Schooling

Unfortunately we were not able to find a day-care with transportation that we liked in the city where the public pre-school was. So we came to the decision of choosing a more convenient location and also find the best option possible for a pre-school/day-care facility since Lori had to return to work too.

We believe to have found that place and the kids started school last Friday. The first day went fairly smooth, especially for Isabella. The teacher said she was very good, interacted with the other kids and kept asking their names so she would learn them. She was also very interested in all the activities they did, such as painting. In fact by the time Lori picked them up, her shirt did not look like that! Actually Isaac’s didn’t either, but supposedly the paint comes off with regular washing, so we shall see.

 

On the other hand, Isaac didn’t do so well. He wasn’t interacting much and didn’t show a lot of interest and focus. And the worst part was that he kept escaping from the classroom. Sounds very familiar to his orphanage behavior where he constantly escaped the playground. There’s little doubt that he has attention issues so we’ll see how he progresses as they adjust to their new setting.

We continued with hospital appointments and in a little over a month, Isaac has grown 0.6” and Isabella 0.9”. We think that’s pretty remarkable for these little kids. Their weight gain wasn’t too bad either and they put on about a half a pound. Isaac still needs to grow considerably, so he’ll receive some extra boost through higher calorie-packed meals (per nutritionist suggestions). Their diagnosis is still not final because there are more tests to run, but we’re preparing ourselves for the inevitable news. More on that in another future post.

Isaac had yet another seizure on August 21st. It was a little stronger than the previous one, but he snapped out of it in 10 minutes. His EEG showed some abnormalities on the right-side of the brain, which no one was surprised to find out given his history of epilepsy. The next step will be an MRI but only after we get clearance from the cardiologist. This Friday we will visit the Ophthalmologist to figure out what to do about his eyes.

On the whole they are progressing quite well. Isabella’s vocabulary continues to grow while Isaac has become more “chatty” after we got their ears cleaned out from the wax build-up. We couldn’t believe our eyes how packed they were! The wax almost turned into a scab and took several tries by the nurse and daily drops at home to soften things up. In fact we have to repeat some Audiology tests because they were inconclusive due to the low ear canal volume.

Tomorrow will be the start of a full school week. Let’s hope they keep up their smiles and enthusiasm!