Cerina

Y'all. Just. I don't even know what to say. We have so much shit going on. I could update each thread with new nonsense. But I have a therapist now. And she told me today that I have poor self-esteem and a core belief that I'm a total screw up.

I don't understand Den Leaders who don't "plan" meetings. The Den Leader guide literally plans out every single meeting for you including opening and closing, all activities, songs, games, everything. It tells you exactly how to do everything, gives you a list of supplies needed, and even provides extras like printouts if needed.

This has been a fucking nightmare, y'all. Not the house itself so much as dealing with these particular family members. For 2.5 years now we've been trying to get my mother-in-law to homestead this house. She's refused. The taxes on it are now absolutely insane, and they're making buying this house a damn nightmare. The tax value on this house has almost doubled since 2020. Homesteading it would have capped the increase to 10% per year. Now we're running into lender after lender being scared to finance us because the monthly tax bill is larger than the principal, interest, and insurance combined. And my MIL and her brother (the two people who own this damn house) are throwing regular hissy fits because it's taking us longer to find a lender than we'd originally anticipated. All because they refused to listen to us about the taxes.

He starts next Tuesday. He and I took a quick tour of the campus this week. He's still trying to pretend that he's not excited about this. But today he was talking to his great-grandma and he was going on and on about the campus and everything he learned. I think he's secretly excited about doing something different. I did find out that his English class is finishing up reading Fahrenheit 451 this week and will begin a writing assignment on it next week, so I'm trying to get him to listen to the audiobook. He's listened to the first chapter.

I think he's actually looking forward to it more than he's letting on. And I think he'll actually enjoy being around people all day. We have to buy his uniform shirts from the school, but we can buy the pants, shoes, belt, and socks from wherever. He's man-sized now though. So we just have to find khaki pants, flat front, no sewn on pockets. I'm thinking we'll start with like 3 pairs of pants and maybe 4 shirts (2 short sleeve and 2 long sleeve) and go from there. It's the shoes that will cause us the most issue because of his oddly shaped feet. And we don't skimp on shoes for him, so we're probably looking at spending $200-300 in shoes alone this weekend (1 brown and 1 black pair).

Aaaand, Noah was accepted for this year. Now I have to get him registered by next Monday, buy his uniforms (which he won't be around to help with because he's going backpacking this weekend with his troop), and convince him that this is a good thing (turns out, spending 14 years complaining about public schools has led him to believe that schools are a terrible place to be...).

Hey! He did it to himself. We just...didn't stop him in time.

And now it looks like we're going to put Noah in school as well. We just no longer have the time to give him the attention that he also deserves. He's doing his school work 100% on his own right now, and that's mostly ok, but I feel guilty that we can't do more. I also feel like a failure for dropping homeschool and sending him to school. So yay for mom guilt! I've got him on the waitlist for a local charter school that follows a classical education model. I'm also redshirting him a bit. I want him to start as a freshman rather than as a sophomore as he would be age-wise. His birthday is in the middle of the summer though, so it's not like he's going to be way older or anything. Because of the way the classical model works, it's just better if he can start at the beginning of the sequence rather than in the middle. Assuming he even gets in. He's number 32 on the waitlist for the fall. I did go ahead and tried to enroll him for the remainder of this school year as well just to see, and he's #1 on that list. So maybe we'll have him finish up 8th grade there if it guarantees him a spot next year. But now I'm definitely going to need to get him a formal dyslexia/dysgraphia diagnosis. Accommodations are super easy when you homeschool, but now I'm going to need paperwork so the school will let him utilize audiobooks and such. He's not exactly happy about this, but his concerns so far are more about how early he's going to have to wake up and whether the uniforms are comfortable. Oh yeah, they have uniforms. I think he's secretly somewhat looking forward to a change. So I guess I have until the fall to fit in all of the learning I'd planned for him but I know they won't do in school. Oh and he needs to be refreshed on Latin, and he's not going to like hearing that either.

We had an ARD for Luke while I was traveling to Seattle last week. It went well, even without me. He needs to be retested, but based on what we've told them, his old test (from when he was 3), and what they've observed so far, he's going to be starting with several supports while we wait. They're going to have an aide in class to help him about for about an hour every day, and he's going to be a part of a pullout group for a social skills class with his caseworker. They'll be working on things like taking turns and engaging in conversations. That should be good for him. I think they're even going to give him short speech sessions once a week. Hopefully after his next eval he'll be getting full speech therapy as well. Overall he's doing well. He's adjusting and making some friends. He's on par with the other kiddos as far as reading and phonics is concerned. He needs individual attention in composition, his handwriting is good, and he's likely very ahead in math. It's helping me considerably to know that he's doing well because as we all know, this adjustment has been harder on me than him.

H8

In Seattle with Icy! Had dinner last night with Jacob and the family, Tami, and Nicole. And we took zero pics.

I keep going to different specialists trying to fix my oogles of health issues, and as of Thursday, I'm not allowed to eat/drink: apples, apple juice, carbonation, chocolate, citrus fruits, cranberries, grapes, mayonnaise, peaches, pineapple, plums, strawberries, tea, tomatoes, vinegar, or vitamin B complex. That's half of my weekly grocery shopping list. So this should be fun.

Sure you do.

That seems so far away!

I'm considering this. I need to find my Fitbit and charger.