The Jones Girls

Maryssa is now going to a speech therapist once a week on Fridays for an hour at Jordon Elementary School.   

It was really stressful trying to get there.   There is no parking as all of the teachers park in the parking lot and leave no room for guests or parents to park.  Really frustrating.   I have to take all3 girls out of the minivan because I can’t leave them in there by themselves as I can’t just drop Maryssa off at the front office.  So we go to the main office and sign in and get a Visitor badge.  Then I walk the triplets across the entire school to Room 9 .  It is a looooong way.  

So I am a nerve racking 5 minutes late.    The teacher tells me I have some paperwork to fill out and take me and the 2 girls outside of the class and fill it out.    Maryssa is in class with another little boy and they both receive speech therapy from the teacher.

So I am outside of the class filling out the paperwork and Miranda and Amanda are running around like little banshee monkeys.   I tell them to be quiet because the classrooms are in session and we need to be quiet.   I am quickly filling out the paperwork and I hand it to the teacher really quick and try to scram.   Maryssa saw me and started bawling…Mommy no Mommy don’t go!!   Broke my heart…

I quickly walked with the girls back to our car, buckle them in the car seats then drive over to Savannah’s kindy class and wait for her to be dismissed.   They took longer getting out.  They were supposed to get out at 11:50am but didn’t get out till almost 12pm.  I had to be back at Jordan school at 12:10pm and I was still waiting in the pick up line at 12;02pm!!   Finally Savvy gets in the car and her Kindy teacher, Mrs. Tarbell, wants to have a quick chat with me and tell me Savannah will be a late bird…Yay!!  That will make pick up and drop off much easier now…whew!!  

In the meantime I am looking at the clock…it is 12:08pm!!  Oh my gosh!!  I safely scadaddle and get to Jordan at 12:15pm and arrive at Maryssa’s class at 12:18pm.

I am met with the teacher with her arms crossed, pissed off as all hell at me and tells me this is unacceptable.  I tried to explain, but she said it can’t happen again.  Ugh…  What a terrible way for us to start Maryss’a 1st day of Speech Therapy.  I tell her I have to run because I left the girls in the car (which I didn’t want to do but I knew I was so late).   Totally sucked…

The teacher did tell me Maryssa did very well and was attentive the whole hour.  My hope is that Maryssa blows through this speech therapy and will graduate by Christmas.  She has come so far since starting private at home speech therapy last November.  She has had continuous Speech Therapy since November of Last year.

One good thing is that Savannah will be a late bird ( as long as her behavior is good and she can keep up with the more advanced Kindy students) and I won’t have a tight timeline between picking her up and picking Maryssa up.  Savannah will be going from 10:10am and I won’t have to deal with the crazy madness of the 8:30am drop off chaos.  I will be with 10 or 15 other cars and will be able to drop off Savannah right in front of her classroom – yay!!  I will pick her up at 11:30am.  This means the mornings won’t be so chaotic for me and I can breathe a little…whew!!

Have you ever heard of those Edible Arrangements? I received one today for our 11th wedding anniversary which will be tomorrow. Cliff’s work sent it to me. Cliff has been working out of state in Arkansas for over 5 weeks now. He had been missed by all of us and his work wanted to show their appreciation for Cliff’s hard work by sending this fruit arrangement. It is very beautiful and the girls devoured the grapes, strawberries and I let them try the chocolate covered fruit too.

What a nice and thoughtful thing his work did. Now I wish my husband could hurry up and get home!! He is flying in tonight for a few days and then will be back in Arkansas sometime next week. He is making good progress on the project out there, with the help of his 2 other colleagues.

I wanted to share real quick what our wedding was like. We got married in Cliff’s hometown of Poultney, VT. I had never been to VT. Cliff had a dream of getting married in the church he attended while he was growing up. So we planned a New England wedding during foliage season, which was for September 19th. The only family member on my side that was able to fly out was my mom and my BFF, Deidre,  had moved to the state of NY a few months before our wedding so it was pretty easy for her to get to the wedding, she was my maid of honor and we were childhood best friends.

So here we are 11 years later, with a marriage that keeps on ticking like the Timex watch and we are constantly working on ourselves and having a good marriage. It is never just easy, but then I think it would be boring if it were just easy…KWIM?

