Today was, “staggered rollout” for my daughter for her kindergarten class in her new school in the next city over. It’s been a long and hard decision for us to send her to a different school. Ultimately we had very little choice as her vision continued to decline despite the surgeries, drops, glasses and help from our entire medical team.
We were hoping to make the experience of transitioning to a new school a positive one, knowing that change can be scary for children. My daughter has been excited to go to a new school where she has another blind friend in her class. She also is looking forward to eating at the cafeteria, moving on from the packed lunches I’ve been making for the last few years.
We checked in at the front office with my son in tow. He had been to a walkthrough of the school before and was pretty much feeling at home. After getting our visitor badges we went to my daughter’s classroom and met her teacher, assistant teacher, braillest, and VI teacher. My daughter worked with her teacher to find her cubby and put her backpack away.
The adults got to talking, mostly because we’d never met any of her teachers before. They were interested in what level of vision she had and how she had lost her vision. In a few minutes we realized my son and daughter weren’t even around—they had found some Duplo blocks. My daughter had built something while my son had built a transforming sword.
We extracted my son and without even saying goodbye because my daughter was happily engaged, we left to go to the VI room to speak more with the teachers there. After finding out some basics from them we headed to the office to pick up our carpool line tags to hang from the rearview mirror so when we pulled up to pick up my daughter, they would know which child went with our car. And then we left my daughter who hadn’t even noticed we’d left, until pickup this afternoon.
When we picked her up we were greeted by her orientation and mobility teacher and her braillest. They said she had a very good first day and we had a few quick comments about plans for the first day of school on Monday and also, what kind of car was this that had the doors open upwards?
When my daughter got in the car we asked her about school. She was happy, she was effusive. She told us she met a new friend named Jonathan. That the chairs in the cafeteria had no backs and the seats were round and were attached from underneath. She did P.E and had fun and also, there is a bathroom and it has a sink and a toilet and toilet paper and the funny part is there is a water fountain attached to the sink you can drink from.
So it was a good day. But she was mentally exhausted. She turned into one of the crankiest, irrational versions of her I’ve seen in a long time. I couldn’t get her to sleep and she didn’t want to eat so we just worked through it until her friends came over and she went out to play.
She’s looking forward to going back on Monday for the main school year and seeing her other blind friend, Aditi, who shares the cubby beside her in the classroom.
The Big Boy Update: Today while my husband and I were talking to the VI teachers at my daughter’s new school my son was bored. He found a pencil and a post-it note stack and made eyes, a nose and a mouth and stuck each face part on his shirt, making a post-it face. He told us, “this is ‘Face’”. He, my son, wasn’t Face, it was the thing on his chest. And he bonded with that ‘Face’ for several hours. He was particularly upset because he didn’t want to hurt Face by putting the seat belt across him.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were getting ready for the first day of school this morning and I was scrambling. I was trying to get my daughter to brush her hair while I cleaned her glasses. I was partly exasperated when she said to me, “mom, didn’t you forget something?” I really didn’t want to play games at that moment but immediately felt bad when my daughter held up the drops (which I’d been looking for) and said, “we didn’t do drops, mom”.
Exercise: I ran seven miles. I’d say more like, “wow, amazing, I didn’t think you remembered how, are you sore, etc.” but I think you already know I’m erratic in my exercising and usually it’s my running buddy to blame when I do get around to doing something. Today she was the cause again. And I thank her for that.
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