The 2012-2013 School Year

The 2012-2013 school year has officially begun. Begun…is that the correct way to say that or should I say began. Oh well, let me go on.

CJ and Nathan started school on Wednesday and Larissa started school on Thursday. It is really too soon to tell what kind of year it’s going to be but I will do everything in my power to make it the best possible year. Of course, I tried to do the same thing last year but that failed….literally. Honestly though, I think that both Nathan and Larissa gave up at some point making any efforts on my part or on the part of the school completely pointless.

I have signed up for MMS. That is a parental site that allows me to see what assignments they have due, when they are due and if they are handed in. I can also see grades once they are posted, or at least that is what I am told. So far, Nathan has three assignments due in Physical Science so I can sort of tell how the site works. I am not sure yet if it will be as good as I had hoped though. The assignments are listed by name but that means nothing to me. So I still have no idea what is due, just that an assignment named “the maze” is due on Sept 4th. Now I know what that is because Nathan told me but I am pretty sure that at one point, I am going to tell him something is due and he won’t know what I am talking about. Or Larissa for that matter.

Larissa seems excited about this school year. Apparently she never really like the kids in her class last year and all of her friends were juniors anyways so she will be graduating with them now. I just don’t understand my daughter. I am pretty sure that is not reason enough to throw away a year’s worth of education and of life just to graduate with your friends. But then again, there is little that I truly understand about the way that Larissa thinks of her education. She is looking forward to the yearbook and prom and graduation and her class ring. Most of those things she never got to do last year or even showed any interest in. Right now, I am just staying optimistic because that is all that I can do. I want to be supportive of the things she does. Here she is the first day of school. She hates her hair that she had to chop off because she destroyed it from dying it too much so she wasn’t thrilled to take the picture.

CJ loves his teacher too. He misses some of the kids that are not in his class anymore but he still sees them at recess and lunch so it’s not a big deal. He enjoys school and I hope to keep it that way. Watching CJ grow just makes me smile. He enjoys spending so much time outside and I love that he does. He plays with the neighbors each and every day. I wonder what will happen when the weather turns cold and it’s too cold to play outside. Here is picture right before heading off to the first day of school. He could not wait to get out the door.

CJ has started karate. He has had his first two meetings and his classes start next week. He will be going every Tuesday and Thursday. He can go as many times during the week as he wants at no additional cost. I love the karate school that he is enrolled in. I think that they will help him grow into a well-rounded boy. I really wanted Nathan to go too but he has no interest in it at all. I won’t push it on him. Here is CJ getting his white belt. They teach the kids that all things in life must be earned so he had to earn his white belt. I think that is awesome.

Nathan has been doing better on his meds. He has been playing with CJ and getting things done. He has already started his project that is due on Sept 4th and it’s not a rushed project, he is actually taking time to make it look really nice. I am proud of him and I hope that this is an indication of what the school year will be like for us. He still shows no interest in any extra-curricular activities but I am enjoying the small changes. The biggest thing is that it has not changed his personality. He is still a clown and full of jokes. I don’t ever want his personality to be masked by the meds. Here he is the first day of school. He really does not like to take pictures at all.

So that is it. That is how the school year has started. I hope to have some good progress this year and will try to document it all here. I hope everyone has a great 2012-2013 school year !

Preparing Nathan for School

Yesterday I took Nathan to the doctor. It was not his physical but it was an appointment to discuss his meds and get him to where he needs to be for the first day of school.

I have always struggled with the option of medication. I only wanted to use it as a last resort. Last school year, after failing several classes first quarter, I worked with his doctor to get him on 26mg of Concerta. That worked ok, no side effects and his concentration seemed to improve. On our first appointment back to the doctor to discuss how it has been working, Nathan mentioned that it appeared to be wearing off too early and he wasn’t able to get through his homework. So his medication was changed to 36 mg of Concerta but extended release. I have to admit that I did notice a good change in Nathan. He was not as argumentative at home and most importantly, he maintained his colorful personality…lol. Nathan is a comedian and a jokester and I didn’t want that to change because I have seen kids get medicated to the point that they are no longer themselves.

Second quarter report card was great. He got all B’s and C’s…which is great. He brought up every single grade. We had also taken away his laptop after the first quarter report card since we thought the amount of time he was spending on it might have been a factor in his grades as well. So I was happy with how that quarter ended. So happy that we gave Nathan his laptop back at the beginning of the third quarter as a reward.

Unfortunately, when the prescription ran out a couple of weeks into third quarter, we needed to go in for another evaluation to get a refill prescription and I had just started working and could not take the additional time to do that since I had already taken so many days already. Days ran into weeks and weeks into months and I was just so used to Nathan being back to “his normal” that I didn’t think it was a big deal. Well third quarter report card came and he had dropped in all his subjects again and failed many of them. I wasn’t really convinced that it was all the medication that had made him do so well because we had also taken away his laptop. Then he went off of the medication and he got his laptop back so I wasn’t sure what to think. Since I was still skeptical with the medication, I decided to keep him off the medication but take away his laptop again.

I got the confirmation that I needed. Even without the laptop and any distractions, Nathan failed his 8th grade year. I know that it is not entirely not my fault but I should have kept him on the medication. I feel as though I am hurting him by making him struggle. I had always thought of medication as a crutch and not as an aide.

I did a lot of thinking over the summer and I stared at his report card, I knew that I had made the wrong decisions. I made the appointment to take him back to discuss medication once again. So as I said at the very beginning of this post, yesterday we went to the doctor. We all made the decision to put him back on 36mg of Concerta and see how that reacts with him. He gained 14 lbs and grew 4 inches in the last 10 months so the same medication might need some tweeking. I am willing to take him as many times as necessary to get Nathan the help that he needs to be the best Nathan he can be this year.

This is going to be an amazing 2012-2013 school year !

Cake Decorating Anyone

Yesterday I took my first cake decorating class. I had such a good time. I was shocked, in a good way, at what I learned. I assumed it was just cake decorating. I learned all about how to make sure your cake comes out the way that you want it to and how to make my own homemade frosting. I learned how to make star tips which is the tip used to make all the form cakes that Wilton sells like this one

…see all those little stars. I can make those now ! What a great feeling. I mean you have all seen the cakes that I have made in the past. They might not be anything you would sell at the store but I am certainly proud of them. But now I can be even prouder of what I make.

What is even better is that I have people that want to take them too so I am going to wait a month to take the other class so that we can take them all together. Didi wants to take them and so does Dalissa. It would be great to take the next courses with them both.

Let’s see who else I might be able to get in with me….lol!