Yawn ...

Not sure what the next couple of months will hold as far as "ability to post/blog." We are starting to realize this moving thing is for real - this weekend Matt and I are going to visit about 7 rental homes, and get an official-ish tour of the new church. We've started to pack up some books, pottery, etc.; I actually got a package of color-coded Avery moving labels but I think that may ultimately only serve to make me think I'm further along than I am ("I have labels. I'm obviously way too organized to have to worry about this."). Something about that last sentence is really awkward, I admit, but I'm not currently motivated enough to do anything about it.


On a somewhat random note, I think I have decided we are not going to have any more biological children. This came to me one night last week as I was unloading the dishwasher. I thought, wow it'll be nice when instead of little children we have kids who are more like Normal People. Specifically, it will be nice when we no longer have these little creatures who require separate (sippy) cups, separate (space-rocket-themed) divided little plates, bottles, carseats, all the baby and young kid paraphernalia you usually enjoy but occasionally get weighed down by. Matt said awhile back, in relation to the another-baby debate, that "David is going to be young for a long time." I think that hit me at this particular moment - it's going to be a long enough time before the trappings of young childhood are all done, and if we were to start over with a brand-new baby it'd be that much longer. And I love kid stuff, really, and I know it'll always be something because that's how parenting is, but at some point even David will be able to play inside unsupervised for awhile, and/or Simon can be counted on not to hit him with a Lego tower, and that will be ... nice.

(We are still considering foster care and/or adoption, but not anytime soon - enough changes coming up).

(Yes, David still takes two bottles per day - his first in the morning and last at night. Otherwise it's sippy cups and open cups. He is totally capable of drinking independently from an open cup - it's usually not an accidental spill but a deliberate dumping. We've tried several times transitioning away from those last two bottles, because he's 3, yes, but he has been really resistant. We'll keep trying and I'm sure he'll give it up relatively soon. I hope ... I felt a little better about the whole situation when one of David's Early Intervention providers, who seems to be a Highly Reasonable Person, said she still makes her sons [ages about 7 and 9] drink out of sippy cups when they are drinking anything but water in the living room]).

Simon is nearly finished with Kindergarten; we are also looking at school districts when considering houses to rent. This feels very grown-up and parent-ish and it's our first such experience. When we moved back to NC Simon had just turned one and he was home with me for six months, then Matt's sister stayed with us for about another six months when I started my job. When it came time to put him in daycare, in our tiny town there was about ... one ... option for a 2 y.o. who was not yet potty-trained. We did have to decide between the regular public school (the town is so sparsely populated we actually have a K-12, and it's a small K-12) and the charter he now attends; we struggled with it a bit but at least both the options, were options. Fortunately we have made a contact in the new school system (a member of the new church) who has been helping us a bit. Also a realtor to assist in the house hunt, thank goodness - we were not getting too far on our own.

There is an option (sort of) for David in the new school system; a self-contained school with a preschool program accepting kids as young as three (free, hooray) with severe disabilities, physical and/or mental. The person referenced above has a (now adult) daughter with spina bifida who attended the school and she was very pleased. When we went to the website, I was slightly taken aback at the pictures of kids in wheelchairs, with lots of head-supporting devices and straps and things. This is going to sound snobby, I suppose, but I promise it's not, it's intended to be funny: my automatic thought was, "Oh my God, David's not like that - he just has Down syndrome!" You see what I'm saying, right? This blog and our lives tend to revolve, to a degree, around the fact that David has Down syndrome, and this was a big life-check in terms of, oh, Down syndrome's not that bad. Which is something I've said a number of times on this blog and elsewhere, mostly in terms of the prenatal testing and abortion issue - if you've just received a diagnosis, Down syndrome likely seems like the end of the world, but it's not, I promise.

I don't want to go too far with this; don't want to go too far with, "Thank God my son is not like that," because that's not what I mean; following the "inspiration porn" guidelines I'll just be glad for how healthy and well my kiddo is doing, not being glad for what he doesn't have.

And, it turns out it's likely a non-issue; when I finally called the preschool coordinator for the new county school system she indicated David likely wouldn't qualify; if he's currently doing well in a private (not free) daycare with twice-weekly services then he'd probably continue with that - his IEP would need to indicate the need for a self-contained program, and it doesn't. It says he's doing great with his current services, and he is ... she said there is another option in their county, of group services (I'm guessing mixed with individual? Need to find out more) that sounds interesting.

To any uber-conservatives who might (for whatever reason) be reading this, perhaps the dashed hopes of not having to pay for daycare sounds like some sort of entitlement thinking. And if that's what you think, (a) it would not be "free daycare,"it would be services through the school system to which (if he qualified) he would be entitled to under federal and state law, and (b) If you are a parent who pays for daycare or preschool currently and you're trying to tell me you wouldn't take it for free if the opportunity presented itself, I will say, you are lying.

Since I don't have a lot to say this week, here's someone I've recently discovered; I think both these posts are pretty well-written:

Holy Innocence  and Screaming Babies in Mass and on the Internet. Happy reading!