Another good day

Another good day today. This job is a bit like a lucky dip, I don't know what the day is going to hold.  

I stayed up latish last night, got to watch the Prison Break episodes.....oh that Wentworth Miller is just divine.  Smart, quiet, intelligent, caring, brilliant, and just yummo to look at!  (big sigh)  So I stayed up when I should have gone to bed, although I felt quite good last night even though my day was huge.

I dropped the kids off and drove Sheila into town and arrived at school at around 8.10am. I spoke to the classroom teacher, and was pleasantly surprised that it was an academically based classroom. No wheelchairs, and no nappies!  The class was smallish, six kids, with one who is severely autistic - he basically needed one on one all day long. The kids were just delightful.  I had a ball with them. In many ways these kids are easier than mainstream kids.  Its more intense, and you have to be even more watchful as their safety is a huge issue, but you don't raise your voice like you do when you have 25 (or 40) in a class.  I left the autistic child with the aide for most of the day as she knows him really well, and I can't walk in there all guns blazing so to speak.  In the afternoon though I sat with him, I spoke to him, got him to use his words when he wanted me to do something for him.  He would cut out small squares of paper, colour them in yellow and then write a word on them. By the end of the day he was getting weary, as he asked me to colour them in for him. He would write a word, and then invariably sing a portion of a song. He kept singing the same lyrics all day long, and finally I realized what he was singing.  It was 'Islands in the stream'. He sang the lyrics, and I continued the singing, and the look he gave me was just priceless. I got goosebumps. At that precise moment, for that one split second, I actually penetrated his solitary mind. It was an incredible feeling.  He just looked at me, and then continued to sing with me. I had connected with him - fleetingly, but in a way he could obviously comprehend.  My aide saw this happen and she said that was amazing because she said when she sings he hates it.  I said to her, I was stunned, because when I used to sing to my eldest when he was a baby, he used to scream!!  Never under estimate the power of music.

After school, I went and did the groceries, took them home and unpacked them, put a load in the dryer, made the lunches for tomorrow, and then took the kids to training.  I got home and had a shower, started preparing the kids' dinners and then sat down with a glass of wine. I have now organized our own dinner and the kids are fed and have had dessert and are sitting quietly and enjoying a movie. The machine is on again, with another load of mud sodden clothes from football training.

I wonder what tomorrow holds.