The Daughter Chronicles

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Mia's new teacher

I realized I hadn't posted in two weeks because I'm a jerk. But here we are again, and I'm writing a bit more about Mia's school and her new teacher!

I mentioned in the post below that Mia's new teacher is, indeed, a new teacher, as in a first-year teacher, which disturbed us a bit. I sent her off to school, however, and hoped for the best. She's been going to school for two weeks now, and everything seems pretty okay. I figured she would eat better once she went back to school, and she has. Her aides write down everything she eats, and just the activity of school seems to have increased her appetite a bit. She has another appointment with the gastroenterologist next week, so we'll see if they need to do anything else for her. She has apparently gained some weight, but I don't quite trust our scale here at the house, so we'll see when they officially weigh her next week. But the eating has been going well.

I went to school last week to speak to the head of the Special Ed. department and say hello to her therapists. I told the Special Ed. Head that we were a bit concerned that Mia's teacher was inexperienced, and she said all the right things to reassure me. The teacher's mentor is on campus, and they're making sure she has all the resources she needs to deal with Mia. It's a bit more difficult to deal with kids who have a traumatic brain injury because they're relatively uncommon, so a special ed. teacher might go years without having one, and this teacher has one right out of the box. But after speaking with the head of Special Ed. and the PT and OT, I felt better. I'm still going to be sticking my nose in her school business, but at least I'm not as concerned about her schooling as I was. I still think it's too easy for Mia to get lost in the shuffle at school because of her immobility, and I want to make sure they don't stick her in a corner and forget about her. That's always my fear.

I'll update her schooling throughout the year, but she does seem to be a lot happier than she was at the end of the summer. I know I am! My mother is visiting for Mia's birthday (which is Sunday, so I'll have more pictures up soon), and she says Mia looks a lot better than she did in May, which is when she last saw her. So that's nice to know. Our goal now: Get her to 40 pounds! That shouldn't be that hard!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Just another thing to worry about

You know, as if we didn't have enough to occupy our minds with regard to our older daughter, now we have something else! School starts tomorrow (Wednesday 12 August), and yesterday we went to a parent-teacher night to meet her new teacher. She's a first-year teacher.

'Nuff said, I think. She's a first-year teacher.

Now, she could be the greatest teacher since Edward James Olmos. I doubt it, though. We're not very happy, but we're willing to give her a chance. I'm just very disappointed by the Mesa School District in general. First they end the program Mia was in the last two years because of budget cuts, then they don't tell us that there's a chance that the program we did put her in might have a first-year teacher heading it. We were considering putting her in a different school district altogether (we've heard the Gilbert, which is next door to Mesa, has a good special ed. program), but we figured we'd give the new school a chance. I hope it wasn't misplaced.

Man, lack of funding for schools sucks.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Voyaging to San Diego!

Well, I'm not going to write a lot about our vacation to San Diego on 22 July, but I will post a bunch of photographs! I went for the comic book convention and decided to take the family! We went to Sea World, the zoo, and the beach in between my visits to the con. We had a grand old time.

Check out the pix!

Norah at Sea World, in the Sesame Street section, which has a lot of kids' stuff.


Here's another one of Norah in the play area. A few seconds after this picture was taken, she landed on her face and got a nasty little cut on her face. She screamed, and then moved on with her life.


Eels!!!!!


On the gondola!


The girls with Shamu. Not the real one.


Mia refused to look at the camera when I was taking these pictures.


Here are some of the many photos I took at the Shamu show. There are seven orcas at Sea World, so who knows which one is actually Shamu!




Here we are at the beach. Norah really, really liked the beach. So did Mia, actually, even though she didn't go in the water.





We went to the zoo, which was a big disappointment (for a variety of reasons). But the girls did get to feed the giraffes!



Here's Norah's wound, a few days later. It looked a lot worse when it happened, but it's gone now.


Anyway, if you're at all interested about reading about my adventures at the Comic-Con, go here. There's a lot of geeky talk about comics, though! Beware!

Friday, August 07, 2009

Man, what a crappy week

I have been meaning to post pictures of our vacation to San Diego, but this week was just lousy. It's the second full week of Mia being home between summer school and the new school year, and as it's August in Arizona, it's really freakin' hot and there's not much to do. Plus, of course, Mia still isn't eating, so it's just been a cruddy week, and I haven't felt like posting pictures. I'll get to it - maybe this weekend.

Of course, the kids are still cute. Norah was wandering around today sort-of singing "Dama Dama," with the first one being somewhat higher in pitch than the second. I couldn't figure out what she was doing until she said something that sounded like "Thank you Mr. Roboto" and I realized she was singing the Styx song, which she heard today in the car. I was singing "Domo (Domo)" to her like Dennis DeYoung does in the song, and she thought it was hilarious. So she said it all day. That was funny.

Pictures soon! They're neat!

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Is Mia's long hip surgery nightmare over?

Well, we certainly hope so. On Wednesday she went to the doctor to get the sutures out of her legs, and the doctor said there were no restrictions on her therapy anymore. On Thursday she stood in her gait trainer for 90 minutes or so with no ill effects. Of course, I put her in there to convince her to eat (I told her she'd get out if she did so), which she didn't, so that wasn't terribly successful, but she did stand for quite a while! On Friday she returned to swim therapy and did perfectly fine. I'm going to put her in her gait trainer a lot over the next ten days or so, until she goes back to school on the 12th, and her physical therapist will be back on that day (he took a vacation - can you believe the nerve????), so we'll have to wait to get her walking again. But she seems fine, in no pain, and now we just have to pack on some pounds to her scrawny frame! That won't be so hard, will it?

(I apologize for the gap in posting. We went to San Diego last week and this week both Mia and Norah were around, so I didn't have a ton of time. I'll get pictures up of our trip in a day or two, I promise!)