— 1 —

Daniel’s IEP. Daniel’s IEP meeting was yesterday and it was the triennial one so there was a pretty significant amount of testing done. I learned that I should have really pushed for more OT and PT when he was in preschool because they’re still working on a lot of foundational skills and he is still pretty delayed. He’s doing some normal kindergarten work but he has the potential to get behind his age group peers so I’ll be working with him on age-appropriate curriculum when he comes home from school so that they can focus on catching him up in other ways.

One thing everyone mentioned: how sweet he is, how happy he is, and how compliant he is. It’s not a guarantee with a lot of autistic kids so I’m pretty thankful I have a sweet one.

— 2 —

Sweetness. I missed Bible study on Wednesday because I woke up with a migraine and when I walked into the midweek Lenten soup supper, some of the members hugged me and told me that they had missed me that morning. It’s so nice to be loved because I’m Jen and not just because I happen to be married to the pastor. It’s also nice to be welcome to do what I want instead of what people thing the perfect pastor’s wife should do.

— 3 —

Gah. Daylight Savings Time starts on Sunday. Does anyone else hate this weekend of the year besides me? Let the sleep deprivation begin (or continue if that’s the case for you)!

— 4 —

PSA on the current challenges to the Affordable Care Act. The challenges to the Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court are not just an attempt to get rid of the birth control provisions. It would roll back care for people like me who cannot get healthcare except by the public exchanges. While Covered California’s website is a piece of crap, the insurance I have is covering all of my medications which are for things that are hereditary and things that arose as complications from my pregnancy with Daniel. It could also mean that insurance companies would not have to cover maternity care which would screw just about every woman who has a baby because none of their prenatal care would be covered as well as the hospital bill from the birth. Seriously, I cannot understand how politicians who are pro-life and against birth control can support this because what it’s doing is giving women another reason to consider abortion.

As far as the federal subsidies in question, they exist for people in the 34 states that have refused to set up exchanges where people can buy insurance. My insurance is subsidized currently because of my income and without that subsidy, we couldn’t afford insurance. (We qualify for Medi-Cal but the system is so overtaxed and for some incredibly stupid reason, the plan we were assigned has no doctors within an hour’s drive of us.)

I’m seriously not trying to start a fight here or play one political party against another — I’m trying to get people to see that this issue does have a face and said face is me.

— 5 —

Spring is here. It’s in the 80’s here today. While I miss four distinct seasons (and I’m sure people in New England and places in the southeast with the ice storm are wanting to throttle me right now), it is kind of nice to have flip-flop weather.

— 6 —

My baby is growing up. The changing table/dresser we had for Daniel was pretty much irrepairable and he had outgrown his toddler bed so we disassembled both of them on Monday for a dump pick-up on Tuesday. We’re now using one of the dressers in the room that he’s occupying and we’ve got the futon pulled out so he has a full-sized bed. It was sad in a way because he will probably be our only child and this means that his “baby years” are over, even though he’s definitely not functioning at an almost six year old level these days.

One downside for the cats: Freya now doesn’t have a perch where she can snoopervise the neighborhood and watch birds. She has taken over my desk but I can tell that it isn’t the same for her.

— 7 —

Adorableness. One last cool thing from my Confirmation on Sunday: since the bishop was present, we had festival-level worship which meant that we had flags and incense in addition to the normal crucifer and torchbearers. Incense in worship means a thurifer (to swing the thurible with the incense) and a boat boy to carry the boat (bowl with the incense). The thurifer was one of the young fathers and the boat boy was his oldest son who I am guessing is probably 6 or 7 years old. It was seriously adorable to see the two of them together!

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