Summer Update

I've been kind of lazy in updating the blog this summer! Well, actually not lazy--more, just too busy! And we actually haven't had a lot of big news to report, anyway.

Katie has been going to Stepping Stones day camp Monday through Friday from 9:00 until 3:00. She loves it! Every day the kids swim, go boating, take nature walks, do arts and crafts, play on the playground, etc. It's really been a great place for Katie, and her camp leader reports every day that she really enjoys it. She is going to be spoiled when school starts back, wondering why she has to work all day instead of play!

Speaking of school, Katie starts back in just two weeks! Our regular school session here starts on August 23rd, but the special needs students start two weeks earlier. They go Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 10:30 until 12:00 for those two weeks to get used to the school building, routine, new teachers, etc. I think it's great that they do that for these kids--that will be so helpful to Katie! So she'll start on Tuesday, the 10th. Hard to believe it's time for school again already--it sure has been a fast summer!

Besides camp, we really haven't done all that much this summer. Katie is usually content in the evenings just to stay at home and watch videos and look at books. She enjoys going out and sitting on the patio for awhile in the evenings, so that's been something new for her and relaxing for us!

We got a zoo pass recently, so we tried taking her to the zoo last Sunday. It was a really hot day, even though we got there at 9:30 in the morning, so we only stayed about an hour. For some reason, the zoo just petrifies Katie! We had taken her to the Columbus Zoo on her spring break earlier this year, and her reaction was the same. She doesn't cry while we're there, but she's really clingy and hangs onto our hands for dear life, and she shuffle-steps the whole way around and sometimes will kind of whimper like she's scared. And you practically have to drag her up to look at the animals close up! I'm not sure if the surroundings are just overwhelming to her, or what? We made pictures of some of the animals and took them with us to hopefully make her understand why we were there, but that didn't really seem to help. We'll keep trying and just stay a short amount of time each visit, and see if we can get her to be more comfortable there. I sure would like to know what's going on in her head sometimes and be able to explain things to her!

I doubt we'll take any trips before school starts. We had thought about taking a long weekend and going somewhere like St. Louis, but Katie seems to be content just taking shorter day trips and then being at home for part of the day, so we'll probably do that instead. We really don't have many more open days before school starts, anyway!

I hope everyone is having a great summer! I'll post pics of Katie's first day at school in a couple of weeks!