Back to School!

Sophie started at a new school at the beginning of the month.  She goes M,T,W from 9a-2:30p and seems to just love it.  Now whenever we get in the car, she's asking if we're going to school.  It's in Grapevine, and we go to Grapevine a lot, so she gets mad the times when she recognizes landmarks, but then I break it to her that we're not going to school that day.

The school is a preschool that specializes in kids that need help with communication and interaction.  They have a speech therapist in-house (you can see her working at a table with a little boy in one of the pictures).  So each kid is taken out and worked with for 20mins of speech therapy a day.  And they have a very low student:teacher ration, like 3:1 or 4:1, so that each kid gets a lot of individual attention.   The school was started by an Occupational Therapist who has an office right around the corner.  (We are actually going to have her see Sophie tomorrow for an evaluation.)  The OT doesn't work at the school, but each day the teachers take the kids to her office where she has a big "sensory gym" that they play in.  It's got swings, a foam pit, balance stuff, tricycles, etc.

Sophie may also get to start going to school at our school district after she turns 3.  We're in the middle of applications and screening to see if she qualifies for therapies there or enrollment in the district's PPCD (preschool program for children with disabilities--hers being primarily speech).   It's a torturous, slow, bureaucratic process dealing with the people at the district, but the upside is that it's "free".

So things have been kinda hectic the last 2 weeks.  I was out of town the weekend before Sophie started school, so my mom was here with her.  I got back Monday night, so took Sophie the next day.  But I haven't seemed to be able to get in a routine yet with the new schedule.  The days when Sophie goes to school, she's pretty beat afterward.  They don't have a nap time (not that she would nap anyway--yeah right!), and I think it's just a lot of work and concentration for her.  So that's made her tired, and then even the days with no school she seems to be a little more sleepy than usual, but she won't nap.  Well, she will, but only in the very late afternoon, like 4:30 or 5:00, and then of course she's up til midnight.  We try to avoid that, but some days she is sooooo cranky by late afternoon that I had to resort to it.
Also, Stephanie has been working crazy hours the last few weeks for fall tax season, but that should be over Wednesday.