Bounce, Skip, and Cut

I've been meaning to start using ideas from the Busy Books that Joy recommended and Slow and Steady Get Me Ready that Jenn recommended on a regular basis. This week I finally started using the "get me ready" book. It really is a great book. Three activities that were listed for those who have recently turned three years old included bouncing a ball, skipping, and cutting with scissors. I purchased a couple of pairs of blunt scissors over the last year, but today was the first time I let Nadia use scissors. She loved it! Of course she still has a LOT to learn with her cutting skills (such as don't cut your shirt which she accidently did today), but she had more success with that than skipping or catching a ball with her hands after she bounced it. We'll keep working on those. I think I'll try to teach her to "trot" first since skipping was a challenge. Last week we started doing some workbook pages together every day. She calls it her schoolwork. We've been working on grouping items into sets, one-to-one correspondence, finding matches, ranking pictures by size, etc. I also have some flashcards that have pictures of objects on them (as few as one to as many as twenty-six). She picks several of the flashcards and counts how many objects are on each card. She's doing pretty well with that! I also read to the kids every day. Today I read at least 10 different Curious George books, for example. We also do some music almost every day. Sometimes we play instruments together while singing, and other days we use the Take-Along Songs books/cds that Nadia loved when she was really young. Both kids sit on my lap, I sing, and we look at the pages of the songbook together. We have a lot of fun together every day! One of Ian's favorite things to do lately is "Ring Around the Rosy." He laughs his head off while we do that! It's the simple things that bring all three of us a lot of joy.

Today Ian had speech therapy for the first time in 3 weeks. She was very pleased! She said in a few weeks we can first switch to her only coming every other week, and that probably soon after that he can be discharged. She said he's caught up to where he should be for his age. YAY! I thought that was the case (as he now says over 80 words), but it was nice to hear it from someone official. So although he'll likely have OT for a few more years, it seems his stint with speech therapy will only be for a few months total (as we just started that in June). She pulled out some flash cards today with pictures on them, and he immediately said the (correct) word for several of them such as: apple, car, and shoes. He's come a long way the past 3 months!

The main thing on my mind today was the health insurance. Today was the deadline for either declining or accepting PSU's insurance. I had emailed someone in my HR on Saturday regarding what date my insurance would become effective again, but I didn't hear back over the holiday weekend. I called her at 8:00 this morning. She said she'd be looking into it and getting back to me today. After a few emails back and forth (and I left a few messages on her voicemail), she sent me an email in the late afternoon that the main headquarters for our state system said I would have had to enroll in the health insurance in May, that I couldn't do so now. I immediately tried calling the head of HR. He didn't answer the phone, so then I called the Assistant Director. Thankfully, he did answer the phone. I explained that I had never been offered health insurance in May. How could I be penalized for not accepting that which I was never offered. I had been told I wouldn't receive any benefits again until the start of the fall semester.

He called the headquarters again and called me back around 4:30 to let me know that yes I was eligible for health insurance. It seems my benefits resumed the end of May because I was teaching this summer. My HR said they didn't know I was working this summer (how could they not know when they issued me paychecks this summer?), and that's why they didn't offer me health insurance in May. Since I wasn't offered it, they will offer it to me now. The only glitch is that they're saying I might have to pay the premiums for the past 3 months (which is lousy because they aren't cheap, I didn't receive the benefits, and I had to drive all over God's creation for medical appointments because PSU's insurance doesn't work with the local hospital). I really hope I don't have to pay for those 3 months, but if that's what it takes to get back on Blue Shield, so be it. I plan to check with the union to see if I am really required to pay for 3 months of coverage which I didn't receive. It wasn't my fault I wasn't told I was eligible 3 months ago. It was a stressful day. I wasn't exactly sure what time was the deadline for enrolling/declining the insurance through PSU today. At first my university was saying I was not eligible for insurance until next May, and if that had been true I needed to sign up for PSU's insurance because PSU's is certainly better than none!!! I also didn't want to end up paying for BOTH insurance premiums as my university's is already very expensive. So I'm glad that just in the nick of time someone in my HR was able to tell me YES you can have health insurance this year so that I could decline PSU's. I accepted PSU's dental and vision because together they cost less than $20 for the entire year for all four of us. I wish I had accepted those the first two years Paul was at PSU. Live and learn. I figured why sign up for additional coverage since we had vision and dental through my job, but it turns out PSU's dental plan is better than mine, plus if you have two plans then it means the one covers the deductible of the other one and we don't pay a dime.

One thing I kept reminding myself during this time of wondering what I should do and whether I was going to find out from HR in time or not was to keep this problem in perspective. I found out today that a friend of mine just recently experienced the passing of her spouse. They had been married for 47 years. I met Jeanie in January 2003. We shared an office for 18 months. I've kept in touch with her since then. We've seen each other at conferences; in fact we shared a hotel room in New Orleans for one conference. We carpooled to a meeting in Virginia once, she attended my baby shower, etc. I kept reminding myself today that my stress was such a minor thing in comparison to losing a spouse. I'd appreciate prayers for Jeanie, her kids, grandkids, etc.  - everyone in her family who is mourning the loss of her sweet husband.