We are enjoying a wonderful weekend with Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. There have been Conversations with Mom-Mom, where Sarah and Amy play with Mom-Mom in her room. Sarah, sometimes known as Door, falls and breaks her nose and needs the aid of Dr. Mouse, also played by Sarah. Speaking of doors, Carl and Sarah went to Lowe’s to get something and Sarah was delighted by a display of 6-panel doors. Among many other names, I am often called Mama Door and Sarah is Baby Door.
It is that time of year when we assess fall and winter gear and realize how much the kids have grown over the past year. Sarah needed new coats and wanted a Musical Note coat. As you might imagine, this wasn’t readily available at Target. Instead, we purchased a small white coat from the women’s section and used a Sharpie to draw musical notes and symbols on it. She loves it. Meanwhile, Amy has outgrown many pairs of pajamas so she helped Grandma make a pair of pajama pants that are long enough for her ever-lengthening legs.
Amy had some math homework to do this weekend that required her to know the order of operations, such as attending to what is inside the parentheses first. She wasn’t understanding why so I translated it into cat language. For instance instead of looking at 6x(3+4), we looked at Litterbox x (cat poop + cat pee). Obviously, before you scoop (multiply by) the litterbox, you would want to wait for the cat to do all of its business inside the (box). I also revised the Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally to Persians (Persian cats) Eat Mice, Dining After Sunset. I think this helped, but time will tell.
Mom-Mom used to tutor people with math anxiety. She has talked with Amy about how Amy has a smart math brain and if she doesn’t understand something in class she could be very brave and ask a question and that probably other kids would like the help too. I don’t know if this will lead to anything at school. I do know that many kids are struggling and having feelings about math this year. It can’t hurt to have many people assuring Amy that if she is struggling then she isn’t the only one. I also think it is ok if she is the only one struggling and that doesn’t make it less valid. But it could make it harder to ask for help if she thinks she is the only one. I know she is learning a lot at school, but when she has homework we often need to go over things as if for the first time.
I am tentatively hopeful about my right hip. For many years it has intermittently been uncomfortable to varying degrees. It often doesn’t interfere with my life, but I almost always can feel a difference between my left and right sides. And sometimes I am sort of limping instead of walking. Yoga has helped, but recently I discovered one particular routine by Yoga With Adriene on youtube that really makes a positive difference. So for the past week I have done the same routine every day and I have had moments of walking when I realize I’m fully comfortable and faster in my pace and my hip isn’t hurting at all. Knock on wood, my head also seems to be in good shape in terms of headache whispers. I still get them, but they are the kind that I can get to go away if I change my thinking and become more present in my body.
Yesterday Amy made bat cupcakes, with broken Grabbit cookies for wings and candy eyes for the, well, eyes. She did almost every step herself. I was just around to offer some light guidance and to frost the cupcakes. Evidently when Amy was describing the plan to Mom-Mom, she said that the candy eyeballs don’t taste like real eyeballs. This lead to much laughter about whether or not Amy had eaten real eyeballs in order to know the difference.
Another highlight from the week was Amy getting American Girl dolls clothes from Grammy. The best part was a tiny pumpkin basket to match Amy’s basket for trick-or-treating. Amy and I were beside ourselves about the cuteness.
May you have an abundance of your equivalent to musical notes, doors, dolls clothes, and cats.
Leave a Reply