It's official, I will be losing my mind this school year

Today was the first day of school for PB and Monster, and tomorrow Bug begins.  What you, dear reader, may not realize right away, is the fact that I will now have a child in all three levels of school.  I have a first grader, sixth grader, and 11th grader.  My supply list runs the gamut from crayons and glue sticks, to binders and dividers, all the way through a drivers permit!

Monster has been so excited about first grade.  Mostly because of his lunch box, which we purchased last year.  This morning, he asked me how long it was until lunch.  When I asked what his favorite part of the day was, his answer was lunch, then recess, then music class.  He definitely has his priorities set.  Tomorrow is Art.  That will blow his mind, I'm sure.  It's amazing to me to see his sense of style evolving as well.

Because my little Monster was so resistant to learning how to read last year, he has been placed in the Literacy First class this year.  I choose to see this as a blessing.  He is smart, and I know that once the right key is turned, reading will become a fun and exciting subject for him.  And this class has the potential to do this for him.  It is a smaller class (only around 16 students) and they focus more attention on reading, writing and such.  However, I am unhappy with how the school year began.  In years past, the day before school you could go and meet your child's teacher during lunch time. This year, state employees (this would be me as well) had our pay cut by 2.5%.  To soften the blow, the Legislator gave us all 5 paid furlough days.  In order to reduce the cost burden, teachers lost in-service days to cover these days.  This means that teachers only had the day before to arrange their rooms and prepare for the first day, unless they wanted to do it on their own time.  That morning was spent in meetings, leaving them only a few hours to set up their rooms.  When we were invited in to find classrooms at 4 pm, most teachers had already gone home.  While I understand why, it's still frustrating.  I don't try to use that time as more than a few minutes of introduction, but a few minutes of understanding what this classroom entails would have been very helpful.  Instead, I will be emailing his teacher tomorrow to ask some questions.  This means she has to find the time to answer me during the school day, instead of having a few minutes the day before.

I'm also upset as I don't feel that he was given the Speech Therapy that he required last year, and this year I will be fighting early for this.  He pronounces his leading L's as Y's, and it's impeding his spelling/reading abilities.

PB began Middle School.  Yesterday we did get our time to travel her schedule and work her locker (a bunch of times.)  She briefly met her teacher, ad her classes are grouped together well.  One of her best friends has all but one class with her, she's getting gym out of the way first semester and it's the last class of the day, and she's excited. Basically, that is pretty much all we can ask.  She asked her sister about her outfit yesterday a bunch of times.  Bug told her that it was a lot of patterns, but she could pull it off.  And I think she did.

Come back tomorrow for an exciting announcement :) (no, I'm not pregnant.)