Thank the tiny baby Jesus...

Well, the panic attacks have stopped for now.  I say for now because I do not want to jinx anything.  (Yes, I have a superstitious side)  I believe that the attacks were stemming from my default fight or flight mode concerning large and many changes coupled with hitting the ground running and no space.  (Did I mention I'm sharing a bathroom with my CAT?)  LORD. Yea, that pretty much does it for my nervous system.  But the constant attacks have stopped (for now) and I am thanking my lucky stars, the tiny baby Jesus and whomever else may have had a hand in that development.

Harley is not loving his new school.  His teacher is GREAT!  However, he is in a classroom of 26 children, and half of them are kindergarten age, Harley is first grade.  That would be ok too, except... for some reason these children have very little to no tools for self regulation and have never been in school before.  Many of them are highly emotional and very easy to set off.  Some act out physically with one another... There is a whole lot of impulsivity, temper tantrums, special needs, open defiance, and all the trimmings.  Harley has sensory integration issues from both sides, and is very upset by all the screaming, chaos and general mayhem which ensues daily.  I have to say, I'm with him on this one.  The parents are required to not only volunteer their time, but what that means in this particular school is that you are supposed to TEACH these children in small groups.  They actually expect that learning is going to happen.  I tell you, this is not possible.  Not by me anyway.  You spend most of your time trying to either get one or more to do the thing  they are supposed to while they openly refuse.  Then while you are haggling with them, the others in the group are getting bored or beginning to either melt or act out with each other.  So... that has been killing both of us.  So, today we toured a charter school which is a little further away, but seems perfect for us.  There is a waiting list, so we may end up doing their hybrid home-school/ two day a week program till we can get in.  We just cannot take much more of the chaos we've been dealing with, so there you go.  I never figured myself as a home-schooler, but  it seems like the only viable choice. sigh.

The new washer and dryer got here today, so that's a blessing.  The downside is that now we do not have that closet space anymore!  AND I have about 10 huge garbage bags full of clothes and linens to do.  I thought that our clothes had a musty and moldy smell from the POD, but we have deduced that it was from our house!  Yep, the house was so musty that we never even noticed it on our clothes till they were all bagged up for about a week or so.  (It's a good thing I stopped panicking, right?)

In general I'm feeling more hopeful that we can make this work.  I've offered a couple of the mom's at Harley's school some free life coaching sessions to keep my skills up till I can get my business up and running.  Not sure how I'm going to manage that yet, but I know that less intelligent people than I have done it, so I can too!  And I will.  But not now.  For now it feels good just to be making baby steps regarding myself and my needs.  It has become glaringly obvious that my needs, as many moms' needs take a back seat to larger, more pressing concerns.  It's good that I'm not ignoring them completely though.  And before you ask, yes, I do have a coach myself.  I am good at self coaching the small stuff, but this is way too big.  It's much better working with someone.  Helps me stay accountable for the things I really really put off.

So that is the report.  (I'm not even going to get into the Christmas cluster-f&*%)  Which is to say we are abysmally unprepared! Hope all is well with you and yours. Thanks for popping in.