November 30

When thinking about what I was grateful for on Thanksgiving, the list just went on and on. I am so very deeply blessed in so many ways. This whole journey with Sarah is a blessing in multiple directions, helping me become more of the person I want to be. As you know, one of my main struggly areas is getting mad and yelling at the girls. I noticed myself wishing that Sarah’s situation was easier, thinking that would be the solution. Then I realized that whenever there is a stuck spot within me, it will find a way to make itself known so I can deal with it. So if it wasn’t this then it would be something else. And if there wasn’t something else, then maybe that would be unfortunate that I wouldn’t notice and address it. Within the last week I have had many moments of successfully, truly staying calm when the girls are upset. It feels like playing catch with someone and deciding to just leave my arms at my side while the ball bounces off me. I just don’t catch the ball of scream. Sometimes this means making a hasty retreat out of the room to an activity such as reading a good book or doing something in the kitchen. It has to be something that I find engrossing enough to help me not engage in the usual dance of whining, yelling, and grumpiness. I am already noticing a slight difference in the length of the girls’ upset. I think it is a smidge shorter. Or maybe it just feels shorter because I am staying calmer. It has certainly helped to have Carl home and have all of us on vacation for the past few days. It will be just me with the girls for most of today and most of Tuesday so we will see if I can maintain the calm. While I can understand in theory that I am in control of my emotions, it often doesn’t seem that way in practice. But I did have a tiny glimpse of really understanding it as true.

There was one day recently when I got mad about a situation. It wasn’t about the girls or towards the girls at all. Sarah said I was a grumpsicle. That, of course, was not what I expected her to say and was cleverly funny enough to dissolve my grumps almost instantly. Sarah is very good at making connections and word substitutions to further her play. I attribute this to her own awesomeness and also to how Carl and I (and maybe others) play and substitute words ourselves. Another example of Sarah doing this happened a couple weeks ago when Sarah was holding a fork and started singing, “Old MacDonald had a fork.”

I served rice spaghetti one night and when I went to put a napkin on Sarah’s lap I discovered she had already done it. She said she was protecting her snail pants! I hardly ever put napkins on the lap of anyone and it is really only to protect the snail pants from certain foods, so this was wonderful that she thought of it too.

On Wednesday, I dressed up in my Colonial outfit and told a story that might have been told in the 1600s. Two days later, Amy told Carl she was going to tell him a story and sing a song. She proceeded to sing about and tell him about a dog and a ladybug (or was it a giraffe and a ladybug?) going out walking and then going home. So cute!! Then this morning Sarah combined a reference about a Dora episode with the story I had told. She said that baby jaguar (Dora) had lost her soap (Colonial story).

We have reached the end of an era. Amy has switched to almost always saying Sarah and Sonia instead of Hara and Honia. This is exciting and I also feel a little sad.

I had a really great talk with M. that helped me shift my perspective and think more clearly about things in the SR room. I described what I thought was a less successful session with Sarah because I felt like I wasn’t as in tune with Sarah, and I was pushing her too much, and we lost our fun connection. In talking to M. I realized how much I learned because of that session, remembering to get the fun connection first and to be flexible to drop something that isn’t working and how to tweak things I tried to make them more effective (eg. start with a big tic tac toe board and gradually make it smaller rather than starting small). I now think this was a very successful session because of how much I learned.

I often ask myself what I could do differently to make my next session more effective. I sometimes ask this of my volunteers after their sessions too. M. helped me see that I could ask it as what could be different just to be different? to help continue building different ideas into some repeat play themes. This way feels like thinking sideways, which is what I often strive to do in the SR room.

I also had an idea while talking to M. of how to maybe teach Sarah about the Wright brothers. She loves bicycles and she often says that she goes flying. What more perfect blend of those two loves than the Wright brothers? My dad dressed as Orville Wright of course! He used to do so when teaching his students about the Wright brothers and on at least two occasions his 3rd graders built a Wright Flyer in the classroom. I was thinking pictures of someone Sarah knows and loves combined with pictures of kids might interest her in the subject. I haven’t yet gone beyond my idea and getting pictures.

Sarah and I had a great time playing with number flash cards. Sometimes when she counts she doesn’t touch each object being counted or she counts some twice. I made a huge hammed up deal about not missing a single square. She seemed to love the drama and spent a lot of time loving my head and then did correctly count while pointing to each square for the number 10 card. Internally I felt like I had shifted from needing her to get through a certain number of cards to wanting to help her really have fun doing just one card correctly no matter how long it took. Later that night I made new flash cards to get us up to 15 and then skipped to 20, 30, etc up through 100. I haven’t yet played with these with her but I’m eager to try.

On Thanksgiving morning, Carl took the girls to a movie in a theater! Sarah hasn’t been to a theater since she was maybe 18 months old. Amy has never been. They lasted for about an hour. Wow. Totally awesome.

Thank you all for your presence in my life.