Rebekah Loses a Tooth

Rebekah lost her first baby tooth yesterday. Six months ago, the dentist told us she had one slightly loose tooth. I’ve been watching that one very carefully. This one was not one of the very front teeth, but rather the one just to the right on the bottom. She has been talking about “my loose tooth” for months now, but the last week had been bringing it up a lot at dinner time. I thought maybe she was trying to get away from eating and didn’t give it a lot of thought. Tuesday night, as I was brushing her teeth, I noticed that she definitely had a loose tooth – and it was very loose. We put a note in Rebekah’s Home-School notebook, so her aids would know about it. When she got off the bus on Wednesday afternoon, she had a “tooth” necklace with her tooth inside it. During morning snack, it came out. Rebekah said her leg caught it. She is very proud of her missing tooth (although she still calls it her loose tooth). She has to look in a mirror any time she passes one to look at it.

We had conferences today and her special ed teacher said that she was sitting right next to Rebekah when her tooth came out. Rebekah matter-of-factly told the group that her loose tooth fell out. She wasn’t upset about it, didn’t panic about any blood (and there really wasn’t much) and was just fine with the whole thing. I’m glad to hear that she didn’t panic or fret about it. We had been talking about it, but I’m never sure if I’ve talked about it enough to take the mystery out of it.

Conferences went well. She is doing pretty well. Her first grade class is getting used to having Rebekah there some of the time and not other times. They have a reading time, where they each need to be by themselves reading and then after a few minutes of that they can partner up and read together. Rebekah picks one of the girls in the class for her partner and the girls are really good about accepting it. Sometimes they will chat and other times Rebekah will ask them to read to her. The class will often say “goodbye” to Rebekah when she leaves the classroom.

She has a friend Matthew in her special ed classroom. It sounds like they play off each other. Teacher says that one of them will show that they are doing what they are supposed to do and then the other will do what they are supposed to do. So far, they aren't feeding off each other in the "bad" habits.

Math is one of her strengths. She has the concepts down. She is recognizing numbers and can count to twenty (on a good day anyway). Her classmates are understanding more and more of what she is saying. She struggles with spelling and reading.

Rebekah showed us to both of her classrooms and showed Sarah where all the “fun” stuff was in her special ed classroom, where they played while we met with the teachers.

Rebekah was off of school last week – Wednesday, Thursday & Friday (teacher inservice & grading days) and off this week Thursday & Friday (for conferences). Last Friday, Mommy asked Rebekah what she wanted to do that was “special” with just Mommy (since Sarah was in school). She wanted to bake cookies and given the choice between chocolate chip or sugar cookies & using a cookie cutter, she chose cookie cutter. So we made sugar cookies – leaves, pumpkins & stars. Then we made some red & orange frosting and frosted them and added sprinkles. She made some special ones for Daddy & Sarah.

It was strange having Rebekah home and Sarah gone at school. It has been such a long time, since I’ve had just Rebekah home and not because of some sort of medical procedure.

Sarah is loving school. She is making friends and gets excited about going to school. She was very upset Monday when she found out that school was cancelled for the day because of a water main break. She told me “I am very sad because I can’t go to school.” It was heart-breaking. She is not happy that she doesn’t get to ride the bus every day. She does get to ride the bus on her speech class day. The bus picks her up at home and then takes her to preschool.

Sarah started up speech therapy again this week. She is enjoying that, too. She came home after the first session (with a new therapist) and wanted to draw a picture for her. Her picture had Flounder (the fish from Ariel – the Little Mermaid) and Flounder’s mommy. Today, we took that picture with us to therapy (session #2) and her therapist put it up on the wall.