We've Moved!

So much has happened in the past few weeks. My head is spinning.

We finally have moved out of Houston, and into the new house. Closing has been delayed and delayed. But TODAY, we are finally closing on the old house. I probably just jinxed it by writing that! Actually, docs we ready late yesterday, but we now live over an hour from the title company. We couldn't get there by the time they got them ready.

The girls started there new school yesterday. Yesterday was also the day of Emmi's ARD for the new district. For the first time, I was a little nervous to go to an ARD. Last week a slight issue came up. Emmi is currently in a mainstream classroom, with no aid other than an FM system. She is preforming well. And by well, I mean, she has already scored high enough to place out of Kindergarten. I think my children got it flipped which one has the oldest child gene. Jill likes to coast by with the minimum she can get to make honor roll (80 exactly). Emmi will study...FOR HOURS. Anyway, Emmi is doing well. She needs very little intervention at this point, other than speech therapy, AI services, and either FM system or sound-field system (depending on the set-up of the classroom, we have used both). All of these things can easily be provided by a combination of the new district and and itinerant AI from a neighboring district.

Except? Emmi's last Full and Individual Eval was completed in 2007 (still within the legal time frame), shortly after enrolling at her old school. She was three, had barely started walking, wore a helmet for her protection, was not potty trained, and had just one implant, activated only nine months prior. Wow, was she a different child then. The services described in that report include, an aid to walk her down the hall, an aid for toileting needs, speech therapy five days a week (she was only received two individual and one group this year), AI three days a week, an interpreter (she primarily signed at that time), and on and on. So this new district took one look at this report and decided she was far beyond what they could handle. They referred us on to the neighboring district to put Emmi in a Deaf Ed program in a class that was both Oral and Sign!

So I pitched a fit. Emmi belongs in a mainstream class, where she has been all year. She is doing well in a mainstream class. That has been proven! My fit did not last longer than one phone call, though, when I simply explained to the head of deaf ed what Emmi was doing and where she was actually placed this year. They quickly decided to leave Emmi in her home school, in a mainstream classroom. Still, I was slightly nervous at the ARD, as if I had to prove myself. I think in the end, they were all relived to find Kenny and I so laid back. We want Emmi's school experience to be as normal as possible. We will push the speech therapy and extra services outside of school as much as possible to supplement, so that she maintains as much normalcy as possible. I think this is probably the opposite of what most parents ask for (because we are lucky enough to be able to get away with it with Emmi due to her performance. We have not always been like this. In the past, when she needed more, we asked for more.). We asked for the minimum. Speech twice a week. AI once a week. No aids. No interpreters. In the end, we got exactly what we wanted. Basically, I was nervous for no reason.

To top it off, both girls had a great first day of school. Jill happily announced, "BEST SCHOOL EVER," when getting into the car. Emmi had found her friend she made over the weekend on the playground. This morning, Jill sat on the bus next to her new friends, and Emmi sat with her new friend (who is the daughter of a friend of Kenny's growing up!). We are settling into the new house, loving our new neighbors, and I am shocked at how smoothly everything has gone!