So very thankful

I have many things to be thankful for this year but the greatest thing in my life right now is:







Everything I do is for him and I wouldn't be where I am in life if he weren't here with me. I am also very thankful to all of the people in my life that help me be the best mom I can be to him. I may question myself some times and wonder if what I am doing is right by him, but then I sit back and really look at the whole picture and realize that he has a TON of people who really, truly care for him and they wouldn't be in his life if I didn't have the need for it. That makes me sad and thankful at the same time! I am glad we needed the extra help and I am glad that I have found such great people to love and care for Anthony.

Life

I am happy to report that all of the new arrangements have been working out well for us. Anthony seems happier now that he is in a home environment while I'm at work. He gets a lot more one on one attention now which I think is something he needed.

I am a lot less stressed when I go to work because I know he is in good hands. He really loves going there and I know he is treated well at each of the sitters' houses.

I keep going back and forth about keeping Anthony in pre-k. He enjoys it for the most part, but since I've been volunteering at his school (in a different classroom than his) I see just how chaotic it can be and just how little attention each of the kids gets. Kids generally get looked past if they are being good and the kids who act up get all the attention. I know, I know, it's like that in every classroom. Still.

It doesn't help that there is a kid in his class who beats up on him and calls him names repeatedly. At least once a week I hear a story about how the kid hit him in the head with a plastic rake or punched him in the stomach or called him a crybaby or stupid.

Last week, Anthony got in trouble at school because he finally punched the kid back after being punched twice and called a crybaby. He was so upset for getting put on yellow because of it (a behavior chart thing they have at school) that he cried for over an hour after we came home.

I don't know. He really likes school other than when these things happen. He always looks forward to going but I feel like crap for continuing to take him whenever I hear the stories about him getting hurt. :( I don't know. Maybe I just feel this way because I feel like I hardly see him? I wish this program were a half -day program like I originally thought it was.

More changes

All this week I was calling around to daycare centers trying to get Anthony into a before school program for Monday mornings. Well, apparently, no daycares offer part time before school programs and they want upwards of $120/week. For before school care.

HA.

So I was chatting with one of the moms at Anthony's school about my crazy schedule and daycare issues and she has offered to watch him on Monday mornings. :) She has a boy a week younger than Anthony and another boy that is 2. We got together at her house this morning to let the boys play and to chat a bit.

I am LOVING this arrangement. This means I won't have to take him up in the tower early in the morning until daycare opens -I can just schedule my break to go pick him up in time to drop him off at school.

Yea, Anthony is now going to be going to three different houses over the four days I work but I am going off the theory that "it takes a village to raise a child" and staying really optimistic about it. I think he will love hanging out at each of these houses and I think it will be good for him.

I just wish I would have found these ladies sooner. :)

Something I've been thinking about

On Tuesday, I went to Anthony's school for a 'volunteer orientation' where they gathered all of us who said we could volunteer our time and go over the things they would need us to do.

About 25 people showed up.

There are 34 classrooms of kids -over 600 students- in his school. Assuming at least half of the students live in 2 parent homes there should be something close to 1000 parents with kids in that school.

Out of 1000 parents, only 25 have the time to volunteer?

I find this very, very hard to believe.

Where is the parent involvement?

I can fully appreciate that many families have both parents working. I can fully appreciate that some stay at home moms may have younger ones at home they might not be able to find care for so they can go and volunteer. But, I also know there are plenty of parents who only have one child or who work odd hours or part time and can be available once a week for an hour or two. Where are they?

And why does this bug me so much?

It feels so good

Tonight, we started a new chapter book (The Magic Treehouse: Haunted Castle on Hallow's Eve) and while I said "We're only going to read two chapters tonight" at the beginning, Anthony kept asking for "One more chapter!" We ended up reading five and he was still begging for more.

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I had a conference today with Anthony's teacher and it went really well.

