Quick update
Find a Conversation
| Sat, 08-19-2006 - 6:16am |
Hi everyone, I have access to computer this evening and checked my million emails and read up on you all. We are not officially back home til end of next week, but we are having a blast! The weather on Martha's Vineyard has been utterly terrific, we have been at beach after beach, sunsets, boating. Staying at the Family Campgrounds has been a real find, he can run all over on his bike unattended with the lovely gangs of kids from all over the country all looking to make friends for a few days, goes chatting at other campsites, loves sleeping in the tent and cooking over a fire. And the Children's Theatre program just rocks. Malcolm spent a few days all nervous refusing to do much participating and even coming a little unglued a few times, but once he got cast in a great part and rehearsals started up, he just fell in love with everyone and started even participating in all the movement and acting classes and making friends and having a ball. Malcolm is playing the Admiral of the British Navy in pirate musical and he has a solo and he is SO FUNNY! He has lots of the best jokes in the script and he nails them and gets a huge round of applause after his solo. He is in heaven. He doesn't want to leave. Can't say I blame him.
BOE meeting won't happen til second week in Sept. so we have lots of time to meet with lawyers and get all our experts rounded up and finish our preparations for what we want BOE to provide immediately --- tutoring and social skills programming and OT and speech while we look for proper placement, and believe you me, we plan to take our sweet time. There are 2 schools we might consider that might have openings, but we are not rushing, as we need to do ooo-gobs of research and we will be peppering any school with a thorough under-the-harsh-lamp interrogation about their ability to work with our son... And even then I will have trouble believing them after all this nightmare, I think...
So in the meantime, the grandmothers have both offered to come out for at least a month each (concurrently, thank you, we do live in a NYC apt.) to help with scheduling nightmare of 2 working parents (even though both our schedules are somewhat flexible) and a child with no school to go to. Augh. If this goes on longer than end of Oct., we may be having alternating grandmother months for awhile!!! I am planning to ask all our outside activities for bigger discounts so we have more cashflow for filling a longer day (no school) with more horseback, swimming, maybe even acting classes. And it is definitely time for him to start piano, he is spending hours picking out tunes and harmonies and writing music now, too. I've been holding off since he has been the hardest working boy on the planet --- but without the hours of school -- well, the super-smart boy is NOT going to need 6 plus hours 5 days a week for his tutoring.
School? Eh. Why bother!?!?!?
Sara
ilovemalcolm

Yay for alternating grannies! what a godsend! Sounds like Martha's Vineyard is a wonderful thing and Malcolm will do just fine when you get home as well. I hope you find a suitable placement quickly, but the homeschool/tutoring/lessons sounds great too.
Betsy
that vacation sounds awesome. I almost missed your update when I was out. Glad to hear you are having such a good time. And alternating grannies just is fantastic.
Hope you get somewhere with the BOE and he has a fabulous time in the mean time.
Renee
Thanks, Renee, I read that you have been very busy yourself there. Glad the Mikester is recovering!
I am trying not to stress out the total lack of knowing how this will all go and stay in vacation mode. I have SO much work to do that it is all very head-ache making and now I have a kid at home indefinitely, a daunting proposition. But I am holding off on most stuff until we have the lawyer meeting, then I can jump into high gear once we actually have a plan!
Tomorrow he goes back to horseback riding, I think his newly-moved-back girlfriend, who is also an equestrian, may come to watch his lesson and meet his teacher and current favorite horse, so that will be fun and lightly easing back into life as we knew it before...
I overheard him telling a friend on the playground today, who asked if he was ready for school this Fall --- "Well, no, I guess (school) wasn't the right school for me, either. I don't know when I'll be starting school again." To which the friend replied "Wow, you're lucky!"
Sara