Busy Start to School Year

Well school has been going for 6 weeks. It has been a busy time! Here is my crew on the first day of school:

It’s been a new experience with Courtney in junior high. She rides the bus to & from school, but she has band before school one day a week and after school a different day a week. We’ve been adjusting to her new schedule. Band is going well for her. I chaperoned a band trip to a baseball game this past Friday night; I had fun! She and her friends sat with me for a lot of the game, I was impressed! I thought I’d be sitting with other moms while our kids ignored us. Here’s me & Courtney:

She got glasses right at the beginning of the school year, I think she looks older with them.

At her well child checkup before school started, I mentioned to her doctor the couple of fainting episodes she had where she lost control of her bladder. He thought it was worth checking to make sure she wasn’t having seizures. She had an MRI of her brain and an EEG done and we saw a neurologist. The neurologist said it sounds like they are just fainting episodes. He said he often sees people who faint and lose bladder/bowel control or have someone tell them they were stiff or jerking while they were out. Apparently, all these things can happen during a "plain" fainting spell and don’t necessarily mean a seizure. He said Courtney is exactly the right age to have fainting spells, when they have gone through a growth spurt sometimes the heart doesn’t get the right blood flow to the brain and fainting is the brain’s way of getting the blood flow back. So i guess that was all good news. She hasn’t fainted since Christmas.

I’m doing some new things this school year. I always sign up to be a homeroom "helper" which is less of a commitment than room mother. But Ben’s room was short a room mother so I said yes when the coordinator asked me to be one. I was rethinking that decision when I went to the room mother meeting which started by the lead coordinator saying how she knows we are all women and we like to gossip and have drama, but she hopes we can all try to work together. Ugh. I try to stay far far away from drama. Other than that, I think it will be fine and I’ll like spending more time with Ben.

I had decided to teach Ben’s religious education class this year. Our church does pre-school (including Kindergarten) classes during Mass and elementary kids before Mass. I’d never been able to teach before, having kids in both time slots. But this year Ben & Becky’s classes are both before Mass, so I would be able to do it. (Courtney is old enough to just hang out while I’m teaching, helping in whichever classroom needs her). However, there were already 3 other people signed up to teach 1st grade, so I got put in 5th grade. I think it will be fun, even though I did want to be in Ben’s class. Maybe there’s more for me to learn from the 5th grade curriculum, I don’t know!

Wednesday is my niece Taylor’s 18th birthday, I can’t believe it. She’s a senior this year. She was a candidate for Homecoming queen (but didn’t win). I said something to Ben about her birthday coming up, and I can’t believe how old she is, and Ben said "She’s not that old. You’re older than she is." THANK YOU. Yes, I turned 40 on Labor Day. I don’t like having to say "forty" yet but I guess I will get used to it!

Ben is playing soccer, Rebecca will start volleyball soon, Courtney will have basketball tryouts sometime this month. Band is also taking a lot of time, Courtney takes piano lessons, Rebecca takes guitar lessons, and Courtney is doing the second year of Cotillion. Busy! but fun!