To My Daughter's Teacher On the First Day Of School

Thank you.

I just dropped my daughter off for her first day of Kindergarten, and you couldn't have been more wonderful.  You caught her eye from across the playground and immediately waved.  You greeted her by name, and with a warm smile, and you were totally okay (encouraging, even) with me hanging around for awhile before actually leaving her.  You looked me in the eye, smiled and greeted me happily, and pretended not to notice when I started tearing up while introducing myself.  {Thank you for that}.  Bailey was the first of your students to arrive, and you chatted with her for a little while before the other kids began showing up, asking her about her missing tooth, and telling her how much you liked her dress.  As other kids began to arrive, I watched you smile and greet them, and comfort the few who were a little hesitant and crying.  Bailey was so excited for her first day of school and so ready to get started.  I felt good about leaving her with you.  I'm confident that you know what you're doing.  I'm confident that my daughter is going to have a wonderful time in your class this year.  I can't wait for you to get to know her (and your other students) better as the year progresses.

But there are things that I won't tell you.

I won't tell you that I cried as soon as I was out of sight of Bailey this morning.  And while packing her lunch and laying out her clothes last night.  I won't tell you that, while I have every confidence in you and your abilities, I'm terrified to be leaving my baby with you {a virtual stranger right now} for 7 hours each day.  You see, from the day she was born, Bailey has been home with me.  I quit my job to be with her, and she's been my number one focus for the last 5 years.  I mean, she was only born just yesterday {or so it feels}.

I won't tell you how empty the house feels without her here right now.  She's my little buddy, and she's always right here with me, asking to help with the daycare kids or trying to finagle her way out of a nap.  I won't tell you that twice now I've turned to tell her something, only to feel a bit of crushing sadness when I remembered that she was at school.  I won't tell you that her brother is missing her something fierce right now.

I won't tell you that I'm jealous of you for getting to spend the day with her.  I'm jealous that you'll get to watch her make and interact with new friends, play on the playground, see her eyes light up when she creates something in art class that she thinks is just awesome {by the way, she's discovered clouds and adds them into every single drawing she does these days}.  I'm jealous that she'll be seeking you out for comfort, for help, for praise instead of me.  I'm jealous that she'll be coming home with stories about all the fun things she did during the day, and I'll have to smile and tell her how happy I am for her, while secretly being miserable that I couldn't be there to witness it, too.

I will tell you that you're so lucky to have her in your class.  To get to know her as she grows this year.  She's such an amazing kid, and I'm so proud of her.  I hope you will be, too.  I can't wait for you to get to know her little personality and her goofy sense of humor.  I hope you see her for the incredible little person that she is, and I hope you continue to foster and encourage her love of learning.  I hope that you'll be patient with her as she learns, and I hope that you'll be stern but loving when she needs a little discipline.

I've prepared her as best I can for school, and Bailey is so proud to be a Kindergartener.  Please love her, care for her, be there for her when I can't.  This first day of school is a huge step, for both her and for me.  When I hand her off to you in the morning, I'm placing all of my hope and all of my confidence in you.  I'm leaving you my most precious possession and, in return, I'm getting a "break" that I don't necessarily want.  It took everything in me to actually walk away and leave her {albeit smiling and happy} this morning.  Please understand what a big deal that was.

I'm passing the torch along to you now, so to speak.  Please keep the flame burning.  

Diagnosis FSHD

It's been a busy couple of weeks.  Right after vacation, I took of 2.5 days of work to go down to Johns Hopkins with my mom as part of a clinical research study.  After years and years of mis-diagnoses and incorrect diagnoses, she finally got a definitive diagnosis of Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy {FSHD).  So, she and I went to Maryland as the "affected" and "non-affected" family members, and gave them blood samples and had a muscle biopsy done.  All in all, we were gone for 3 days...the longest I've ever been away from either of the kids.  And, as nice as it was to have the break, I missed the hell out of them.

