Back to school time

After at week at sleep over camp in Charlottesville and a week at Grandma and Grandpa Mac's in NY, Margaret started a new school year at a new school. She will now be going to a small Christian school in our town and is in the fourth grade. She seemed to have a smooth start to the school year. Patrick is in charge of getting her ready and getting her to school, which has minimized the tension in the morning between Margaret and I. After school, she's been helpful watching Abby while I work out. Homework is starting to be assigned and it looks a bit difficult. I hope that she will do her best and that we don't end up having daily battles over homework... but so far, so good...

Since we couldn't afford to send both big kids to the private school, AP switched over the public middle school this year. After coming home from two weeks at sleep away camp, we went to the open house and he and I quickly got lost in the halls of the school. I was supposed to help ease his fears and I ended up making him more nervous! He was especially nervous about gym class and having to change into the required uniform... and also about opening his combination locks. But, after the first day, he was so excited and had such a great time meeting up w/ old friends... I think he'll do just fine. He did say that the high school kids on the bus use a lot of swear words... and that all the boys talk about are girls... He turns 13 in a few weeks! I'm trying to give him good advise and make sure that I appear as "cool" as possible so that he will be open w/ me... but it is hard for me not to counsel him at every opportunity... I'm just praying he sticks w/ a good crowd and that the bad seeds don't rub off on him too much...

I think I've told everyone at this point, but we got great news this week about Abby's sleep test. Prior to surgery she had 148 instances of Central Sleep Apnea during her sleep study... a rare condition caused by pressure on the brain. This time, she only had 12! The pulmonary/respiratory doctor noted that in her opinion, Abigail no longer has CSA (only mild obstructive sleep apnea which is much more common and treated by a tonsillectomy). We are so relieved! We meet w/ the neurosurgeon in a couple of weeks, but we're fairly certain that these results show that the surgery was more successful than he feared and we will only need to monitor the situation and not need to put her through another brain surgery... Amen! Obviously, I've started back to work. Summer was wonderful... first two weeks of school have gone smoothly, but I am definitely tired. Soccer already is in full swing... and Abby has gotten sick twice already in two weeks! But, she really loves going to her baby sitter's home and that makes going back to work so much easier. We are continuing to meet with our "parenting coach" who is teaching us some good techniques for parenting older-adopted children. And, we're looking forward to the Celtic games that are held locally every Labor Day weekend... Check out more pics of the last two weeks of summer... (mostly Abby pics b/c the big kids were away at camp) by clicking the slide show below: