Twas the Night Before School...

Look, I know I don't deserve a favor.
I'm hit or miss around these parts, and I'm lurking everywhere, rarely saying boo.
So don't do me a favor.
But do one for Rooster? He's been working harder than words can tell, and tomorrow is his first day of school, which would be a big enough day already, but this is at the school that didn't want us.
He doesn't know we had to fight over this school. He doesn't know that he got in through a lottery, then got refused because they "already have a lot of kids with autism." He doesn't know his father took this to the top, that the district overruled the principal. He doesn't know that we have no idea, no idea in the world, if we have made the right choice to send him there. He doesn't know it's a public school with a good reputation for helping kids on the spectrum, or that, sadly, this reputation has come to feel like a burden to the administration that they would rather shed. He doesn't know how close I came to sending him back to the more mediocre school where he had some very painful run-ins with a few bad teachers and hateful parents, just because at the end of the year a few people reached out to us there with kind words of encouragement and support, and we've been starved for that. He doesn't know about the spreadsheet of pros and cons, the dozens of schools we've visited, the stacks of applications we completed. I hope he doesn't know I'm scared.
Please, send Rooster good vibes for tomorrow, on his first day of second grade.
I have been, and will continue, sending good vibes for all the kiddos in the blogosphere as we face the uncertainty and anxiety that come our way each fall.
Here is to a happy 2011-12.