We have ourselves a kindergartener! I am pleased to report that the first week of school went more smoothly than I had imagined. We had no official enzyme plan in place on the first day, so I just tucked a big bottle of pills into my pocket on our way to school and handed them to the teacher with the following detailed instructions: "Two for snack, three for lunch." And that was that. As far as I have been able to gather from the 90 seconds of conversation we've managed since then, there is a now school nurse. Her name might be Heather, although I'm not sure. It is possible that Nurse Heather may give our classroom teacher a form to document the administration of medication. I don't believe that this has happened yet. And also there may be rules about it. But hey. Is Lemon getting his enzymes when he is supposed to? By all accounts, yes, and his digestion seems to be working as normally as it ever does, which is evidence that things are happening according to plan.
One of my worries when Lemon started school was that he wouldn't eat anything at lunch time and be a wreck by the end of the day every day. And, I've been pleasantly surprised in that respect. While he doesn't eat anything that would normally be considered a lunch, he does eat something every day. He reliably drinks his whole juice box, which is a good start, and then he also usually consumes something on the order of half a string cheese, a vanilla wafer, and half a grape. It doesn't sound like much, but honestly it's way more than I expected for the first week. Also, he spontaneously commented to me that one of the things that he liked best about school was "how they have such great food for lunch." I asked if he meant the food that was in his lunch box. He said yes. Then I asked him if he had any idea how the food got in there every day. He said the school put it there. Thanks a lot, kid.We live walking distance from our elementary school, and it has been really fantastic to be able to walk him to and from school every day. I had not anticipated how much I would like that--both the time walking with him, and the fact that it is SOOO convenient. I remember when we first moved here, when he was 6 months old, I would push him in the stroller on a walk around the block and tell him, "Some day you will go to school here." And now we are there. Wow.
What actually transpires at school remains something of an open question, as Lemon is not terribly forthcoming about the whole thing. His teacher posts lots of happy pictures of everyone on the school's app, and he is in a good mood at the end of the day, and I think I'm fine to just take that for what it is.
Lime sailed through the transition to the 3-year-old classroom at preschool. And, I have to say, he really rather likes having his afternoons at home with just him and the nanny with no one beating him up or competing for her attention. Speaking of the nanny, on the first day of school she announced her intention to quit, so I am launching into a search for her replacement now. It's great timing to find someone new (HAHAHAHA) because over the next 8 weeks I believe Papa Bear and I have 8 out-of-town trips between us. Plus the ongoing adaptations to the new school and schedule and whatnot. Kids love change. Anyhow, we've rolled through child care crises before so I'm sure somehow we'll roll through this one too. But ugh. Until the nanny announced her intention to quit I was planning to have Lime do 4K at his same preschool and be home in the afternoons. Now, I'm thinking I might be kind of done with arranging in-home child care, and that I will just send him to a full-day 4K program when the time comes. We shall see.
Not wanting to go to long before having a CF-related opportunity to miss school, Lemon has his quarterly clinic visit on Wednesday morning. I had been vaguely looking forward to it, or at least not dreading it, since I do like to have his progress assessed, and we have a few questions for the team this time around, mostly about which of his medications we can switch over to pills now that he is such an amazing pill swallower. But, I just got a call from the clinic on Friday telling me that our nurse practitioner had a family emergency, so instead of her we are seeing Dr. Random Pulmonologist. Now, admittedly, I have never met this particular Dr. Random Pulmonologist before, but my previous experiences with other members of this class have not left me with very high expectations, so the visit might be a big waste of time. Sigh. But, of course, rescheduling with the the nurse practitioner isn't possible unless I want to wait until December, which is when we are due for our next visit anyhow. So, we'll just go in with low expectations and hope that somehow they are exceeded.
