Happy Easter. While I only really celebrate Easter in the chocolate and egg-hunt sort of way, I do appreciate the idea of a new beginning and the idea that maybe all of us could step into a newness of being right now. Maybe I don’t need to understand why I was so blah for most of yesterday, feeling like I could barely motivate to move a dish or take out the trash. If I want to reflect and find answers then that can be useful, but I could also just let it be and move forward.
This morning, we did an egg hunt with plastic eggs, as we have in past years. Sarah was the most connected to the activity that she has ever been. She looked for eggs. She found them! She found more than 1! And then she enjoyed a favorite activity of opening and closing the eggs. In lieu of jelly beans I bought a container of buttons for each girl. They both love small things and putting small things in and out of containers. I also got them wooden Hello Kitty pictures to paint.
For breakfast we all enjoyed a piece of sunflower-seed butter pie on a chocolate crust with chocolate eggs on top. It is grain-free and vegan, using maple syrup for sweetener. Delicious and a bit intense.
On Monday, Sarah was at school without a personal attendant in the wings. This is the first time she has done this at her current preschool. Sonia was sick and I had a client so I asked her teachers if they were ok with Sarah attending on her own or if I should have her in the daycare that is in the same building. They said she could be at school. Apparently it went well. Yay!
Sonia was sick for several days so the girls and I essentially had 3 days on our own. We rocked it. We went to a fabric store, a clothing store, a grocery store, playgrounds, and the library. I didn’t yell and get super stressed. I amazed my own self. And then once I had help again I felt my tiredness and went a bit into blahdom. And then I felt very disappointed in my tired blahness, wondering what was wrong with me. I am thinking part of it is that when I don’t have extra help then I lower my expectations of cleanliness and accomplishments. When I do have my usual high level of help then I expect that I should accomplish tons of things. What I would like most to accomplish would be feeling as relaxed about what I deem achievements when I have help as when I don’t. What if I could have the same relaxed flow regardless of my level of assistance? Isn’t the biggest accomplishment feeling relaxed and happy about how I moved through my day? I am the one defining when I rock it and when I don’t. Maybe I am wrong about when I don’t. Maybe I could even see the blah times as rockin’. This is the mental egg hunt of life.
I seem to have stepped casually and unexpectedly into an awesome way to help Sarah with writing and reading. I bought a slant board because I had read that that was good for writing practice. I wrote a message for Sarah using dots so when she connected them she would see the words. Now I do this every day and she is doing a wonderful job with following the dots and reading the message (with some guidance). I love that sometimes she reads something and it seems so easy for her as to not be remarkable. As if it is no big thing!
With the packs of words we have now moved into one of the packs having two-word combinations. Sarah is reading them without any difficulty! Yesterday she read the newest card flawlessly after only being told once what it was. We realized that she already knew each individual word so maybe that is why it was so easy for her. This is exactly the idea of this method. If we move into each step when she is ready then ideally it will be easy and fun.
We have finished moving through the dot number cards through 100 and including zero. I now show Sarah multiplication equations each day.
Both girls are increasing how sweetly and politely they ask for things. I am more calm and relaxed most of the time when I ask for this or wait for it. Overall I am less grumpy, angry, and stressed than I often have been. I’m not sure if this is a change in my thinking or if it is because of being gluten-free for over a month. I hope it is the new thinking! I have been reading Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. I’m finding it helpful and occasionally hard to fully comprehend. Sometimes I use it to feel more relaxed and loving and hopeful. Sometimes I twist the message and use it to berate myself for doing things wrong. Still, overall, I think it is helping me have more peaceful experiences.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to support Sarah so she can relax and thrive. When she used to resist potty time, the breakthrough move on our part was to wear her favorite pair of my pajamas and read to her while she happened to sit on the potty, with no agenda other than to read while wearing favorite pjs. Considering how successful this was has helped me be comfortable playing dog music a lot. I have even helped her become a bit more flexible about it by having it set to randomly play from lots of songs Sarah likes, beyond just dog music. The key is to always start with her favorite song from dog music, which is “The Farmer in the Dell.” The limit we still enforce is that she doesn’t get to look at the picture of Pluto because that involves staring at an electronic screen for seemingly ever. Maybe I could print out the Pluto picture for her. I wonder if that would work or if it is more about the electronic screen?
I have decided to make her enough pairs of snail pants that she can wear them every day. In the past I kept thinking that it was important for us to work on her flexibility by having the reality be that clothes do need to be washed and she can’t wear one pair of pants all the time. There was lots of yelling and screaming unless the pants were taken away completely. She doesn’t do half measures well. In the spirit of supporting her enough that she can feel calm and relaxed and then move forward from that point, I changed my thinking. Let’s surround her with an abundance of snail pants. The only snag is that the fabric is not being made anymore. Luckily I found several yards at our local Jo-Ann Fabrics. I have since gone to two others and they haven’t had any. I have made one pair of pants and repaired her old pair. One of our amazing volunteers has offered to help me make more pairs. Awesome. Snail pants or bust! If I can find enough more fabric maybe I will even make myself a pair. Or we could make Sarah a shirt and dress and hat. This is joining as ism, I just hadn’t seen it that clearly in the past.
At our most recent group meeting we decided that Sarah might be ready to play simple card games such as Slapjack, War, Crazy 8’s, and Go Fish. She might also be ready for Hangman. She can play tic tac toe already. Maybe she is ready for the game where there are lots of dots and you make squares and initial a square when you complete it. She has already played War and Slapjack since we had this inspiration. I realized that games that incorporate an ism (aka stim) love, such as turning over cards or handling small game pieces, is actually a great way to help her feel motivated to play a game.
Our field trip this week was to Sonia’s house to see her foster rats. Both girls were very brave, and they petted the rats and held them. Wow.
I wish you all an abundance of whatever your snail pants are, a fresh renewal in whatever minute you choose, and the recognition that you are rockin’ it even when things feel blah.
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