Spring is here!

Hello All -

I cannot believe (well, yes I can) how long it has taken me to be able to get back to the blog and update on Mollie's great progress with her new ears.

Can I just say - Wow! She is making leaps and bounds literally. She has really clicked with her ears and she is so good she already knows how to put her magnets back on her ears when they fall off. She will come up to one of us and say "uh oh, uh oh" which signals us to fix her ears.

Since I last wrote we have had several events pass. First we have gone to several stimulation appointments with Dr. Cathy. She plugs Mollie into her computer and we work on games. While we play these games they are able to really fine tune her equipment so that she does not miss anything. She went from hearing at a 80 to 90level all the way up to 15 in both ears. You and I would hear in the normal hearing range from 20 to higher. So, good news is Mollie can actually hear better than us, but her brain has to learn how to process all the new sounds she hears.

The other events we have been going through are her Individual Education Plan (IEP for short) this is where she has the right to have an education plan and school taylored to her learning ability. Since she has been going to the Mama Lere school, our goal as always been to keep her going to this school until she can mainstream into (hopefully) a typical elementary school by the time she starts 1st grade. The school is contracted through Metro which is Davidson County (thank goodness we live here) the county will pay for Mollie to continue her education at the school. The school, just to give you an idea, is $18K a year. This does not include her individual therapy she receives once a week. This allows her the ability to attend a smaller class with children who have hearing loss that are her age as well. It is a very small school but sooo great! So since this process has started we have had a Transition Meeting and an Arena Assessment. Next week we will have her actual IEP which is the written plan for Mollie for the next 3 years. All of this is very overwhelming to get through as a parent. It is dealing with a lot of red tape to make sure your child receives the disability benefits they are entitled to by law. If ever any of you have to go through this type of process... please call me I will be happy to help. One last item we are trying to get included is her transportation to and from school. It would be so helpful to have a bus come to our house every day to pick her up and bring her home. Especially since the school is downtown and gas is getting so expensive. Plus I could keep Nate in his current preschool and get Madie off to school in the morning without having to move mountains. All of this seems to be working out well so far. It just has too, I have prayed and worked so hard for it to. Everytime I say to Bobby - "I just can't do this" - he encourages me and reminds me that I am doing it and I have been doing it and doing a good job of it!!! How sweet and encouraging for me.

In final notes - we are all taking a break in June. Nobody is going to school, nobody is going to camp, we are just going to take a break! We have our first family vacation ever, planned in June to go to the beach for a week. We have rented a house in Destin, FL and will have some friends meet us there towards the end of the week. I cannot wait to introduce Nate and Mollie to the ocean. In July - Mollie will go to school 5 days a week from 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 a.m., Nate will go to school MWF from 9:00 a.m. until when I decide to pick him up and Madie will travel with me and keep me company. Hopefully she and I can carve out some special time together. Then in August both girls will be at school 5 days a week and Nate will be in school 3 days a week. There is some possibility that I might actually have some sense of having some time to myself and being able to get errands done with out always having a child or 3 children with me. Maybe my closets will get cleaned out, maybe I can start a craft or actually read a book again - who knows! :)