to do everything, which will lead to acting out. so i figure i'll lower my expectations so i'm not disappointed. :) he was in sensory overload tonight with so many people and noises all around, i'm sure it'll be an issue for a while during the school days. i had to pick him up and rub his back to help, he was just flopping around acting all nuts. i hope he'll get used to it!
em was surprisingly happy, even bragging a little to her friends that she was homeschooling. i think it helped that today i told her more fun activities we could do. for her first math, we'll bake cupcakes (measuring, adding, temperature), put on icing (maybe patterns or textures), then add and subtract with the sprinkles. :) so she was happy to see friends, and sad to leave them, but still seems excited to be home, so that's good. hopefully it'll be a smooth start to the year. oh, i said lower my expectations. then hopefully we'll just survive the beginning and see how it goes. :)

hoping for a good first day of school. i remember when...

mr will start kindergarten this week. i'll send him off praying all goes well, and hoping it's better than em's first day of first grade two years ago. it was her first year at a new school and she'd had very bad experiences with her first mom forgetting to pick her up. of course she said she was never scared (which is sad, cause she should have been, but she was used to it). here's an email i sent to friends that day recounting the story...
Yeah, first day of school and Em’s not on the bus when it drops Cj off!!! Cj yells out the window that Em’s not there, the driver asks us if we have her. So I tear back into the house and out the back door into the van and race down the road. In the meantime apparently, Dad turns around to tell me he’ll go to school and I can stay home with the boys but instead I called him and said I was halfway to school. Fortunately we’re 2.5 miles from school and apparently if you’re in a hurry it takes 1.5 minutes to get there. My worries were two-fold, first if she was at school feeling let down yet again. Her mom used to forget her, a lot (amounting to child endangering charges) so I thought here we are first day of school and I’ve let her down. (How do I make her understand we didn’t forget her? How do I make her not be scared? How do I tell her this is different?...)Or someone else picked her up and I’ll have to kill someone. (Where do I look first? I’ll have to call the police, but I’m not waiting on them. I can use my big Honda key, that’ll go all the way thru the eye into the brain!...)I didn’t know which one I hoped for! That was a horrible feeling knowing that either option would be bad, either for her physically or mentally or both. Man I was fuming!So I got there and they were on the radio with the bus driver still. Then they radioed all the drivers and another bus says they have her, she’d just gotten on the wrong one. Shew!!!! So I asked the secretary nicely (well okay I yelled a lot) how this happened and she said her teacher puts her on the bus, so I said well I need her teacher up here right now. So she got there and I yelled more. Then she explained the process and all that and the principal came in and joined the conversation. He said what exactly happened, I’m not sure I understand. I said you lost my daughter, that’s what. And I might have yelled more. Then we went on to discuss security and how they would from now on be sure she’s physically on the bus and what they’ll do if anyone else tries to pick her up, etc. Btw, they’ll call the police (state law), but also call me since I’m close (and can come dish out justice my own self!). I told them how important this was to her self esteem and feeling of security and all that, plus that her former family is a security risk and unstable and all that. I really don’t think we’ll have any more issues, as I don’t think any of them are likely to forget this for a while. She got home an hour later after a long boring bus ride, not a bit scared, just laughed that she got on the wrong bus. That says something for her feeling of security, so that was great to see. She and Cj both now know to tell the driver if the other’s not on there from now on too. And her teacher even called to be sure she got home okay and was alright. We can’t tell what happened, but Em said she was in line but the principal said the bus was over “there” but she went over “there” the wrong way. She’s not good at paying attention, but then I personally don’t think a 6 yr old should have the opportunity to be wrong, especially on the first day. But like I said, I doubt it’ll happen again. I’ll probably need to apologize to those three at the open house in a few days. But at least they know how important it is. Sigh, so thus ends the first day of school! :)

do you have any resources (as in short, explanatory letters) for teachers of RADicals??

the letter on the nancy thomas site is incredibly long and i'd prefer a shorter version. i've been through two years of trying to briefly explain RAD to em's teachers and now mr is starting school. i already feel sorry for his teacher. :) i'm (kinda) over the frustration part, but i know he'll drive his teacher up the wall trying to figure out why he's so freaking smart and so dumb at the same time. i don't want to overexplain, and i feel less need to have the teacher working directly with me since i (kinda) have a handle on it, but i do want to give an idea of the issues they'll see.
do any of you RADical parents have a good resource? i have a long email to one teacher i may be able to edit down. fortunately, i no longer feel the need to explain why i do things differently than most moms (i just don't care anymore and fortunately i have thick skin), so i won't need to defend myself like i have in the past. but i would like to spare his teachers the frustration of the WHY he does what he does. of course he also has coordination and sensory processing issues, so it may be a lost cause. i guess when they see that he scored in the 99th percentile in verbal reasoning, but only in the 1st percentile in non-verbal skills, they'll realize his poor brain is being pulled in two directions! it's going to be a long year. :)