Buses, Hand Surgeons, and Conferences (Oh My!)

It surely was Monday this morning, and 6 AM seemed to come earlier *this* Monday morning than usual. Not that 6 AM ever seems late, but with it getting light even later in the mornings, plus the clouds and the rain, it just seemed extraordinarily early today. Luke got up okay, though he didn't eat any of his breakfast. Other than very brief negotiations about which jacket to wear to the bus stop (I insisted on the water resistant one, which turned out to be a very good thing!), the morning went quite smoothly.

Then we spent the next 25 minutes waiting for the school bus that never came. We were out there at the same time as usual, and we usually wait about 5 minutes before the bus shows up, so either it came more than 5 minutes early, or it came after we left (or it didn't come at all). Note to self: get a larger umbrella for waiting at the bus stop!! I was soaked from about the hips down trying to keep Luke covered, and he was still reasonably wet. It was our first time waiting for the bus in the rain, and I figured it wasn't a big deal since we shouldn't be more than a bit damp in less than 5 minutes of waiting. After two torrential downpours, though, we were both quite wet, me more so than Luke.

At 7:10, we headed back home for our first drop off at school. I had no idea what the procedure was for that. The website had a little bit of info, and thanks to listening to other parents talk about dropping kids off in the morning, I had some inkling of what to expect. (Drive up, someone will open the door, child hops out, person closes the door, you drove away.) But still, trying to figure out where to wait and how it works in the rainy dark was not my idea of fun. We did see a school bus sitting with emergency flashers on down one of the neighborhood roads. No idea if that was the elementary school bus or not (could have been the middle school bus). We were already in the car, and I didn't have an umbrella with me, so we just kept going. I figure we'll oversleep one of these days and I'll need to know how to drop him off. May as well learn now! It went really well, all things considered. We live 2.5 miles (4 km) from the school. It took about 10 minutes to get from the house to the school and drop him off. Not bad, given that I had to wait in the carpool line with 20-30 other cars. It took nearly 20 minutes for me to get home! Gotta love rainy Monday Atlanta morning traffic. And I did change out of my wet clothes and into my pajamas when I got home, just because I could. It had been quite the Monday already, and I hadn't even been awake for 2 hours.

Next came DH's doctor's appointment for his hand late Monday morning. I was quite surprised when I looked up the website for the hand specialist he was referred to only to discover the guy is a plastic surgeon. For a hand? Really? Plus, he's a surgeon. My mom (the RN) always says "why are people surprised when they go see a surgeon and he recommends surgery?" I'm not saying they recommend unnecessary surgery, but if that is who you were referred to, then obviously the referring doctor thought you needed surgery, so it shouldn't be a surprise. So we were quite surprised when DH did not come home with a recommendation for surgery. His injury is right on the threshold for what they do surgery for and what they only do therapy for, so he left it up to DH, who most definitely opted for no surgery! (At least not at this time. Will follow up with surgeon to make sure it is healing properly.) He will go to have a custom splint put on it tomorrow at the physical therapy office, then after 8 weeks he'll start physical therapy. He is most unhappy that he will be off the basketball court for nearly 2 months (possibly longer, depending on what the PT says after the splint is off).

After that was Luke's first parent-teacher conference at school. It is standard procedure to have one after the first progress report is sent home. I didn't mention it sooner because I wanted to see what the teacher had to say about his status/progress. Given that the report was for only the first 6 weeks, most of the items were listed as "not assessed," which is reasonable. For everything that was assessed, he scored a "meets expectations," except for one item. "Recognizes all upper and lower case letters." We know he still has trouble with Vs and Ws; we're not worried about that at this point. I am confident he'll get that soon enough. I was much more concerned with her personal evaluation and overall impression of where he is now, how he is progressing, and especially his behavior.

Mrs. B was very complimentary of Luke on all counts. She did mention, as we expected, that he doesn't always seem to be paying attention, but he can usually repeat back anything she was saying. He's just a little distracting to her, but not disruptive to the other children, which was my primary concern. He's been prone to having "not listening" and "not staying on task" marked on his weekly behavior report, but she said that even that is improving. He's good with numbers and spatial orientation (duh! LOL), and he is in the second highest reading group in the class (out of 5 groups). When I said that I had been worried he was a little behind on that, she assured me that he absolutely is not. The only kids ahead of him are the very few who could already read when they got there. He is making great progress on his reading, and he apparently is better about demonstrating it for her more than he demonstrates it for us, which is frustrating (for us) but we'll take it. An excellent meeting, for sure.

I guess Monday was just interested in getting all of the bad stuff out of the way early! Definitely made for a stressful morning, but better to miss the bus, get soaked, and drop Luke off at school, than to have hand surgery required and a poor school progress report.

Currently feeling: a bit damp, but overall pleased