It's a New Year, full of hopes and dreams, annd maybe just a littl fear.
My grandson turns 3 next month. That is a joyful time. But, it is also scarey. You see he has a speech delay problem. Right now he is working with a wonderful speech therapist. She is great with him an cares about him almost as much as I do. But, when he turns 3 he falls under the realm of the local school district for his speech needs.
Having been a teacher working in the public schools, I know what he is about to face. Public schools have Special Education programs ( which he will fall into) which don't really serve children like him. At best, he will be placed in a preschool class with 20 other children with a host of mental and physical problems. There he will get half an hour of speech therapy once or twice a week.
There isn't a problem with the size of the class. He just isn't in need of being in a special ed classroom. What is recomended for a child with his speech delay is one hour of speech therapy 3 to 5 times a week. He has no delays in any area other than speech. So, he will be in a class where the children are learning skills he has already mastered. And he will become bored IN PRESCHOOL.
There is a second possibility, he can stay in the preschool program he is in ad receive speech therapy for 1/2 hour twice a week. Neither choice is good as far as I am concerned.
As the grandmother, there isn't anything I can do. I have made suggestions to my daughter. She has listened. I give her lots of credit for that. And, I can tell her what the school district should be able to do. But, when she is in the meetings and it's her against the special education team, who has to deal with a budget, there isn't a lot she can do.
They will tell her," these are the programs we have set up." We don't have room for him in the program he needs, we will place him in this more restrictive classroom because of space. We will move him when space opens up." Or they can only provide x number of hours of therapy when he should be getting more.
There is so much BS they will be giving my daughterand she will have to fight. As a regular classroom teacer, I only know part of what special education depts can do. But, I know how they try to get parents to agree with their "plan" even if it's not the best for the child. They justify it by saying these are the programs they have or they have limited funds or some other lame excuse.
My grandson is a happy outgoing child. The least restrictive inviornment for him is to provide him the speech help he needs 5 days a week and place him in a regular education classroom. I hope my daughter can stand up to the pressure the Special Education dept. of the local school dist. is about to apply.

Well I sat on this post for a while. I wasn't sure if I should post it. Things have changed. Not only an I going to help, but I have started a new buisness to help other parents work their way throught the maze of public education. Things do seem to work out.

One of my fondest memories is of my mother baking cookies with my then 2 year old daughter. They mixed dough from a recipe my Mom knew by heart. As I watched them roll out the dough and cut out the cookies it felt almost like a Norman Rockwell moment. My daughter kneeded her dough, rolled it out, and cut out her shapes. The more she worked the blacker the dough became. I was a little concerned that anyone would eat those cookies. My mother just smiled and sent my little one off to wash her hands in the bathroom. As my litle sweetie turned the corner mom wisked away the dirty cookie tray and replaced it with fresh clean cookies she had cut out and popped them in the oven. The tray my daughter had made was never to be seen again. When the cookies came out of the oven, my daughter was none the wiser and we had wonderful cookies. It all looked so smart and easy. And, beacuse I was expecting our second child any day, watching this wonderful exchange between my mother and daughter gave me chance to relax a little.

Jump forward a number of years. I am now the grandmother of two wonderful children, a girl who just turned four and a boy who is two. The memory of my mother baking with her grandchild is still so sweet that I decided to bake cookies with my grandchildren. I can not pull a sugar cookie recipe from my memory so I did what any modern day grandmother would do. I went to the internet. After a short search I found a recipe that would work. Since the dough needed to be chilled at least an hour, I decided to make the dough the night before. Everything went well. Two batches of dough chilling in the fridge ready for the morning.

