Jets

"Hey Mom look it's a really big plane!"
"No honey it's just a little commuter plane" He's been saying this for days now so I barely look up when he says it. Yesterday though he was right! I looked up and saw a jet and we began to see a few more and then the streaks of planes headed to the South started decorating the sky.

And today for the first morning in days I've heard the planes taking off from Roissy. We live near the airport so it was silent the past week which was really odd. That noise was a welcome sound!

Our plane is rescheduled for next week and I'm taking Little S out of school for the week of the ascension. I was a little stressed with the booking because I had to decide my dates quickly while I was on the telephone with the airlines, a really tired booking agent. I kept having to say "umm hold on a sec" while I studied the calendar and requested return dates on really full flights. S's teacher won't be happy because that's nearly two weeks of missed school but one of the days of the ascension week is yet another field trip to a chateau (you've seen one, you've seen them all) and then the day before they'll be preparing for it. The rest of the week is a "pont" and it's a week all rearranged and goofy anyway.

I had a little tiff with Little S's teacher the day before vacation about taking him out for the week. She said we needed to think more about him and his need to be attached to the school and his friends (in other words stop being selfish twits) I didn't feel like I could ever explain to her how hard it is not seeing your family for two freaking years, and not having them see your children grow up. I didn't try to explain and just took her wrath, let her get all her anger out. But I got really annoyed when she said "can't you go in the summer next time?" as if money were falling from the sky at our feet for the three tickets in July each year. I told her it was really expensive and she just sighed really loud and said "next year it's serious and you won't be able to take him out of school on a whim." Next year he starts first grade. And the year after he has to start trade school so he can serve the greater good of the people. Bad citizen mommy, oh dear.

Seb was angry about her attitude and he said "oh I wish I could have been there." We're both really fed up with the school's obsession with Little S's personality problems. I haven't blogged much about this but we've seen lots of different specialists on our own lately and they all say he's fine, just maybe intimidated by school and large groups. The school keeps pushing us to find a problem though and we've reached a point where we just want to say "he's normal just not THE norm" It's a square peg kid. I appreciate their concern but they're starting to give him a complex because the teacher talks to us about his problems right in front of him. He's seeing a school psychologist and a sort of play therapist, two different people each week at school and even though we did sign off on it, now we're thinking they're just going in circles chasing their tails. Each few months they come up with a conflicting report and most of it's jargon to say "poor lost kid who has to translate everything from English to French" and they keep suggesting we eliminate the English to help his French which I don't agree with.

So you can imagine that the trip to the US and the week (plural now) is not going to go ever well.