Here is a salute to my Darling Husband Cliff….to a great 11 years of marriage and looking forward to a lifetime of many more anniversaries!!

xoxoxoxoxoxxo

The girls have been learning how to emulate and copy dance routines from different shows like Fantasmic at Disneyland.   I have been thinking for a while that they would love to be in dance class.    The problem is with 4 girls in dance, it can be pretty expensive.

I got a coupon in the mail today from Savannah’s old Ballet Dance Studio, Adagio Dance. They are offering waiving the registration fee and offering a hefty discount for ballet and dance classes.

There was a schedule of classes included with the coupon and Pre Combo Ballet & Tap for 2-3 yo’s (triplets) and Pre Combo & Tap for 4-5 yo’s (for Savvy) are Friday nights 6:45-7:15 for the triplets class and 7:15-7:45 for Savvy’s class.  Wow, I could take all of them in one swoop, who could have planned that schedule any better?

Now mind you, I opened my mail at 5pm tonight so I just noticed that the time of the classes that are tonight’s classes are 6:45 and 7:15pm!!      I thought about it and called the dance studio and asked if I could bring the triplets down and have Ms. Jennifer, the dance instructor and owner, evaluate the triplets to see if they were ready for the 2-3 yo class.   I also wanted her to let me know if she thought Savvy could do the 4-5 yo class.

After I made the call, they told me to bring the girls down tonight if I wanted.   I am looking at the clock and it is now 5:50pm.  I have about 40 minutes for me to jump in the shower because I feel gross (it has been so hot and oppressive here) and also to get all 4 girls dressed up in the ballet gear and hair done.

I am running around with a vengeance and we managed to get to the dance studio at 6:50, just 5 minutes late.  Not too bad.    I had no ballet shoes or tap shoes for the girls and the studio said they have extras to lend people.   That was so cool!!   They were able to provide all of the ballet shoes and tap shoes for the 4 girls.  Yipee!!   I quickly get the triplets ballet shoes on and I walk them into the dance room.    I stay in there for moral support and observance for 5-10 minutes and then I left the room to be with Savvy who was watching vigilantly outside viewing through the one-way mirror.

One thing that impressed me about dance class on Friday nights is the classes only have about 6 kids in them and with my girls it made it about 9 kids in the triplets class and in Savvy’s class it was only about 5 with her in the class.  The waiting room for the parents was pretty bare and it made for a very relaxing and less hurried atmosphere.   The girls’ classes were the last classes of the day which made it less rushed and enjoyable for me.

Ok so back to dance!!  After 15 minutes of ballet, all of the girls ran out and I switched the ballet shoes for tap shoes.     You should have seen me, I was like a conveyor belt putting one shoe after the other…6 feet in all!! LOL!!

 The triplets quickly scuttled back into the dance room and tapped their little heart out.I had tears in my eyes.  I was so proud of them!!

I got Savannah ready for her class and she did beautifully in her class.    She has been out of ballet for about 16 months now.    She remembered most of her moves from her past and got to learn some new moves using new techniques.   She looked so confident and relaxed and had so much fun.

While she was in class, the triplets were running around the waiting area like my little banshee monkeys.  I had to remind them to be quiet to not disturb Savannah’s class.

It was amazing to see my parade of 4 pink ballet princesses, fluttering about in their tutus and laughing and giggling like little angels.    My 4 girls won the hearts of their teacher, Ms. Jennifer and also all of the other parents.

So I negotiated a discount rate with the owner.  I think the dance will benefit all of the girls in the following manner:

Amanda:   This will improve her sense of balance, strengthen her core and help her posture.

Maryssa:  She is pigeon toed, her feet point inward.  The shoes and the exercises will help align her feet to be more forward and hopefully help her overcome her pigeon toe.

Miranda:   She does not take direction well and easily gets distracted.  This will help her learn and follow direction in a group setting as well as keep her focused.

Savannah:   She has bilateral coordination issues and muscle tone issues which were inherited from me (so sorry Savvy!).    In the past when she was in dance, it offered her good therapy to help her promote good coordination and muscle tone.  

The nice thing about all of this is all of the girls have no idea it is therapy, it is fun, fun, fun!!