Tuesday was hectic at work. I was impatiently waiting for the delivery of my new sit/stand desk to help relieve some of my fibro symptoms, I had a lot of actual work to do, and I spent a good portion of the morning on the phone with IT trying to find out why I suddenly couldn't save anything to my department drive. During the mess I missed a couple phone calls on my personal phone, and noting that they were an OHSU number and an unknown number, I assumed it was an appointment reminder and a spam call. When I finally got around to listening to the voicemail, I was greeted with a vague message to call my doctor's office (a little scary) and a call that dropped my stomach to my toes and got me impossibly hyper.
"Hi, this is Rebeccah from James John Head Start," the voicemail started. It dawned on me that we had in fact been placed on the waitlist months ago. "I'd like to let you know we have an AM spot for Simon if you're interested." As I do when I'm excited about something, I jumped right into the details: It's February, so he'd only have three months of school. He might not adjust in that time. Even so, it might help him adjust next fall. Or it could turn him off of school. It's only three hours a day, which is far longer than he's ever done anything, but short enough to get through. Better than jumping in to full day. Bob could get work done undisturbed! Except when he'd need to be in the class. Or maybe Simon will do better without us. Mark (early intervention teacher) will help him there instead of Swap! We won't be at Swap much, the kid will be far too exhausted. He's worn out after 30 minutes of gymnastics class, and it's not the physical activity that does it.
On and on and on. In the midst of the processing overdrive, I called, checked my chart, called again and saw they were just letting me know insurance denied a prescription, no concern there. Back to Simon. Bob and I chatted. I posted on Facebook. I remembered to get some work done. I decided to call back to say yes to the spot, knowing I could change my mind, and I really didn't want to miss our chance. We chatted, waffled, conferred, and decided we were definitely leaning toward going for it, but would wait to see what Mark had to say. We fully expected him to be enthusiastic about it, he brought us the application and was really disappointed when Simon didn't get in earlier. I sent him an email so that he'd have time to think it over before they met at Swap today.
No thinking needed to happen on Mark's end, before he even talked to Bob and knew if we were going to do it, he went to the Head Start, camera in hand, and took pictures of the teacher, the classroom, and the school to get a social story ready to prepare Simon. This county teacher randomly assigned to our family took this extra step before he knew what our answer would be. It's a touching indication of how much he cares for Simon, and I'm grateful this will give him a chance to see Simon at the school he'll go to in the fall. Head Start isn't in the same building of course, but it's the same location. Despite the adjustment concerns, and worry that tough three months will sour him to school, the opportunity to do it now and at James John is most likely going to give him a great experience to help him ease into Kindergarten next year. Every time I think about the reality of it, my guts flop again, but I'm really hopeful about the chance this will give him to do well.
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