Professor Georgie

I've been working on getting my syllabus finished for the course I'm teaching this semester. I got up from my perch on the sofa for a minute and when I came back I found Georgie "helping" with the syllabus-writing, complete with phone in hand (I had been making calls as well, trying to multi-task). It cracks me up how he is so interested in trying to copy absolutely everything we do - he so badly wants to be a big boy. He's even trying to use the bathroom like Daddy and Hank, but he can't figure out those darned onesies. I'm not letting myself get my hopes up that potty-training will be easy and early for him, but a part of me is excited at the prospect!

You'll notice in the pictures the shiner on Georgie's eye. He got that while climbing into a rubbermaid container that we keep the Legos in. I've watched him crawl into that thing about 100 times (apparently he likes to be right in the middle of the Legos) and every time he does it I always think, "Hmmm, one of these days he's gonna step on the side and the other side is going to flip up and bang him in the face." Ta da! He shed some tears and then 10 minutes later he was trying to climb back in again. Sigh.

And I must mention for my fellow school psychs out there, did you realize that Best Practices in School Psychology is now on the 5th Edition and has 6 volumes?? It is insane! The course I'm teaching is a seminar class and each class is a different topic from Best Practices - when I took this course at IU we had the 3rd Edition of Best Practices and there was like one chapter per subject - now there are like 9 chapters per subject! So I've had some trouble whittling down the readings, because it's only a 1-credit class and they are all going to hate me and fry me on course evals if I assign that much reading. Not to mention that some of the chapters are just plain ridiculous - they have broken up the content so much this time around. I swear, I think there's a chapter like "Best Practices in Working with Students with Learning Disabilities in Rural Settings who also have Depression and live in a Pink House". Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not by much. And the price of this BP 5th Edition! Ugh. My course evals are going to be in the toilet just for making them buy that book. (In my defense, EVERY school psych student ends up needing to buy it sooner or later. It's just that my class happens to be the first in this program that requires it. Ouch.)

Hank has some sort of mystery rash on his arms. Probably a fun offshoot of his eczema issues, but just in case I'm going to haul him into doctors' office tomorrow. The last time this happened was last winter, and all we got out of the doctors' office visit was a nice case of the flu and no explanation of the rash. We also have parent-teacher conferences tomorrow, which I am looking foward to. I think (and this may change, but for right now we are pretty sure) that he will go ahead and start kindergarten in the fall, even though he'll be one of the youngest. After talking to many different people, we have come to the consensus that he's more than ready for kindergarten work and holding him back a year will essentially be a wasted year for him. First of all, there's nowhere to put him next year, unless we send him to a new preschool that only meets three mornings per week. So that would be less time than he attends now. Second, he is already doing kindergarten level work in his current class. For some reason, he has picked up fairly easily on reading and math. He's not reading War and Peace or anything, but he can sound out most small words and knows many sight words already. He also does basic math facts in addition and subtraction. Basically, the only reason we would hold him back is simply because he has a late birthday, and when it comes down to it, that alone just wasn't a good enough reason. At least, that's where we're at this week. We'll see what happens after conferences tomorrow!