Brain Dump.

It has been a long and sombre week in the That Family household.
My grandfather, one of my most beloved family members, who was diagnosed in September with colon cancer that had metastasized to his testicles and liver is in the long, slow and painful process of dying, something that is hard to explain to a child and even harder to understand yourself. We are trying to introduce to her the topics of shiva, shloshhim and burial itself, slowly. Kid3 is handling these things better than I am.
Kid3 was suspended from school this week. Basically, the school has a zero-tolerance policy on bullying, and suspends both the bully and the victim. It will go on to her permanent record that she was suspended in 1st grade ESL class for a bullying incident, without indicating that she was the victim, rather than the perpetrator. Apparently, this can be used to exclude her from field trips, extracurriculars and extended education opportunities, to "protect" her classmates. It also makes it very difficult to move her to another school in our area, because they are all zero-tolerance too. Kid3, and her bully, are both expected to participate in school run counseling to learn about how to socialize. After school, you, know, when a lot of parents are still at work trying to make a living. With a parent in attendance.
Due to several troubling incidents at school in the last month - one of the teachers was suspended without pay pending a child abuse investigation involving a student - we have been investigating alternative options. Most of which are expensive, particularly to enroll an ESL student at the 11th hour.
So I "get" to go back to being a working mom next week. My boss was wonderful about increasing my salary, with a corresponding rise of in-office hours to from two hr/wk to three days a week.
Kid1 and Kid2 will be back to going to daycare at my mother's, getting 1/3 of the therapy they are getting now and generally being happy about that arrangement. Kid3 will be off to a Montessori school, 45 mins away, 5 days/week and That Spouse gets to spend an extra hour a day on his commute, to drop her off at school "on the way" to work.
It is one of those weeks when I wonder whether we have done a good thing for Kid3 at all. She has begged to be sent back to Russia, where the children are nice. I am begging to go back with her; the vodka is plentiful there.
It is a week of just doing what you gotta do and praying that it will come out okay in the end.