We're Ready for Preschool. Maybe.

School in Texas starts wicked early.  Like, in a week.  We get out really early too, right around Memorial Day.  Like most of America, our school year resolves around the agricultural need to have children help bring in the crops during the farming season.  I'm not really sure how that applies any more, unless ConAgra is hiring ten-year-olds to operate the robotic milking machines or whatever.  I know it was super helpful to have my four kids around this summer while I brought in our crops, if by crops, you mean industrial-size boxes of popsicles.

Anyway, the sorghum field across the way has been harvested (really), so apparently, everyone's ready for school to start.

Since Little Dude's Asperger diagnosis came during the summer, the school district has until the first day of the new school year to conduct the meeting setting up his Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  To be fair, this is extremely difficult for the schools to manage, because most staff is "off contract" until the week before school starts.  By the time they've reviewed the files, they've got about ten minutes before the bell rings on Day 1.

However, the great staff at our elementary school is on top of things, and our meeting is scheduled for the last workday before school starts.  There will be enough people in attendance to field a baseball team, so it'll be a party, I figure.  I recently read a recommendation that parents should bring booze to IEP meetings to make it more fun, but while I adore mimosas, I think I'll just settle for bringing doughnuts and coffee.

Nothing's official yet, but the basic plan is that Little Dude will attend the Head Start preschool in the morning, which means he'll be with his typically-developing peers.  Then he will switch to the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD) in the afternoon to receive Occupational, Physical, and Speech Therapies, as well as work on potty training.  We feel like it's a great arrangement.  Everyone at the school is terrific, and he'll be attending the same school as his sisters. Plus, he already likes the playground there.

Little Dude himself is warming up to it.  Up until yesterday, he insisted that he was not going to preschool; rather, he planned to be homeschooled.  We tried telling him it's where all the Younglings go to train to become Jedis. He went ballistic. "I am not a Youngling!" he screamed. "I AM ALREADY A JEDI!"

But today we dropped in at the school, and the Special Ed. Coordinator asked him if he was excited to come to school and play on the playground at recess, and he sort of perked up.  Then we went to Target, and picked out a Star Wars lunch box, and he was positively giddy about going to school.

Then we came home and his sisters played "School" with him, and showed him how he'll put his awesome lunchbox in a cubby when he gets to school, and sit in a circle for story time, and line up in the hallway to go places.  They even taught him to raise his hand when he has a question.  Then they had snack time, and as a special treat: popsicles!  At that point he became so excited for school that he was jumping up and down and flapping his hands.

"School" kind of devolved after that, because the Pork Lo Maniac decided to demonstrate what happens when you're not behaved properly, and Cookie had to keep putting her in the Thinking Chair.  Eventually the Pork Lo Maniac had to be escorted by the Peanut Butter Kid to the Principal's Office.  The Principal is also known as Principal Daddy, and his office is our sectional couch.  In between bites of hot dog (oh yeah, I slaved over a hot stove all day today), Principal Daddy asked if she had learned her lesson.  He's quite the disciplinarian, he is.

Shortly after that, Little Dude ran out of the playroom away from school.  Which leaves me to wonder how he's going to fare in full-day preschool.  Because the fun of packing his awesome new lunch box is only going to get us so far, I know.  After that, it's on the teachers.  I hope they have Legos.