Ups and Downs, au deaux

The past several weeks have had ups and downs. But today, I introduce our newest "UP!"

Draven Gage Veal (yep that's his real name) finally made an appearance. All 10 pounds, 7 ounces of him. He sprang into the doctor's arms using his 22 inches of springy babyness. My niece is just barely my height, so the docs decided a c-section would be safer for both Mama and Baby. I hope the little guy and his family can get settled and squared away quickly. Let's see, this makes Great-kid #17.

And I get to cross some goodies off my UFO list--curtains for all the windows in Draven's house, and a couple more big baby blankets--done.

Back to School
I've been involved with a grad class this semester, offered by BGSU. There are 20 students in the class who hope to be special educators or school psychologists in the near future. And there are 10 of us parents who are 'embedded' in the program. The idea is to be sure these future educators really get what the difficulties are that we families face every day. I got to tell our story last week. The only way I could sort out what we've been through was to turn to my friend PowerPoint for help. DH and I worked and worked to try to remember which school the kids went to in what year. They've been shuffled and shucked around so much and for what? Going down this road again has been tough. And then we get a letter from the State Board of Ed, saying that our district has been selected for a review of the Special Ed program. We were invited to attended a meeting and if we wished, we could make remarks. Now, I give public programs for a living. Doesn't bother me to stand up in front of hundreds of people and talk. But I was shaking so hard when I gave my remarks that I must have sounded like a complete loser. But when my Mama Bear genes kicked in, I was completely overtaken by emotion. And so very sadly, many, many of the same grievances we had 15 years ago are still happening. Can't this school district learn anything from past lessons? So now I have to prepare written remarks to submit, then it's time to re-convene the Parents of Students with Special Needs group that we started way back when. Back to the trenches for me, I guess.

Back to Work
And to end on an UP note, I got my request to re-up at Madison Junction! Hooray! I'll be happy to see my fingerprint cards get here, so we can get that out of the way.