Saturday, September 29, 2012

Crawling! Fast!

Once again, it has been an inordinately long time since I have blogged.  We went to Hungary and had a really nice trip; instead of doing marshmallows over a blazing fire, Hungarians like to cook bacon, drip the fat on bread covered in onions, and eat it.  So here's a picture of you participating in this activity.  I must say that you really enjoyed the fire!  Here you are with Daddy, Laci Bacsi, Zsuzsa Neni, and Nagyi:

When you were in Hungary, you were still figuring out how to pull up.  Soon after we returned, though, I called ECDC, the College's pre-school, and learned that it would be at least two years until you got in there.  Even though I would highly recommend Loving and Learning, where you were at the time, they wouldn't move you up unless you were walking AND drinking from a sippy cup, and you ended up in there with 6-week-olds. 
After much consternation and many interviews, we ended up deciding between two really good, but really different schools.  It might help others to know why we made the decision we did, so here it is.  Trinity Montessori is an excellent school, we loved the teachers, and they were the only traditional pre-school really excited about having you as a student.  Most of the schools I called were very excited about having us as customers until I mentioned that you had Down Syndrome, at which point it became "oh...I guess we can handle that."  This didn't overwhelm me with confidence, but the people at Trinity were so different, so invested from the start.  Your friend Maybelle went there for a year (see Maybelle's mom's blog:  piepmeier.blogspot.com).  I even talked to this woman, my colleague, about her decision, and she told me she was a big proponent of inclusivity, the school worked really well for Maybelle, and that she was walking within two weeks.  
But we did not end up picking Trinity, and therein lies the story.  While I'm also a huge proponent of inclusive education and fully expect that you will go to local, non-special-needs schools, I also thought a lot about you and your personality.  You (at least at this point in your life) are a bit shy, reserved, and not willing to "get in there" and take what you need.  I was worried that the de-centralized Montessori method would not allow you to have your turn, as it were: that the other students would get ahead of you and leave you out of the game.  I also know that you thrive on structure; who else gets up at 7:30 every morning, even in Hungarian time?  So we ended up at the Charles Webb Center: http://www.dsncc.com/Charles%20Webb%20Center.html.  I really agonized about this, but a woman on the babycenter.com board finally said what I needed to hear: that I needed to do what was best for my child.  It has been an amazing experience for Jules; they work with her on standing and on walking every day, and I've watched my daughter become more and more mobile before my eyes.  Here, if I can get it on, is a video of her going after our Cardigan Corgi, Puck:

If that link doesn't work, check out:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/liway9dygvfq8jl/2012-08-28%2004.44.22.mov


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