Maybe “school” isn’t the right word for it; at five months (Abe) and almost two-and-a-half (Bess), there’s not going to be a lot of hardcore academics. There will, I’m sure, be the learning of things  just as important–how to make friends, how to deal with the unexpected, how to adapt to unfamiliar places (already a competency for them).

Yesterday afternoon we got the call that the children had (finally) been approved to attend the Montessori School where we’d wanted to put them. Some background:

One of my partners at the law firm has her son there in the nursery; her daughter just graduated into kindergarten from the school. On top of that, this partner’s husband is a Montessori-certified teacher himself, so if it gets the stamp of approval from him, that speaks volumes. We toured the facility some months back before taking our placement and were well-satisfied.

Here’s the rub: private school is expensive. The school was solidly out of the price range for a church-worker and a young attorney with a start-up law firm. But, foster children are sometimes eligible for pre-public school education to be paid for, and the Montessori School just happened to be one of the two places approved by CPS for such funding.

When we first got our placement, the original CPS worker had told us that she’d filed the NCI (the funding program) paperwork for us, but that it could be 30 to 45 days before we’d get approved. “No problem,” we said and set about using vacation time to each each work half days in the office and half days at home.

This week K was bound for Dallas to attend internship orientation for her seminary program. We knew this in advance and hoped that the NCI would clear before then.

Thus, it came as a shock when we found out mid-week last week that the NCI paperwork had in fact not been submitted. Fortunately, we now have a good team behind us–our DePelchin clinician has been excellent all the way through and we now have a solid long-term CPS worker who knows the ropes.

Our CPS worker faxed K the paperwork we needed to fill out the same day it was discovered that the first worker had not submitted anything, and we were assured that things would be expedite as much as possible.

That left me taking off three days of work this week to manage the kids. I had great help from our parents (with whom it was nice to get to spend the time), but it was still exhausting. So, when we got word yesterday that they could start today, we were both relieved. I’m finally back to the office full-time, where spare moments can be devoted to writing instead of chasing little ones. At the same time, it does feel strange to spend so much time apart from them today.

I’m excited to find out how the first day went (and excited to have another full day in the office tomorrow)!