A Week Under Her Belt

Well, Corinne has survived her first full week of school with flying colors. We have already added a half hour onto her day because she is doing so well, and seems to want to be involved with what the other kids are doing (as opposed to working separately with her aide). Now she stays for lunch time and sits at a table with her classmates. She also does circle time, and I'm told that she is doing her best to follow along and even stands up to say her name, shakes hands with her friends and sits between two other kids (in the past she always had to be on the end, preferably with an adult next to her). She is learning the name of her teacher, school and the town we live in, as well as her classmates names. We've settled into a nice little routine and she is always very excited when I tell her we're going to school. Everyone is thrilled with how she is doing and I think they are starting to get a taste of her true, silly personality. She has only cried twice. Once was because she got soap in her eyes and once was because she didn't like the plastic gloves that her aide has to wear to change her diaper (she told me they looked like the plastic bags that Momma puts snacks into). Go figure. So all is well and everyone is happy here at Loser Family, Inc. these days. More to come.

First Day of School

Well, today was the big day- Corinne's first day of preschool. I'm happy to report that there were no tears (at least not from her. Dadda and I may have teared up a little) and she really seems to like it. She's got her own aide, Mrs. H, who will be with her all the time, except when she's with her OT and speech therapist. That helps a lot, because at no point is she left to fend for herself. For now she's only going half days (2 1/2 hours) 5 days a week, but we will add another hour when she seems like she's ready for it, which I suspect will be sooner rather than later. Eventually she'll be up to 6 hours a day, 4 days a week.

So for today we have managed to get out of her (with the help of her daily notes) that she painted, did circle time, sang "open and shut them" (to which she exclaimed with delight "Steph sings that song every day!", referring to how one of her EI providers taught her that song this summer) and an unidentified song about a bean bag. She ate a pretzel and did a snowman puzzle. One boy cried because probably he missed his momma, but she, Corinne, did not cry. Upon picking her up, her first words to me were "I want to take a nap, momma" (even though it was only 11:00) and some concern that I had forgotten my bag (I dropped off a change of clothes and diapers that morning).

Upon arriving home, Corinne decided that her favorite stuffed animal, Shamu, should be exiled to our front walkway, where she left him until nap time, retrieved him for nap only to return him to the outdoors again after nap. She even left him there while we went to the grocery store, despite my warnings that someone might take him. I wish it could have been her pacifier, the beloved Boobah, instead. I'm sure there's some sort of psychology at work here regarding feelings of abandonment that I'll try not to dwell on.

So there you have it, a nicely uneventful first day of school. Hopefully she will continue to like it. In the meantime I must admit that I'm loving my 2 1/2 hours of freedom!

new classmates (Corinne at far right)

Vacation Week

We just finished up our family vacation week. We were originally going to stay in a cabin up in New Hampshire, but then I went and got all pregnant, and we decided that the money was needed more than the "escape". But Pete still took the week off and we had a nice, relaxing time and did a number of half day trips. We went to a barbecue for our playgroup, a birthday party for Corinne's friend Hannah, the drive in, which was a surprising success. We found a great double screen place not too far from our house and loaded up the Family Dorkster with Corinne's mattress, couch cushions, blankets and stuffed animals. Then we got ourselves some Chinese take out and ate in the back of the van while watching Wall-E, which Corinne really liked. She was nice and calm during it, although she proved she isn't quite ready for the regular cinema by talking in a fairly loud voice for the first hour ("Momma, what's this one's name?"; " What's that one called?"; "Hi Dadda!", etc, etc.). Then we turned the van around facing forward and Corinne slept in the back while Pete and I watched Bat Man. We'd definitely do it again.

We also went to the Southwick Zoo, which was way better than Stone Zoo that we went to a couple weeks ago. I liked the monkeys, which were really playful and funny. One kept reaching his arm through the bars to hold people's hands (Herpes B, anyone?!) and would then lick his hand. Pete liked the camels because there was a one hump one who kept biting the humps on the two humpers (we think he had hump envy) and they would make this really loud, pissed off noise.

Corinne liked the turtles, especially the regular, boring old kind that are in every pond in North America. She went back to them again and again and squinked herself silly. Go figure. Nothing else impressed her nearly as much.

Next we went to the Big Bugs exhibit at Garden in the Woods. There were thirteen great big bug sculptures made of organic materials- very cool.

We also went to our old favorite, the DeCordova Sculpture park. Here's Corinne, admiring the pine cone people. As a big fan of pine cones, this exhibit really spoke to her.

So all in all a great week. It was nice having Pete home every day and he really loved being able to spend so much time with Corinne. Today it was back to school shopping for Corinne and I to get ready for the first day on Wednesday. Stay tuned...

(Corinne and Turtle, driving the Family Dorkster after flower picking with Dadda)