Open House at Lionheart!

Matthew had a such a great day at open house! First of all, I was so excited that he wanted to come! He had spent the week with MaMa & PaPa since I had preplanning, and he had a GREAT time. When I talked to him on Wednesday night, I posed it as "Do you want to skip open house since you already know who your teachers are and such?" He paused for a second and said, "NO... I WANT to come to open house!" Wow... last year he missed it and didn't care! He was so excited to be there and see everyone... he did great!

He went to his classroom first and went straight to his teachers to show them his new haircut (buzzed off from our summer tete a tete with lice - ugh). He loves it, and they did too! Then he talked to his best friend Matt Strom. Matt said "Hey Matthew - you're bald!" To which Matthew of course responded with no, he wasn't bald, he had SOME hair. He also met a new student, Jake, and worked on a puzzle with him! He came to my room for a bit to get on the computer, but even while he was online (after having NO computer for a week!), I told him that Conor had just come in. I asked him if he'd bookmark his computer time real quick and go say hello to Conor. To my surprise, he said 'Sure!" and he jumped right up and went to his classroom. Apparently he and Conor had a really cool exchange. After finishing his 30 min on the computer, he wanted to go downstairs and meet the new pe teacher. We walked around downstairs, and we ended up in Jill's classroom. He met this one mom, and he said you must be Mrs. Fitzgerald (we're still not sure how he figured that out). So then we got on a discussion about changing last names. Kristie Arnold (one of his teacher assistants from last year) said, "Hey Matther, my name is going to change this year! Did you know that I'm getting married?" Matthew said, "Wow! Really?!" I picked up her hand to show him, and Matthew held her hand and EXCLAIMED, "WOW!!! That's the biggest diamond I've ever seen! Look at Mom's (he picked up my hand) - her's is tiny! Oh - but I love it! And I love you (to me, paving over the "insult" to my ring!, LOL). He couldn't get over her ring - it was hilarious.

When we went back upstairs, he saw another friend, Alex. Alex put his arm around Matthew's shoulders and said, "I really missed you, Matthew." Matthew hugged him and said, "Missed you too."

The funniest part was near the end when we met a family with a service dog. We shared a little bit of our journey and how it just didn't really work for Matthew. I said in the end, that as it turned out, Matthew just wasn't really a dog person, but that I have witnessed some amazing stories of life-changing they can be. Matthew said, "Yep... for me the service dog is out and the medicine is IN."

Cool stuff!