It has been another great week. I feel like both girls suddenly reached new levels with some of their abilities. I realize it is probably a long gradual process but sometimes it feels like a “kachunk” to a new place. Amy is suddenly coloring inside the lines, with her usual eye for interesting color combinations. It is startling and exciting to see a talent in Amy that doesn’t come from me at all. She is such an artist. Meanwhile, Sarah is suddenly reading beginner level books. I know last week she had read a line from one. Well, this week she has read entire books with me pointing to the words and only helping occasionally. Wow. I feel like the word cards may soon be obsolete.
We had a team meeting this morning and it was as wonderful as ever. I love my team members so very much. Today we made books for Sarah. It was exciting to see how we each approached the task and the completely different books we produced. So far Sarah hasn’t been interested in reading them, but we all had fun making them, and we delighted in reading them ourselves.
Some highlights from the week…
Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop visited early in the week. Mom-Mom brilliantly had parties of varying sorts with the girls. They had laughing parties, crying parties, anticipation parties, cheering parties, snoring parties, and at Sarah’s request, a short screaming party.
One morning when Sonia was taking Sarah into school, Sarah was wanting to tell Sonia something and wanted to look at her while she was speaking so Sarah was sometimes nearly walking backwards because she wanted to keep eye contact. This was unsolicited eye contact!!
One day Sarah was on my lap and I said, “I love you” and she said, “so much!” Usually I say, “I love you so much” and I must say it often enough that she expected it. I love that! Overall, despite a handful of grumpy/yelling times, we are still having sweet connections and she is giving me more chin presses and smiling more often when we see each other.
On Wednesday I unexpectedly encountered a lovely therapist who used to work with Sarah when Sarah was maybe 3 1/2. At that time we were still quite anxious about Sarah’s eating and needing her to gain weight. I was tense about her eating and wanted to avoid a feeding tube. Sarah could walk but not run/jump/gallop/climb/etc. She couldn’t talk and wasn’t potty trained. No developmental milestone has ever been a given for us as we have parented Sarah. It felt so deliciously awesome to share with this therapist how far Sarah has come since that time.
When we left school on Thursday, I lost Sarah for a couple of scary minutes. It turned out that she had zoomed into the bathroom and I hadn’t seen her detour. Then today when we passed a port-a-potty, she stopped and went in. While I want her to tell us where she is going, it seems quite wonderful that she is taking care of her potty needs in such an independent way outside of the home.
Today we went to a birthday party at a pumpkin farm. It was wonderful. The girls loved the hay ride and the pumpkin patch. They loved running around with the other kids. They loved the food and Sarah could even eat some of it. They loved painting pumpkins. Sarah’s pumpkin decorating skill seemed to come from nowhere. I had no idea she would be so purposeful. Usually with home art projects Sarah paints her hand and then puts her hand on newspaper and maybe paints the focus item for a few moments. With her pumpkin, Sarah independently applied two googly eye stickers and painted a mouth and hair. As if it was no big thing because of course that is how you put a face on a pumpkin. OH MY GOODNESS!!! Amy’s pumpkin painting reflected her usual thorough style and is no less wonderful, it was just less of a surprise.
Note to self: always accommodate Sarah easily and quickly when she wants a clothing change after getting paint or food on her clothes unless we are at home and you can be relaxed and patient with helping her wait until a good time to change. At a party, in public, just go get the clothes! Otherwise you will get mad and speak sternly and be slightly rough with her as you hold her hand and you will regret it. (On the plus side, when she was upset after the clothing change, and had been crying for a while, I held her and apologized for yelling at her. Maybe she was at the end of her cry anyway, but it felt like she switched suddenly into a different mode and she started laughing and giving me chin presses).
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