And We're Off

The Child has been on break for two weeks, me for one. Today everything gets back to the other normal...early rising, the trip into school and then off to work. I'm thankful that I love my job; makes the leaving behind of leisure a little less sting-y.

The Child has been doing really well in school this year. Finally. The whole nearly-flunking-out thing shook her up and she's finally determined that both doing AND turning in her homework has merit. She even studies for tests. One of the conditions of her returning to her school was being tested...her counselor wanted to rule out any learning disabilities that could be contributing to her struggles.

This was a fruitful thing. We'd always known she was mildly dyslexic and the psychologist confirmed this. It was also discovered that while she has better than average intelligence the processor in her brain works more slowly. So, for example, she has an excellent grasp of the workings of mathematics but it takes her a long time to compute formulas. Therefore, the gap between her intelligence and her performance is significant enough that she qualifies for certain academic accommodations: more time for tests, audio books are highly recommended and she'll be able to have more time for the SAT. And that first bit, more time for tests, should help her grades even more because this year it's test scores that are bringing down her grades. (Granted, she's getting As and Bs this year but there's been a little sliding in Science and it owes to test scores).

Anynoodle, point is, she is working much harder and performing to her potential and so, after a quarter of academic probation, she was allowed to audition for the spring musical. And landed a small role. (Not a lead but not in the chorus, either. Last year she didn't even make it into the chorus). She's very excited. And I don't know if all this school stuff is part of it or if it's the fact that she is nearly 17 or a combination of the two but she has, all a sudden, become a much more mature young woman. There are fewer and fewer glimpses of the little girl and more and more evidence of the woman she's becoming. Which is delightful and freaky all at once.

Of course, at this present moment she is still lying in bed despite having been called 20 minutes ago and I suspect that the moment I hit "publish" and go to rouse her again there will ensue the classic grumpy teen/irritated mommy routine but still.