Last Day-First Day Happys

This is the last morning of preschool and the first day of our summer. And in honor of this once-a-year occasion, I am having a breakfast of mint gelatto and a macchiato at my favorite coffeehouse, Nordaggio's. (Ah, the privledges of adulthood!)

Summer doesn't usually make me happy. In fact, summer is my least favorite season, not only because the bugs and the heat drive me crazy, but because (as Garrison Keillor once said) it's the season that exposes my weaknesses: run, jump, skip or hop--I ain't good at any of 'em and summer is nothing if not about running, jumping, skipping, or hopping with unfettered joy. In short, I'm a geeky clutz who flees (gracelessly) from the words "team sports" and "sweat."

My only hope and source of summer pleasure is a pool. So this summer we've joined the neighborhood pool and I plan to spend a ton of time down there with Tesla. This makes me happy.

I hope this makes her happy, too, because we're just plain stuck with one another the whole summer long--and the pool will be one of our few outlets for killing time. After last summer, I decided signing Tesla up with a Mother's Day Out program wouldn't work: it's a pain to have to train another teacher to work with Tesla, and half the time I had to pick her up early because they didn't know what to do with her if something went wrong. Sigh. So it's just me and she this summer, baby.

But I am incredibly happy and grateful for the teacher we've had this year: Mrs. Kathy Davis. (Big hug out to you, babe!) Kathy is dually certified in special ed and early childhood, so when she approached me about putting Tesla into a regular preschool classroom instead of a special needs class, I did a little happy dance. Of course, we would!

Kathy is a pioneer in our district because this route is definately the road less travelled, but we are all more grateful for it. Not only has Tesla been able to adapt to a room full of typical sensory challenges, but she's been able to grow, academically, and develop many social skills we could have never taught her here at home all by her lonesome. She's a much happier kid and that makes parenting her that much easier and rewarding. And Kathy's had the pleasure of proving to herself and others that higher functioning kids with autism CAN work well in regular classrooms.

A couple of weeks ago I was able to stand in during a school assembly. When I did this before, months ago, Tesla spotted Randy and I and ran to us, couldn't stay still and couldn't easily orient herself to the situation (one of those typical autistic-y 'can't see the forest for the trees' modes). This time, however, Tesla sat in the middle of the line with the rest of her classmates and remained in her place. Even some squirrly boys behind her didn't get her off focus. I watched with amazement as she turned around to see what they were doing, evaluate it, and then turned around and focused back on the speaker. Holy Progress, Batman! And this week, Kathy proudly told me, Tesla got to be line leader, a job she took very seriously by pushing Kathy behind her and telling her to hold her hands behind her back. (Big puddles in my eyes, folks.) She's with us--not 100%--but she's is with us, working in our world and with our language!

So even though these are the last few minutes of my 'free time' this school year, I am so very, very happy.