The krausen will generally fall back in when your fermentation is slowing down and the yeast are not producing enough carbon dioxide to maintain it.
Steeping grains is mainly for color and some flavor, it is not really a partial mash. If you steeped in a small volume of water and let it sit around 150 for awhile then it becomes a partial mash.
You sound like you want to start rushing things, that is when you mess up. If you want to check gravity on Friday go for it, but I would not start checking every day. You could contaminate your beer and it will just get annoying to have to sanitize stuff all the time. I would just wait till Sunday to check and plan on transferring then.
I don't keg so it is usually another month, at the absolute earliest, before I start drinking the beer. This is after some time in the secondary in cooler than fermentation temps to get it to clear some, then bottle conditioning. Even then, I think it takes 4 or 5 weeks in the bottle to peak.