Well, here we are. Monday morning I will drop off Grayson at his classroom in his new school, and he will officially be a Kindergartner. I’ll leave him for more than seven hours in a brand new place with brand new people taking care of him. I’m a little nervous for him, but mostly I’m incredibly excited.

There is no sadness at all in G reaching this milestone, because he reached it. When he was diagnosed almost four years ago I never believed that he would eventually go to kindergarten. Any tears I’ve shed are a result of my pride and gratitude that I have an almost six year old, who despite living with a horrible disease, gets to have a life and have access to a great education.

We had his ARD yesterday morning. G sat and listened to his Veggie Tales while I signed form after form. His goals are appropriate, and the school is going to ask for a lot of evaluations and services (music therapy? Yes please!). His vision teacher from when he was a baby attended the ARD and I got choked up when I saw her, because she first met G when he was 4 months old. How far he’s come.

After the ARD we made our way to G’s classroom where the teacher, paraprofessionals and nurse all learned how to care for him. I showed them how to get him in and out of the wheelchair, change his diaper, give his medicine, and use his feeding pump.  I think they are a little overwhelmed, but they were all so sweet and thorough, I know it’s going to be just fine.

His teacher is so sweet and enthusiastic, and is experienced in teaching Life Skills (G’s placement). It takes a special kind of commitment and empathy to care for children like G, and I can tell she has it. I can’t wait for us to get to know her.

G will ride the bus to and from school, but I’ll be taking him the first few days. Bus service is definitely at the top of my list of things I am most excited about! They will pick him up at our house and drop him back off in the afternoon. And my life just got significantly less complicated.

I do feel a little residual sadness that G isn’t going back to the Caroline School this year. That school will forever hold special memories in my heart because of how well they loved and cared for G for four years. I do, however, feel like we made the absolute right decision in moving him so much closer to home and have nothing but optimism and excitement about his new school adventure.

Kindergarten, let’s do this. He’s going to rock it.

This was at Meet the Teacher Thursday night. G looks a little puny because he’d been in the ER all day getting fluids to get over a tummy bug. He will be much more enthusiastic on Monday. 

Dear Nolan,
One month until you are one! I think back to a year ago, when we didn’t know you were you (or even a he), and how hot and miserable I was. I’m so glad that this hot August I’ll be snuggling you on the outside! You’ve had a big month developmentally. You are cruising everywhere and are starting to walk by pushing things around- won’t be long now! I can’t wait; the more you are able to do, the more fun you get.

We aren’t doing much these days other than hanging out at home- it’s too hot to do much outdoors. You never get tired of crawling everywhere and getting into everything though!

I may lose some followers over this post, and I’m just going to have to be ok with that. But for six years, I’ve processed my life on this blog, and I have to process this. I’m not going to apologize if this offends you, but I’m happy to have an honest, respectful dialogue about it.

WHY are any of you voting for Donald Trump?

Oh, you hate Hillary? Why? Because she’s lied? Guess what- I’ve lied, and so have you. But you know what I’ve never done? Publicly and openly mocked a disabled person. Yeah, this one’s personal. My throat gets tight and tears well in my eyes every time I see that clip of Trump making fun of that reporter. To me, he’s making fun of Grayson. The person that may be the Commander in Chief of my country would stoop so low to mock my son, and not even have the decency to apologize for it.

You know what else is personal, to me and the majority of you reading this post? His misogyny. Right now, if you are planning to vote for Trump, please read this. Now. It will make you sick to your stomach, but read it to the very end. As a woman, and especially as the mother of a daughter, this is horrifying.

He’s a racist. Protecting our borders and fighting terrorism are good things, but calling groups of immigrants, illegal or not, violent criminals and rapists is just unconscionable. Calling for a ban of an entire religious group because of the actions of an extreme few is wrong. And unconstitutional. He can’t do that (along with a whole list of other things he has planned; he obviously has no idea how government even works- and a bunch of national security leaders don’t think so either.)

I’ve heard some of you say you like him because he’s not a career politician. This one makes absolutely no sense to me. You wouldn’t hire someone with no experience in education to be the superintendent of your school district, nor would you hire someone with no business experience to be the CEO of your company. I just don’t understand why (regardless of anything else) Trump’s total lack of political experience is anything but a hindrance to his campaign.

Trump’s speech at the RNC a few weeks ago made it sound like we should all be hiding in our homes because the crime in this country is so bad. It’s not. I’m not afraid to leave my house and live my life, and Trump’s scare tactics aren’t going to change that. What does scare me is a narcissist running for president who says ” I alone can fix it” about anything. Last I checked, we aren’t electing a dictator.

Back to Hillary. You hate her. Again, why? Specifically, why? You call her a criminal- she’s never been convicted of anything. The email thing- got it. I can say with absolute certainty she won’t do that again. But I can’t say that about Trump- who is almost laughably unable to learn from his mistakes (and won’t ever ask for forgiveness anyway). Policy aside, she’s more than qualified for the job. She knows how our government works, and how to interact with foreign leaders. She has actual policies and plans to get them accomplished, that don’t involve building walls and forcing our military to commit war crimes.

Christian friends- you say you can’t vote for Hillary because of her stance on abortion and gay marriage. Well, aside from the fact that you could never convince me that Trump is pro-life, whether or not abortion is legal or not, it’s going to exist. Instead of spending so much time and energy trying to make it illegal, why don’t we show love and empathy to women who are faced with that choice? If a woman feels helpless and alone and thinks abortion is her only option, she’s going to have an abortion, whether it’s legal or not. And regardless whether or not you think homosexuality is a sin, we are not a Christian nation and gay marriage is a civil rights issue, not a religious one.

I don’t love Hillary (but can we all just take a minute and acknowledge the historical significance of her nomination), and don’t agree with her on everything. I’m also not in the camp of thinking I have to pick between the “lesser of two evils”, because to me, there’s just no comparison of which campaign spews evil and has left me with genuine fear for the future. #imwithher.