Karli can read!

Well, one word anyway!  What word is it?  Horse!  Pretty random, but I'll take it, it's a start!  I've slacked on working on sight reading words with her and now I could just kick myself.  We're going to start working with her hard on them now!  I picked her up early from school the other day for an appointment and she was so excited to tell me she could read "horse".  We've "tested" her at home since then and she really does recognize it so that's exciting.  She also has her first homework ever that's due Friday.  Fun times!

Playing dress up

Yesterday morning Karli really wanted to wear her Cinderella costume, so I was letting her play in it.  Next thing I know, I hear her "reading" to her build a bear (who also happens to have a Cinderella costume).  It was the sweetest thing.  I love that my princess loves being a princess!  :)

First day of Kindergarten

I'm know I'm going backwards in time a little with this post, sorry!  I'll add pictures later.  :)

Well, Karli's first day of kindergarten will definitely be one we won't forget.  We set it up at her ARD this past spring for the bus to pick her up from home to take her to school and then after school the bus takes her to daycare.  She stays at daycare for about an hour until I get off of work.  Transportation called a couple of times in the weeks leading up to school to verify things so I wasn't worried.  Her bus driver called and left a message with the time she would be picking Karli up, but in the message she said she looked forward to meeting "him".  Everyone slips from time to time so it wasn't a big deal, but just to be on the safe side we called the bus barn to verify the time.  The dispatcher said the driver must have looked down to another child's name after she started leaving the message, but that she would be there to pick Karli up at 8:01 just like the message had said. 

That morning we got Karli up and got her dressed early so I could take some pictures and not be rushed.  8:01 came and went.  At 8:10 we call the bus barn and they say the busses are just running late to keep waiting.  This is understandable for the first day, so we were o.k. with that.  8:20 came and went, then 8:30.  So, we call back again and they start radioing for the driver.  They said she would be there in 3 minutes.  Finally at 8:45 I got Karli in the car and drove her to school as we called the bus barn back again to find out where the bus was.  School starts at 8:20 and I HATE being late, so I was really frazzled by this point.  Karli was disappointed she didn't get to ride the bus, but was overall o.k. thank goodness. 

We got to school and explained what happened and walked her back to her classroom.  Her teachers took her and she went and sat down with the other kids and never looked back!  She was just happy to be at school. 

I was so frazzled by everything that went on I never even cried that morning, I ended up being more mad that we were "robbed" of her first day experience because of the mix up with the bus.  We never did find out what happened, but the director of special ed transportation called about an hour after we took her to school and sincerely apologized for the mix up and assured us the bus would be at our house the next morning.  We appreciated this since she called us on her own to apologize.  Since then we've had no problems other than the 8:01 they originally told us has turned out to be more like 8:10, but at least they're consistent now!  That little bit of time difference really isn't a big deal other than it makes a difference when I'm sitting in traffic on my way to work!  I really love being able to stay at home with Karli in the mornings now and have that extra time with her that I didn't have before.  Up until now, she's been dropped off at 6:30 at daycare.  I'm having to work at home now at night and on the weekends some to make up the time I'm missing, but it's worth it.  :)

Editing to add a couple of pictures  :)

Where's my bus?

This is technically the second day, but the first day on the bus :)

Loving Kindergarten! (and some randomness)

So far both Karli & I are loving kindergarten.  She wakes up every morning and says "I go kingegarten again?"  It's such a relief to me to know that she enjoys school!  So far I'm really liking her teachers this year.  We met one of them at her ARD meeting in March and I got a good first impression and she's living up to it!  I had a meeting with them this past week to go over Karli's behavior plan.  We're getting rid of the official "Behavior Intervention Plan" or BIP for short and instead converting the plan to goals on her IEP so that it will allow them to change and/or modify how the behavior is dealt with instead of following a step by step plan that is set in stone.  The BIP was put in place by her PPCD teacher and just wasn't working.  I don't know if she matured some over the summer or if she just responds better to her new teachers but so far they are not having as many issues with her being aggressive and bolting from them and/or the classroom as they were having in PPCD.  At home one discipline technique might work for a day or a week or a month and then it won't work anymore, so flexibility with her is definitely needed! 

She had a dentist appointment this morning and we gave her Valium to help her relax.  Last time it didn't affect her much so I really thought I would take her back to school a couple of hours after the appointment.  Yeah, not so much.  Poor baby girl was so loopy and unstable on her feet!  It hit her hard this time so I ended up having to keep her home all day.  I had to take her up to my office for a little bit so I could do a couple of things and she was hugging and kissing everyone in sight!  She was SO sad she wasn't going to school, that's all she's asked me about all day.  She took a 3 hour nap and slept off the Valium and luckily woke up her normal self. 

She's still only wearing her CPAP for anywhere from 1-2 hours at night.  We bought her a twin bed last month and she LOVES it.  We do too because it's so much easier with the CPAP not having the bars of her crib/toddler bed to deal with.  We also started giving her the 3mg timed release melatonin and that had her sleeping well for about a week but she's back to waking up 3-4 times a night again.  Maybe one day she'll sleep all night with her CPAP on.  I can dream, right?  :) 

I'll post pictures soon.  I'm on my work laptop and all the pictures are on my laptop and I'm too lazy to switch computers at the moment! 

Hello? Is anyone left out there?

I'm going to make an attempt to keep up with this again, but of course I said that a year ago and that didn't exactly happen. I am going to try though. All areas of our lives have been SO crazy lately, but all in all things are going well. Karli just started Kindergarten this past Monday and so far so good. She loves riding the bus! The bus picks her up about 8 which is an hour after I would typically have been at work, so I've adjusted my hours some and am working from home some as well to make up time. I really love being with her though in the mornings. It's nice to have a little bit slower pace and be able to spend more time with her. Not to mention we've eliminated a couple of bad influences that she had by going to daycare so early. Anyway, that's my update for now. My baby girl is growing up WAY too fast!