Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

January 2011 has started off being a pretty exciting year for us!  It is bringing a few changes to our routine.

First, two weeks ago, Casa Colina made me an offer that I couldn't refuse.  They offered me a temporary neuropsychologist position at their Transitional Living Center, and I accepted and started this week!  It's temporary, because they are doing a search for a new director of the whole TLC that they hope will be a neuropsychologist.  I'm actually job sharing the position with my former supervisor when I was a practicum student at Casa Colina before I went on internship (she is actually in private practice but moonlights for Casa Colina; Casa Colina is very friendly to those of us on the mommy track).  It's a big change for me in terms of my workday.  Instead of doing outpatient evaluations, where I would see a client one day, maybe see them one more time for an hour to give them feedback and never see them again, things are different at TLC. 

Patients come to TLC when they have had very devastating brain or spinal cord injuries.  They've already been in a hospital and done acute rehabiliatation (where you get 3 hours/day of therapy) and still need a lot of intense rehabilitation to make life livable again.  Most of the patients are residential at TLC for a period of several months (some just 6 weeks, others for a couple of years) and then they also have day treatment for people who can live at home and come in for intense therapies.  They do 6-8 hours of therapy and groups a day. So obviously, I'll be seeing these patients for a much longer period of time.  I'll have a caseload of certain ones who are "mine."  My day will consist of doing some brief evaluations when patients come in and just before they discharge, doing individual, couple, family, and group therapies related to adjustment to disability, teaching a discharge readiness group, supervising two doctoral-level practicum students, dealing with crises and behavioral problems, and being the voice of neuropsych at the case conferences (my colleague gets to field the family conferences).  In terms of my schedule, it's not really changing too much.  I'll just be gone longer during the day on both Monday and Tuesday.  That makes me very happy, because it still gives me the opportunity to be at home with Rebecca and make the most of this fun time in her life.

Speaking of Rebecca, she is about to embark on the great adventure of preschool.  She loves children so much and really needs more time to interact with kids in a classroom setting.  Her little brain is thirsty for knowledge, and we'd been planning to put her in preschool if I had started in Alabama when I originally thought I would.  As it turns out, the preschool that our niece went to as a little girl has openings and does a flexible scheduling so that we can do just two days a week.  We went to tour the campus yesterday, and Rebecca loved it!  She went right in and started playing with the kids and had a great time.  We had the choice of making her one of the oldest in the 2007 class or one of the youngest in the 2006 class (she was born in February 2007).  Since she had already met almost all of the objectives that the 2007 class has to work on until August, we decided to go ahead and place her in the 2006 class.  She starts on Monday and is very excited!  We have her Disney princess backpack all ready to go!