A New Season...

It has been a while since I posted.  I honestly haven't felt like writing and have withdrawn into myself for comfort and solitude.  Things had been going well, barely any bumps in the road, and then school started...  My punkin horsie is having a rough go of it this year in Kindergarten.  About a month into school she began to meltdown at bedtime, sobbing hysterically that she didn't want to go to school.  She has figured out that she is behind her classmates.  Ryan and I would take turns holding her, as she buried her head into our chests and sobbed, sometimes for an hour or more.  It broke my heart..

I emailed her teacher, case manager, and therapists immediately when this began and all were quick to support her.  Her teacher put together a special bag with a chalkboard, markers, and a letter writing practice book for us to use at home.  She was excited to practice her writing, we stick with markers over pencil right now as she can write better with those, and we bought her a set to use at school where her teacher allows her to use them instead of pencils.  Things seemed to be improving and she stopped crying at bedtime.  Then, we hit October.

In October, she began to have accidents at school.  I had her checked for UTI's twice, and she was negative.  At home, all of her bodily functions were working, but at school we thought she was just getting distracted and forgetting to pee.  I should change that, we THOUGHT she was getting distracted, until the day when she had 3 accidents in less than 1 hour and Ryan had to go to school and get her.  A doctor's visit and an x-ray showed that her intestines were full and when the doctor tried to listen for movement, he heard nothing.  So began the path we are currently on to avoid having any type of surgery.  A path paved with suppositories, Miralax, Mineral Oil, and Senna.  We were reunited with Dr. Fishbein at Children's, who was pleased to see us again, until he heard why we were there.

In November, I went to Parent-Teacher conferences, and I almost wish I hadn't.  It's hard to sit there and keep from crying when you are bombarded with everything you already know to be true.  Yes, I know she is behind in Math.  Yes, I know she struggles to write her letters and numbers.  Yes, I know she struggles with counting.  And the list goes on...until I got to speech and that was the shining moment of the day- she is excelling at her speech goals :-)  When I left her conference and prepared to go back to school to begin my own parent-teacher conferences, I cried the entire way back to school as well as in the privacy of my classroom.

Yes, my punkin horsie is having a tough time in Kindergarten this year.  Every day after work we have a schedule of what we need to work on.  We are extremely blessed with the new daycare that we found, as Miss Nora works with Juli after she gets off the bus from Kindergarten.  She has made her lots of reusable letter sheets for her to trace and practice writing her letters on, and with Miss Nora's help, her writing is getting better.

What I so wish for people to see with my little girl is that while she may be behind in many areas, she does excel at others.  She can sing most of the words to: Thrive by Casting Crowns, God's Not Dead by the Newsboys, Kings & Queens by Audio Adrenaline, & You Are by Colton Dixon.  She has a wonderful imagination and one of our favorite things to do at night is to play "Big Sully/Little Sully" with her stuffed Sully animals.  One thing I have learned from being Juli's mom is that every season will eventually end.  Our last rough season ended eventually, and I know that this season will end eventually as well.

Romans 5:3-5 "Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."

And now for some cuteness...