Anthony is at the top of the class academically. His teacher says about half of the class does well with writing letters but Anthony is the only one who is writing sentences. He is also the only one in the class who can pick up a book for the first time and read 90% of it without help.

I've been told that although they haven't had a reading assessment done, yet -one will be done half way through the year- he will most likely be the only one in his class on his level and that he will most likely join another student or two from other classes for reading groups. The fact that they are going to split kids up to join others who are on the same level excites me. Every week I learn something new about things this school does and they all have been good -it makes me feel good about my decision to put him into this program.

He has always been so eager to learn and I have loved feeding his appetite for it over the years. I just hope we can keep this momentum going throughout his schooling.

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This report comes on the heels of a report I got a couple weeks ago from two of the daycare workers that take care of Anthony. They say that he is the absolute best kid in that entire daycare. They were just gushing about how polite and smart he is. It really made me tear up.

I finally feel like I have been doing things right. Life has been crazy since he was born. I always worry how everything will affect him and wonder how messed up he will be because of everything that happens in his life. Roy has been in and out of his life, we've moved many times, but up until a year ago I had been a constant. And then last year everything came undone, uprooted, completely and utterly f'd up. And he had his rough moments. We all did. It's no secret that this past year has been brutal on all of us.

To hear that other people think that he is a great kid, see that he has manners, see that he is smart... it makes me feel good. It makes me think that I can do right by him, even if I am a single mother raising a boy.

Sighs of relief

I finally -finally- found someone to watch Anthony while I am at work. Well, two someones, actually.

One is a lady I met through a local message board. She'll be watching him on Friday and Saturday nights. We went to meet her on Thursday evening. She has a daughter a few months older than Anthony and they played well together while we talked. I am feeling very good about this arrangement. :)

The other is one of my co-workers. She'll be watching him on Sundays. I watch her son on Thursday nights so Anthony already knows her very well. :)

Mondays, he will be going to a different daycare center for before school and to pick up the bus to school.

I am just so fed up with this ghetto daycare he is in. The owner is rude and downright disrespectful. She has the nerve to complain about my schedule and the hours I bring Anthony to the center yet I am paying full price for part time care. I pay for 40 hours a week and now that A goes to school he only goes to daycare about 25 hours in a week. IF THAT! I never even asked for a price reduction! WTF is she complaining about?? Agh.

Next weekend will be his last weekend there and I am SO happy to be done with it! I feel bad for him a tiny bit because he has made some friends there and enjoys the teachers but the bad far outweighs the good about that place.

As it is right now I feel like he never gets a break. He is constantly around a ton of kids and I know it has got to be wearing on him. I think he will be much better off in a home environment over the weekend so he can relax a bit. :)

Man, this kid kills me.

Three accidents in 24 hours. Nothing that's really his fault but boy does he have bad luck.

First, he knocks over a can of paint upstairs (which apparently I didn't seal all the way) and gets paint all over his brand new clothes that he had just worn for the first time yesterday along with the carpet in one of the bedrooms. Instead of coming to me and telling me about the mess he'd made, he attempted to clean it up himself which only made the clean up worse. I tried for over 3 hours last night to get all the paint out and while I got most of it out of the shirt, and I think it would be wearable, the pants will now become "home pants" because there is no way I'm sending him to school with paint splattered jeans.

Then, this morning, he trips over his own feet while carrying his leftover breakfast to the garbage can and gets food all over his clothes requiring a wardrobe change.

Lastly, his thermos came open inside his book bag and leaked milk all over the place. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal because the only thing he usually has in his book bag is his lunch box. But no. Today was library day and he had a library book in there. The pages were all stuck together and in my attempt to separate the pages, the pages tore apart. The book is ruined.

I know, none of this is really a huge deal. I can buy another pair of pants, I can wash the clothes from this morning, I can buy a new book to give to the school. It just seems as though Murphy has been visiting us a little too much lately and I'd like him to back off.