Jill was awesome today, considering she never really went to daycare, or has spent any extended periods of time away from me. I think because Matt went last year and had the same teacher (Miss P) who always showed a lot of attention to Jill as well, made a huge difference. Jill was already familiar with the classroom, too. In fact, as we were walking into the school today, Jill said, "Mumma, you don't have to stay with me today. I'll stay with Miss [P] and play with the kitchen and color. I'll be okay by myself because I'm a big girl now."
I really think that Jill is going to love school. She loves to do arts and crafts, she loves to have stories read to her, and not to compare, but she's a heck of a lot better at concentrating and sitting still than Matt was at the same age.
Matt did really well, too, from what Mark told me (he went with Matt, I went with Jill to the orientations). He's so friendly... he was walking through the main hallway after on our way out to the car, waving and calling out to the teachers he saw by name and saying hello. He's better at names and faces than I am! Matt has the same Pre-K teacher that Jonathan and Ryan had and they both loved her.
Both kids will be going to school three mornings a week. Matt on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and Jillian on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We also signed Jill up for a ballet/tap class at a local dance studio, and Matt up for Karate.
Oh, and an small update on the back situation...
I had an appointment with a pain management specialist today. He was able to sit down with me and give me a much clearer description of what is most likely going on with my back. Basically, what he and Dr. Cook (the neurosurgeon I saw a couple of weeks ago) think is that - and I really hope I don't completely flub up this explanation - I have some compression of the facet joints (the joints in the spine) in my lower back. The reason why I have more pain when I'm lying down is because the area that is effected is compressed more when I'm prone than when I'm upright. That's also why I have more pain when I arch my back than when I touch my toes, and why it hurts when I sneeze or cough. He also said that this kind of compression can resemble a torn disk on an MRI, which makes sense because if the joints are compressed, it's squeezing the disk in between the joints, making it look like a bulge or a tear.
He then explained that there's a good diagnostic test to figure out whether it is really the facet joints causing the pain. What they do is, with the help of x-ray, inject an anesthetic into the area around the joints. If the pain goes away completely in the few days before the anesthetic wears off, they know that it is really the joints, and not something else that's causing the pain (here is a really good description of the test I'm having done). So I'll be going in on September 24th to have that procedure. One more step forward towards not having any more back pain, I suppose.
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