Reflection

In honor of those affected by The Boston Marathon, I wanted to share a few photos and highlights from The Shamrock Shuffle and challenge myself to a new goal.  

The day started out at 4:45 A.M. on Sunday. Lucky for me, but not so much for my hardworking dad, I was able to grab a ride from him to McCormick Place since he was on his way to work that morning. Once at the hotel, I met my friends who spent the night. We took awhile to joke about how early it was and attempt to eek out a few more minutes of charge on our cell phones until we had to catch the trolley to Grant Park.  Once there, we were met with this sight

and with the goal in mind.

We had about an hour and half to kill since wave 2 started at 9:15. Within that time, we also located the bathrooms and had some cute group shots taken by spectators.

Three of us deliberately placed ourselves in the last corral of the entire race. This worked out well for our pacing but not so much for the waiting around business. By the time we crossed the start line, it was about 10:00, however, Corral K is where the magic happens :-)

Just about 19,000 people ahead of us, but who cares, look where we get to run!! LOVE my city!!!! Race time begins and we manage to keep ourselves entertained with lovely conversation despite losing battery power to our phones. My friend and I mentioned that the energy was amazing. Music was playing at mile markers and starting at mile 3, people where cheering like crazy! The last mile, our trio decided to split up and finish at our best. I came in just over an hour for 5 miles having NEVER run 5 miles in my life.. I'd say I did pretty good. After the race, we decided to meet up at the infamous banana stands for a celebratory banana and beer!

I was inspired by others posts about what they did to honor those affected. My goal was to sprint a mile. I came in at 10:02 which is my fastest mile run!  I'm insisting on 11:00 mile averages for 5k races. Let's see what happens on May 11th.

Ultimate Blog Party Post

Blogging is new to me and was born out of the need to communicate information on my blossoming family; and to help others with special needs children to relate and gain a better sense of identity through the blog community.

I am a teacher and mom of a 2.5 year old daughter and an 11 month daughter who was diagnosed with 18q- syndrome (1 in 40,000).

Moving Along

Last week James and I decided on a plan in terms of what we wanted to accomplish for the fundraiser over Spring Break. He is off a total of three days this week, which leaves us a good chunk of time for planning and doing.

Today turned out to be quite a productive day. We headed out to Bourbon Street around noon to meet with the Fundraiser Coordinator. She answered a few questions for us and gave us a tour of the room along with suggestions of how to maximize space in the room.  Next stop was Archer Bank in Mount Greenwood to setup an account for the fundraiser. This took awhile, but I was impressed with the ease of the registration process and what will be provided for us the day of the fundraiser. Once home, James registered "A Day for Adele" as a domain name with Go Daddy.  We need to register the fundraiser account with paypal ASAP so we can include a paypal button on our webpage for pre-sale tickets. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, James and I will be adding to the web page and will create a facebook page. Our goal is to get both launched by Friday.

Adele is officially crawling as her main mode of transportation. In true Adele form, she rounds out hitting this developmental milestone right at the edge of when it's considered delayed; she will be 11 months old on Wednesday. We also noticed that she "dances". Jade was giving us one of her many performances, and Adele decided to bop her head and body to the music. CUTE!

For the last two weeks, I have spent the majority of car rides listening to "Far From the Tree". This is because the book is 1000 pages so as you can imagine, the audible version goes on forever as well.  I am completely captivated by this book and cannot WAIT to discuss it at book club in August.  I am continually impressed with the author's ability to weave family interviews, history, statistics and research in each area of disability. I am walking away with a three-dimensional view of people with disabilities that I have not worked with, and a broader perspective of those I am familiar with.

Off we go

After dinner routine in our house includes family time in the loft. Tonight I noticed that Adele was especially physically confident. I was over-the-moon when I saw her lift herself off of her belly, onto her knees, into a crawling position and actually crawl a foot! She attempted and succeeded a few times before and after the required excited mama video.

When you have a child with a disability, milestones that are achieved cause an amplified reaction by family members. This is for a few reasons: you never know what milestone may or may not happen at all, and chances are, it took longer for your child to reach given milestone.

I am listening to the audio book version of "Far From the Tree" and have reached the chapter on Down Syndrome.  Since the author does not include a chapter on other types of chromosomal abnormalities, this is most likely the chapter I will relate to the most. A story is shared about a boy born in the late 60's with DS.  Dr.'s advised this family to put the boy in a "home" since he would not ever recognize his family or learn anything. The family visits a groundbreaking institution with progressive doctors and psychologists that suggest nurture may superseded nature.  This mom took off running with all types of EI like activities and therapies. The boy was reading at a fourth grade level when he was in first grade. The parents began advising other families of children with DS to follow in there footsteps.

Then it happened. Adolescence, the moment when her son showed both social and academic discrepancies amongst his peers. He begins to become depressed and is taken to see a therapist. Boy graduates with a high school diploma and is eventually placed in a small, well staffed group home. He is too smart for other individuals with DS, but not quite socially up to par with other adults. He is still rather lonely but finds solace in his roommate at the group home.

The mother reflects on whether or not it was a good idea to push her son as much as she did. Her observation was that lower functioning individuals with DS, tended to appear more happy. In subsequent lectures, the mother is realistic with new parents of babies with DS.

I have said before that I am both cursed and fortunate to be in the field of Special Education, having a child with a disability. I can bring a "big picture" sense of what Adele's life may entail thanks to my career, however, I also know a storm is brewing. This is ALSO true of Jade, but Adele's storm will most likely be more intense for many reasons.

For now, I am savoring Adele & Jade's achievements and milestones, but I never take an eye off the approaching storms.

Inventory

As we continue to roll through 2013, it occurred to me that I should check on my goals for 2013, here's a re-cap:

New goals (gotta have them!):

1. Run the Shamrock Shuffle in Downtown Chicago. Haven't signed up yet! Thanks for the reminder blog!

2. Develop my photography skills. I am not currently taking classes, however I am toying around with different apps and editing functions.

3. Read more! Yes!! I have read 5 out of my goal of 20 for year... Thinking I may surpass this.

4. Improve my writing skills. I've been doing my damnedest to use their, there and they're properly!

5. Continue to grow as a teacher. I'm working on it... So far I can give myself kudos for learning how to utilize an I-Pad in my classroom and with individual students.

Another goal that I need to bump to the top of this list comes in the form of waking up earlier during the week.  I have been cutting it way to close to show-time at work these days and it has not gone unnoticed.  I discovered a wonderful app called "Sleep Cycle", that essentially tracks your movement while you sleep. Supposedly, when you are still, you are in REM sleep, when you move around, you are in Non-REM sleep. You put your charging phone next to your pillow under a mattress case and set your alarm for a given time. The app will wake you up within a half hour before your set time based on when you appear to be in light sleep. The theory is that if you wake up during light Non-REM, you will wake up more refreshed and less stressed.  You need 5 days of data to start gathering trends about what may affect your sleep, here's a snapshot of Night 1:

My goal is to not only get up earlier for work, but it is to get up earlier to provide some "me" time before the kids get up and to gather data and analyze what behaviors create the best climate for quality sleep. While I realize that having two children under the age of 3 will throw a wrench into this occasionally, I have two very good little sleepers, so unless illness arises, I'll be okay. 

I'm following a blog that created a 30 day sleep challenge. One of the suggestions was to try to be more aware of set-backs that will disrupt your day. My threshold for set-backs was much lower than it is now thanks to children and life experience in general. The advice is to anticipate disruptions and be pleasantly surprised when they don't occur. I am going to continue to work on this as to help keep a positive attitude through out my day. 

Here's a few snow day pics of the gals