Here's a quick update so you can know that all is well in our world:
John and I are still working at Christ UMC and still loving it. It's a little crazy to work with your spouse and live with your coworker, but we are in a good place with it all. Not a whole lot else exciting about us. Oh, we moved. That's pretty huge. We live close to work now - it's a SEVEN MINUTE commute. In rush hour, it can stretch to 15 minutes. Holy crap. It's amazing how much stress being close to work has relieved - more family dinners together, more time to get our act together and kids off to school in the morning, 30 minutes more sleep on Sunday morning (that's probably more huge than it sounds to you non-pastor types!), fewer 12 hour workdays because there's now time to come home between meetings - things that were impossible in a dual-career household with 45-60 minute commute times. We're kind of house poor, but it's totally worth it.
Becca started kindergarten and is doing great. We could not be happier with our new school system - we moved from Williamson County Schools to a system-within-a-system, Franklin Special School District. It's amazing. We pay a bit more in taxes, but it's so worth it. Williamson County Schools are considered among the best in the state, and FSSD has the same level of academics, but with more personalized attention and more diversity (economic, racial, developmental, etc). Becca's got 16 kids in her kindergarten class with one teacher (Mrs. Mathias - or "Miss Maffias," as Becca calls her), one paraprofessional (TA - Ms. Misty), PLUS Becca's personal aide (Ms. Janelle), who is with the class half the day. That's a heckuva adult-child ratio! There are kids of all colors and accents in her class, and we love having her little world reflect our world a bit more. We love the IEP team and are especially lucky that they have a hearing specialist who works with Becca once a week to help her learn how to live with her disability - teaching her tricks like turning her good ear towards a speaker when she is having trouble, etc. There have been a few bumps with the transition here and there, but Becca thrives in a school environment and (gasp!) actually love the rules and routines there. We have our parent-teacher conference next week, so I'm interested to see what Mrs. Mathias says about her work...her handwriting looks particularly awful to me, and she seems to have trouble processing how to write each letter (not just trouble in actually forming the shapes), but you knew I'd find something to worry about, right?
Baby James is a big boy! He turned 1 last month, and he is every bit of it. I know it's probably cliche or whatever, but it is so much fun to have a typically-developing kid! Not that Becca isn't fun, of course, but it is just pure joy to see a kid just pick up on skills on his own. When preemie mamas get together, we ask what the other family is "working on" - as in, what skills are you focusing on in therapy? What special techniques and equipment are you using? What kind of progress are you making? With James (as with most kids), we don't "work" on things. He just learns to do them. I swear, every time I turn around he's picked up a new skill. The most recent is his ability to transform into a monkey at any given time. He doesn't play AT his train table anymore - he plays ON it. Tonight, he used the tub of play food to try to climb up on the top of their play kitchen. Ridiculous. He's not walking yet, but he can walk using a push toy or a laundry basket. Speaking of laundry baskets, his favorite thing to do in all the world is to take a full basket of laundry, empty it by throwing each individual piece behind him, and climb into the empty basket and bounce. Weirdo. Man, I love that squishy kid. He also started daycare, which is going well. Of course, he's been there three weeks and already brought home 2 virus that have wound their way through the family, but I guess that's to be expected. Sigh. And THAT is why Becca couldn't go to daycare until she was two - makes me glad we rearranged our lives to make that possible!
So there you have it. I say I'm going to quit blogging (or kind of quit blogging), and then I churn out a full post. Whatev. At least when I come back, I'll know where I left off. :) Until then...love from the Hills!
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