Night one, Bailey called me in tears.  She missed me, she couldn't sleep, she wanted to know when I would be home.  It was rough.  Before I left, she gave me her t-ball trophy from this past season and told me to take it with me "to remember her".  So, as soon as I got to my hotel room the first thing I did was unpack that trophy and put it on the shelf across from my bed.

Our first day was a breeze.  We had to be at the hospital around 9ish, so we met for breakfast early, I filled up on coffee, and we headed the few blocks over.  After a physical, I gave 12 tubes of blood, and then my job for the day was done.  Easy peasy.  My mom took a little longer because she had more tests to do, but we were out of there around lunch time...just in time to walk around Baltimore a bit, grab some lunch, and stock up on little trinkets for the kids.

This bad boy was 45oz. of margarita deliciousness...and I downed the entire thing.  For lunch.

Day 2 was a little bit harder.  Mom and I were due at Johns Hopkins at 12:30 to check in for our biopsies.  We checked in, they gowned us up,...and then we waited.  For hours.  

I was awake during the procedure, and it was both fascinating and excruciating.  I had to lie down on a table in the OR and my legs, torso, chest, and arms were all strapped to the table so I didn't "try to help with the procedure".  My bicep was prepped and then a sheet was propped up on my chest so that I couldn't see what was happening (smart thinking, doc.  VERY smart thinking).  The surgeon injected a decent amount of lidocaine and got to work.

The procedure itself wasn't awful.  The sounds of the metal surgical instruments clanking together, the snipping of the "scissors" as my muscle was cut and removed, the feeling of blood trickling down the part of my arm that wasn't numb from local anesthetic, the thought of what was actually going on behind that blue sheet...those things messed with my mind in a way that was both cool and overwhelming.  I had fabulous doctors and nurses in the room with me, and they did their best to talk to me and distract me from what was going on but it was hard not to focus on the procedure.  I could feel my arm being tugged and kept picturing the muscles in my body the way they'd been shown to us in high school science text books.  At one point, my muscle tensed (I'd been warned the day before that this might happen)...while my arm was cut open and the muscle was being cut.  The pain lasted for about 5 seconds but it was the longest 5 seconds of my life.  It was so surprising and painful that my entire body responded, jerking once quickly and breaking into a cold sweat.  Once the muscle relaxed, it was smooth sailing again, aside from the tugging and cutting.  The procedure took a little less than an hour, and left a scar that's a little longer than an inch long on the inside of my arm.

My arm was pretty sore for the next few days, but it's getting better and we're coming up on the end of the 14 day waiting period (I can finally keep the bandage off and the stitches should dissolve quickly).  Plus, we treated ourselves to some of this amazing-ness:

Overall, it was a good experience.  I missed the hell out of Scott and the kids {and I'll admit I'm a little nervous to get the results from my genetic test back} but I feel good that I "helped" in some small way.

Vacation 2015

Another vacation has come and gone (and things have been so busy that I'm only just now sitting down to write a post about a trip that happened two weeks ago).

As always, we spent a week in Ocean City, NJ and it was nice to get away for a few days.  Since having kids, vacations aren't as relaxing as they used to be, but it's still nice to wake up next to the ocean and not have to go to work, you know?  The sleeping arrangement definitely wasn't ideal-- the 4 of us in a room with only one queen-sized bed made for some interesting and uncomfortable nights, but who am I to complain?

We had a beautiful week and the kids had a blast.  Ice cream every night, rides on the boardwalk most evenings, staying up WAY past their bedtime...what more could a kid want?

This is how he went on every ride...even the slow ones

Even daddy got in on the fun

Bailey was a total beach babe this year.  She loved the water, loved the sand, loved building castles and finding sea shells.

Gerry was decidedly not a fan of the beach.  He was cool with the sand and he seemed to enjoy being in the water, but he did not like the sand touching him after he'd gotten wet.