Morning came. My daughter and her children were to arrive a about 10:00. At almost ten I get a phone call. The boy is still asleep. He has been woken several times and still can't / won't get up. No problem I say. Let him sleep.come over when he getes up. I decide at this point that the kids will enjoy decorating the cookies so I might as well start baking them and have some ready to go when they arrive. Good thought right? So I start baking. I take out my board and cover it with flour. I have my new rolling pin and the bands that go around it so I can roll the dough to the correct thickness.
( My mom didn't need those). The cookie cutters are out. I have two of each shape we plan to use so there will be no fighting. I take the dough out of the fridge. It is too cold to roll. Maybe that is why the directions said to chill the dough for one hour. I finally get the dough rolled out. Those thickness bands don't work well. I get two trays of cookies cut out. I put one in the oven for eight minutes and the doorbell rings. My family is here. Now I have a dog. She is a very cute boxer who is just a year old. Normally when the grandchildren come over she gets excited but can be controlled. Not today. This dog is so excited that the children can not get into the house. Cookies in the oven, children trying to come in the house and I am trying to restrain 45 lbs of dog while trying to hold the door open. After some yelling for my husband to come help me we get everyone in the house, the dog outside and the first batch of cookies out of the oven with out being burned.
At this point I find out that my daughter was in such a hurry to bring the children over ( not to disappoint me) that the little man hasn' t had breakfast. Everything stops! He needs breakfast. What kind of a Bubbie would I be if I didn't make breakfast. The second batch of cookies comes out of the oven as I scramble up some eggs. (Little man's favorite) After breakfast we are ready to bake cookies. Everyone washes their hands so we don't end up with black cookie dough. My daughter and I roll out dough for both children and show them how to use the cookie cutters. They do a great job. We get most of the dough cut out and leave some for the kids to play with. Time for the little ones to have a break until all the cookies are baked.
I make the icing that will cover half of the cookies and we all wash hands again. The mommy and I frost the cookies while the little ones put sprinkles on top of the frosting. I have been smart here. All of the sprinkles are in little bowls with spoons and each child has their own sided cookie sheet to work on. (Contain the mess as much as possible) The kids sprinkle the cookies. Who knew that blue and red sprinkles would be more popular than all the other colors! They did a good job even if all the sprinkles are on one side of each cookie. Then I spread chocolate frosting on the undecorated half of the cookies and we made sandwich cookies.

The whole process did not seem as easy as when my mother made cookies with my daughter oh so many years ago. I just hope the memory is as sweet for my family as that one is for me.

Doing much better today. I got a good nights sleep. I have a good cup of coffee. (Thanks Jan)
And what I hope will be a quiet day to knit. Still need to work on posting pics.

I spent time with the babies yesterday. That helped my day improve. The "Dude" is really doing well on his talking. He says Bubb eee now and sssss for stop. He says peez for please, Mom ee, Da dee and Mim mim for Miriam. I even got him to say a sentence yesterday. It was one word at a time, but he said "Go to Mommy car". It was great. But Mommy wasn't there to hear it.
You can see how hard he works to get out the words he has. The determination on his little face....

I am so lucky to be able to spend so much time with these little angles. To Evelyn, I wish you were here to, just to get to watch them grow up.

too many things going sideways

Today has been a real pain. Things keep going wrong. Or at least not going the way I expected. I hate days like this.
So, since thingsare gling wrong I am going to try to post a pic nere today.
Well, thatdidn't work either. I think if I can get a pic off theweb I should be able to.load it here. But thjs machine says I have too many windows open. So I will have to fivufe that out before I try again.

After that wonderful post about knitting I haven't touched my knitting at all. I have dyed yarn, cleaned house, grocery shopped and done a million other things. But no knitting. On small business saturday I bought some great sock yarn. But it isn't getting cast on. I am afraid it will end up in the stash and be forgotten. (Like so many other skeins)
Today I have tons of cooking todo because everyone is coming here for Shabbat dinner. The Mommy and Daddy people have an office party to go to. So the rest of the clan will be here.

Menu

Soup
Prime Rib
Double Baked potatoes
Some veggie
Challah
Babka for dessert

Everything made from scratch by me today. I really do love cooking and baking. So I am off to start. Have a great day everyone.

I have been knitting. I have made fingerless gloves for 6 people. I have also completed a round baby blanket for my niece who's baby is due in April. I have bought more sock yarn too. I have even started working on my sweater again. So I am keeping busy!

I am starting to get the hang of this new tablet. So you will see posts from me.

We hada great Thanksgiving. Lots of good food. I'll post pics as soon as I can figure that out.

Yesterday was small business saturday, so I did go shopping. I wentto my local yarn store. Becca and our friend Jenn went with us. It was great. Lots of yummy yarns. We also shopped so other stores too. Becca found some wonderful gifts she needed and then we had tea. There is a really great tea shop loosly based on the book "Little Women".
So we had to stop in. It is just the kind of place to take Miss Mim for "High Tea". I am going to haveto setthat upfor after her birthday. In about 3 weeks our little princess will be jturning 4. It's hard to believe but true. She is growing up so fast.

Well, I hadbestgo and get myday started. I hope everyone is enjoying the start of the holiday season. I know I am.