Tuesday, September 7, 2010

First Day of School!

YAY!  Today was the first day of school for Murphy and Harlie.  The morning went smoothly and everyone got where they needed to be - with time to spare.

This is how I found Harlie when I went in her room this morning...


Here's the three of us getting ready to walk to school...




Here are two silly dads trying to figure out if they were happy or sad about school starting.  Tom is clearly faking his sadness.  And Preston looks like he's come to terms with his emotions...


The first week they let us walk the kids to their classroom.


Back home for Harlie's turn to go.  I decided to let her skip the hearing impairment instruction today for the bus ride.  She was so excited.  I think it was a good call.


Here's Brandy and Harlie.  Harlie was not being cooperative with the pictures today.


Putting the harness on for the bus ride...


Her going up the stairs - all by herself!  I love this bus driver!  She is so nice.  I hope we get to keep her!


All secure for the ride to school...


And a token pic of Cooper just so he doesn't feel too left out...


And everyone had a good day.  It was fun picking Murphy up at the end of the day.  Two of my neighbors have kindergartners, so we all got to be there to get the kids.  It was chaos for a few minutes as all the kids were dismissed.  But fun chaos.  It is nice to get back into the groove again.

Murphy started gymnastics today, too.  It is his very first "fun" activity.  He clearly doesn't want to do anything sports-related - so I thought I could pass this off as not being a sport, but still giving him some exercise.  He seemed to really like it.

On Friday Harlie and Cooper will take gymnastics, too.  Me signing them up all started with Harlie's physical therapist recommending it for Harlie.  Since she has loose ligaments, we should try to compensate by building muscle strength (since you can't do anything about the ligaments).  For example, when she wants to go one direction, and I want her to come with me, I cannot pull her arm with any effort whatsoever.  It totally feels like I'm going to pull her arm right out of it's socket.  It's a really weird feeling.  And she said gymnastics would help with that.  When I was looking at the classes offered, I realized that the boys would probably really like it, too.  So, I signed them all up.  We'll see how it goes for this first session and then go from there.

Tomorrow is Therapy Day.  Harlie has speech therapy, feeding therapy and physical therapy.  Normally, this occurs on Thursdays, but since it is the first week of school, things got moved around a bit.

In Feeding Therapy, a psychologist will sit in on the session to observe Harlie's behavior.  It is atrocious.  I can't believe how this little girl can break an adult into pieces in a matter of a few minutes.  It is now a battle just to get the tray on the high chair.  And now that she's almost four, she knows how to get it off.  Really, we're at her mercy in so many respects.

And it's such a shame, too.  Even when resisting every bite - she ends up eating a good volume - tonight's battle ended with a 9.5 ounce feeding (which is great).  That is clearly the only thing that is keeping me going.

Well, that's it for now.  I must get to bed.  I have an early run in the morning - ugh - 5:30am!!!!  These school hours are killing my training time!

Thanks!
Christy

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