We are enjoying a wonderful visit with Grammy and Granddad. On our drive to meet them at our mountain house we had a short phone call on speaker phone. As Carl and I said our goodbyes, from the back seat two voices chimed in with, “Meow!” and, “Musical note!” It was adorable. The only trouble with the visit is that it feels like it is going too fast and is too short.
Amy has had some big feelings at bedtime Friday and Saturday because she wanted to stay up later than usual, which we allow on weekends. Sarah didn’t want to stay up much later than usual and wanted the light out in their shared room. When we don’t have company then they each have their own room. When we do have company then Amy reads in my bedroom before she goes to sleep in the kids’ shared room. Usually this works mostly smoothly, but this time around Amy was very upset that Sarah wanted to go to bed. Sarah was upset that Amy didn’t want to go to bed. Amy was also upset about how quickly the weekend passes and that Sunday doesn’t feel like a weekend because so much of it is getting ready for the week ahead. I think this school year is harder for her than past school years so this feeling about the weekend is intensified.
Last Sunday, Amy had some big struggles and feelings regarding math homework. Doing long division with decimals is new and challenging. Carl and I each spent time helping her and she did get through it, but it was a loooong day. I had been realizing that she really needed to have her times tables memorized and that she didn’t. So I made flashcards. After a week or so I realized that I needed to help her know how to use them effectively. While resistant at first, she did a wonderful job going through them with me throughout the week. I picked a small pile of cards each morning, and then as we went through them I would pick the equation that gave her the most pause. That became our equation of the day. I would ask her repeatedly, changing the order of the numbers, sometimes asking as a division question, or sometimes whispering the equation as a secret I had to tell her. It felt good to move beyond math feeling onerous to having fun with it.
Granddad used to teach multiplication and division to his students and would purposely pretend that he didn’t know the answers. He also had Chris The Multiplying Cat beanbag animal as his assistant. Chris usually got the answers right. As Grammy quizzed Granddad, Chris, and Amy, Granddad really did not know his times tables. He had a perfect deadpan, yet somehow believable, way of answering incorrectly. Amy was cracking up, especially when Granddad said the answer to one equation was “green.”
Sarah’s week went well overall. She delights in spending time playing restaurant with Grammy. She also reads books with Grammy and lets Grammy read books to her. Note that Sarah doesn’t let me read books to her anymore. Yesterday had one weird blip when Sarah suddenly didn’t feel well. She had been talking to Granddad, then suddenly got up and said she was dizzy and had a headache. She got in bed and had some Advil and water. A couple minutes later she had yogurt and then seemed almost back to normal. Within an hour she seemed fully herself. My adrenaline really got going when she first didn’t feel well, as always happens. It is often difficult to truly ascertain how Sarah is feeling. When she really feels yucky, sometimes she says she feels fine because she really wants to feel good. When I asked if she felt dizzy she said, “No. No thank you.” Other times, when she wants to get out of something she may play up a headache when there isn’t one. She also will describe, seemingly out of the blue on any given day, how she felt after a seizure that was many months ago. I think time is a very different thing in her mind, and timelines aren’t actually lines but rather piles or strands that get all intertwined. The only thing that told me Sarah was truly feeling ok was when we went for a walk and she started happily running down the road to catch up to Grammy.
Sarah’s neurologist has increased her level of oxcarbazepine, her anti-seizure medication. We are titrating up to get to the appropriate new level. She is also on an increased amount of miralax after I spoke with her PCP. The good news is, while Sarah’s x-ray had me all worried about scoliosis, her PCP said that wasn’t the correct xray to diagnose such a thing. It could have been her positioning. It also hasn’t ever been something noted on her well-visits. The PCP said we could do another x-ray to check for scoliosis if I wanted, but I opted not to at this time. That feels like it would be an overload of imaging and hospital trips.
My intention for the past couple of months has been to have Mondays during school hours be my book-writing time. Rarely does this actually happen. I have either been substitute teaching at the massage school, hanging out with whichever kid didn’t have school, driving home from something, or I’m not sure what. This past Monday I did have my day. It was glorious to have a chunk of a day that was truly just for me and I didn’t have anyone else to care for in any way. I even got to have lunch with a dear friend. I realized that my assumption of being able to work for 4 hours straight on my book is completely unrealistic. I can maybe handle an hour, but then I need a break. Still, it has been years since I set aside a regular day to be just for me. It felt so freeing and rejuvenating.
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