Miscellany

There's so much going on right now. Now only does it keep me from blogging much, but when I get a chance there's almost too many topics to choose from! So I thought I'd do a little rambling.

My work website is down. Allakhazam has been suffering from DDOS attacks. We've no idea whom or why, but they're inconveniencing a lot of people, both staff and users. I spend half the downtime catching up on house stuff and the other half checking to see if I can work yet! It's really become a PITA.

The mysterious assailants did ease up long enough to let us get a Developer Chat done last Thursday. For you non-gamers, that's when we invite developers from a game (in this case EverQuest II) to come take live questions from live players in IRC chat. This event is like cooking a huge holiday meal. There's a lot of preparation and last-minute stuff, then it's on, everyone eats, and it's over. Except with a chat you're not stuck with leftovers and dishes! I love the chats. The EQII developers are a bunch of very neat people who care passionately about the world they created for us to play in.

Let's see. Kiddo's not in any preschool or daycare right now. We'd changed to a more structured school on the advice of his last teacher (who, you may recall, moved back to Florida), and it was a dismal failure. We saw two problems. First, they seemed to not get the concept that a child new to their environment needs to be taught their routines, schedules, and rules. Second, there was on particular teacher with whom Kiddo had horrible behavior - melt downs (remember when they were tantrums?), hitting and biting, all of which are absolutely not normal for him. We thought it very telling that when that teacher was absent he showed none of those behaviors, but the school would have nothing of that idea. They told us our kid was broken. Maybe ADHD, maybe Asperger's, at the very least he needed serious behavioral counseling.

Needless to say he's not there anymore. (I won't drop names publicly, but if you're in my area and have a need to know, leave a comment with a contact e-mail). Now, we've known Kiddo's behind a little bit socially. He was an only child until he was three, didn't go to day care, and we've no peers with kids, so his experience is lacking. But to tell us our kid is broken because you're too whatever to take the time to teach? Yeah, bugs me too. The consensus thus far is he's just a KID. and a BOY at that.

He's being evaluated for language and cognitive development. So far we've just done the language evaluations, but there's no red flags. Yeah, his social language is a little behind in abstract concepts. But we're hearing things like "He has an astounding vocabulary!!" and "He's very smart! " and while all the evaluation reports aren't back yet, no one has seen anything worrying.

Meanwhile, Kiddo's old preschool/daycare is closing at the end of the month, effectively stranding 60 kids. I was talking to my neighbor, who has a daughter in after-school care there, and there are absolutely no daycare openings in town anywhere. So I'm taking it as a Celestial Hint that Kiddo just needs to be home with me right now. We watching him develop, it's kind of cool. I've arranged to watch the neighbor girl after the daycare closes at least to the end of the school year, so he'll get some social time and our neighbor ( who's a single working mom) can save a little money and not stress while she looks for a new summer placement. Meanwhile I'll waitlist him with a few daycares and see if something part-time opens up for summer so he can have a social life.

Oh, we have birthdays! Gee, I must be a little stressed about the rest of the stuff, I should have mentioned that first! Today Kiddo is FIVE! Five years!! Amazing! And on the 11th Baby will be two and I'll really have to stop calling him Baby! Kiddo's a little down today because his birthday party isn't RIGHT NOW, but that's five for ya!

I guess that catches up Life for now. I'll post birthday pictures soon, and also talk about milk and gasoline....