I don't sugar coat my feelings when it comes to school.  I LOVE my children, but I am absolutely going to be that mom that celebrates when the last baby goes off to kindergarten.  Will I be sad?  Sure.  But I will have mimosas at 9 am to celebrate my new found "freedom".

Grace is FINALLY back to school.  This is her last year of preschool and this year she is in a 3-day program versus the 2-day one she was in last year.  We met her teachers on Friday and I am very excited to watch my girl grow this year.  We are also excited to have her best friend from last year in her class again this year.  It is so sweet watching their little friendship bloom (also thankful to have such an awesome friend in her mom!).


School started today and while it has been a rainy, gloomy day... we got a good report back.  There was painting, snacks, music and lots of playing.  She ran right into her class and didn't look back and at the end of the day, she was excited to show me everything she got to bring home in her backpack.

Grace will also continue with speech this year.

To recap... When Grace turned 3, we made the call to get her evaluated through the school districts special education program.  In retrospect I feel like this should have been done closer to 2 when we originally noticed that she was behind the curve in the language department.  (My mom guilt will probably forever beat me up about that one.)  Her evaluation was completed in May of  2017.  It was determined that she was on par for all other development areas, just behind in her speech development leading to an IEP  (individualized education program).  In August of 2017, she started attending one on one speech sessions at one of the local elementary schools through the school district.  At her first IEP review around the holidays, her speech therapist (who is amazing!) suggested we bump her up to two sessions a week even though she had hit the semester goal that was in place.  So we started going twice a week the second half of the year.  By the end of the last school year her therapist was fairly certain Grace suffers from apraxia of speech.  Apraxia is a motor planning issue.  Her mouth doesn't convey what her brain is thinking.  Over the summer we attended the summer session of speech therapy through the school district and then did one on one lessons with her therapist the last half of the summer.


This summer we saw so much progress in Grace's speech.  We still have bad days where it is a serious challenge to understand what she is saying.  That's the apraxia.  But for the most part she had come leaps and bounds since we started this process a year and a half ago.  This year we are seeing a different speech therapist that works directly with Grace's preschool.  Her current therapist, the one she saw this summer and the one we had last school year have all said her file does not accurately reflect her current abilities.  She has come a long ways.

So here we are.  Ready to get back into the swing of things.  I managed to show up dressed, with some mascara on to preschool this morning.  I am trying not to set the bar too high... but maybe I will do a bit better than pregnant Amanda did most of last school year.

With that... cheers to the new school year!