June 10

For a little while lately Sarah has been asking us to look at her drawings. Recently when I suggested that she could practice piano, she asked Grandma to be her audience. I love how Sarah increasingly wants to share things with us. Sometimes when things are how you want them to be it is easy to not notice them. Last weekend during the neighborhood party that happens annually on our street, Sarah came to tell us that she was going down the street to the police car that was available for exploration. Wow. That is really notable and amazing that she came to tell us. It was so in line with how we want things to be that we almost missed it.

Grandma is in town now, allowing us to once again have a child-free weekend to attend a wedding. The wedding was that of a high-school friend. It was beautiful and meaningful and wonderful. It was also wonderful to catch up with high school friends, college friends, and friends from Carl’s grad school days. The weekend has been full of laughter, sometimes laughing to the point of tears. A huge thank you to the family and sitters who made this weekend possible.

Amy unfortunately no longer likes the math game of simple problems to which Sarah purposefully gives the wrong answer. Amy thinks it doesn’t help Sarah learn, despite my explanations for why I think it does. I guess I can focus with appreciation on the fact that Amy wants to help Sarah learn.

Sarah is officially done with second grade. When school resumes she will be a fourth grader! Still with lots of extra help and mostly in the resource room, but also still joining the neurotypical kids as often as makes sense for her. She will have her same core group of wonderful support teachers who love her and think about her so well.

From G’s time with Sarah on Friday, he wrote:
“The urge to sing and be more musical hit me today after Sarah and I had built individual structures separately but kind of in parallel.  I made a tower out of that game that has colored columns and purple circles and Sarah made her newest favoritest marble run structure.  It’s simple but effective for her sensory purposes.  Lot’s of “Oh, that’s cool/nice” and similar comments from BOTH of us.

Then, reading.  Sarah read Mo Willems and asked me to rub her legs.  For some reason the original Oompa-Loompa song (Oompa…doompa…doompadeedoo…I’ve got a-no-ther pu-zzle for…you…) lodged in my frontal cortex and I quietly but clearly hummed it out kind of rhythmically as I rubbed.  I matched my hand movements to the song.  She stopped dead in her tracks reading.  Watched my face, my hands.  And when I hit the final note she looked up. “I liked that.”

Then she noticed a bruise on my thigh.  From my having run into my bed.  She questioned me, like a doctor might, about the circumstances.  She then found her own bruise, indicated that she’d fallen.  I was speaking very loosely to her, but also a bit extra…like almost as if we were in a play.  As if there were an audience.  “I so often run into my bed, Sarah.  It’s a problem.  Sometimes I run into other corners, like the table or chair.  You know.”  And she, “Yeah.  The same thing happens to me.”
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Amy came home with her journal from May. One entry seemed quite profound. She drew a picture of a girl outside at night with a star glowing in the sky. She wrote, “The yard is dark. The artist sees a star. She makes a wish for new paint.”

I just got a message from Sc who is with the girls now. She said they are playing school and that each girl took a turn reading to the class. Again, Sarah is doing so amazingly beautifully well that sometimes we almost miss it because we come to take her steady progress for granted. That is precisely why I write, to help myself continue to notice each tiny moment of amazingness as it quickly morphs into being normal.