Back to School! or (New Routines: Here We Come!)

Whew… Well… It has been an interesting few weeks. I haven't had time to write much because it is that time of year again...

School is back in session! This of course means lots of things to lots of different people. To my family, the start of school this year means that we have Sofie entering Kindergarten and Bianca going to 1st grade with a whole new set of routines to establish.

Sofie humors me with a pose.

Sofie has been super excited and energetic. She couldn’t wait to go to school. Bianca has been in school of some kind (early intervention, therapy, what have you) since she was 3 and Sofie was 2. So Sofie has always wanted to go and ride the school bus and be with the other kids. She didn’t cry when I left in fact she couldn’t wait for me to get out so that she could color without posing for pictures.

I am going to buy this suit for the paras.

Bianca on the other hand… has been a challenge. Bianca now goes all day, and the classroom that she had become so familiar with last year got given to the full-day kindergarten kids and the special needs class was move to a MUCH smaller classroom. So between getting up at a different time and going to a different classroom, Bianca is still in the process of developing her routine. It will happen, it always does… it just takes a little while.

I feel bad for her teachers and paras though. They seem to be taking quite a bit of Bianca’s wrath as I get daily reports on Bianca head-butting them on an almost daily basis. I feel really bad about that when you consider that all one the paras she keeps attacking did was raise over $2500 for our Autism Walk team. I told my wife that as a gift we should give her one of those padded Dog Bite Suits to keep her safe from bumps and bruises at the hand of our daughter.

The change in schedule has left Bianca sleepy and a little less participatory in her therapy session. It has also left this daddy pretty tired. Getting up at 6:45 to get kids ready for school when your body is used to going to bed after 2AM is brutal! But the good thing is that I can usually go back to sleep with my son and then he and I have a good chunk of the day together just the two of us. This provides for a lot more one on one daddy/son bonding time, which is really nice. I have already sent the wrong lunches off with each kid which proves tougher on Sofie than on Bianca. Sofie is super picky and Bianca loves to eat fresh fruits and veggies which Sofie considers nothing shy of toxic. The teacher had to buy Sofie a lunch because she refused to eat anything in Bianca’s lunchbox. I owe somebody $1.75.

Bianca is NOT a morning person.

On the plus side, Bianca has been routinely sleeping through the night. When she does wake up she usually stays under the covers and sings herself back to sleep. We’ve had one morning that we woke up to a code brown, but it was caught pretty early and another morning that Bianca woke up at 3AM and was up for the day. All in all… not NEARLY as bad as the start of previous school years.

It is now bath-time in the Melgarejo household, so I am off. Yesterday Sofie informed me that she didn’t want to take a bath with her little brother because she didn’t want him to “pee in my face”. I have no clue what that is about. I have a feeling that my or a babysitter is holding out on a story though.

I hope your back to school experience is going well! Feel free to share them in the comment section below!

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