Sorry my loyal readers for the nine day silence. It’s been a long nine days and I haven’t had any time or energy to blog.

The day of my last blog, I came down with some stomach bug that has plagued me until now. I’m still a bit queasy but feeling better.

It drained me of all my energy. Every day I did the bare minimum.

For nine days I have had absolutely no energy to cook anything creative or healthy. Gorgeous, locally sourced, organic veggies delivered from Irv & Shelley’s Fresh Picks have wilted in the crisper while I’ve fed my kids a bunch of pre-packaged white carbs, cheese and processed meats. It was not a high point for me as a mother and not something I am proud to blog about.

For nine days we also had a very difficult week with Ben as school. It is another thing I don’t feel good blogging about and I’m pretty sure when Ben gets older he WILL not like it to be public knowledge so let me just give you a little metaphor for the past week.

I feel like in Kindergarten they basically throw 30 kids in a big pool and see who can swim. Some have had expensive lessons and get right in there. Others cry when they are dropped in by eventually start swimming or realize they can touch their feet to the ground. Ben didn’t do any of these things. Ben sank. But he went down kicking and screaming. And no matter what they did, throwing out buoys, try to give some instruction, nothing worked.

In the end it got so bad we picked him up from school last Thursday.

It has gotten better since then. Wednesday we sent him in 1/2 day, just in the special ed room, and with his own personal therapist. Then we repeated this half day schedule, without his therapist, for the next two days.

We realized Ben needs to just get out of the pool altogether and start at the first step of the stairs and work his way down slowly.

We also got really good news from the principal today. Ben’s one-on-one aide was approved today so we can start the hiring process. When he/she is hired we have a chance at getting him back to school full time.

But for now we’ll keep the 1/2 days up. They seem to be working. All days he got a good report from the teacher and as a result he gets to cash in the prize we dangled in front of him when we told him he was going back.

Ironically the prize is for him to go swimming this weekend.