July 8

This past weekend we had a small vacation with several relatives at a lake house. It was lovely. And a bit stressful. I am realizing that at this point most of my vacations will be a mix of both. The girls are getting more independent so some things are easier and feel safer and some things feel more challenging. Sarah loves doors and so often tried to leave out the back door to the lake house (away from the water). I don’t think she was actually going anywhere, but I still felt like we had to be vigilant because she can be so silent and speedy as she moves from one location to another.

Highlights from our trip…
When Sarah saw one of her relatives she said, “Hi, S.” We know her greetings are getting to be amazing, but to greet someone by name takes it to yet another level. She hasn’t seen S. in almost a year.

We saw fireworks from a boat. Sarah loved the whole thing, especially pretending to drive the boat. Amy tried valiantly to stay awake but fell asleep right before the fireworks started and couldn’t be roused. She slept in my arms, in her life jacket, so soundly that I was able to step off the boat and carry her to bed, take off the life jacket and her sweatshirt, and tuck her into bed without her batting an eyelid.

Carl took the girls out in a kayak. The girls shared the front seat and Carl was in the back. The girls each took turns attempting to paddle. This was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Carl took them via water over to a nearby beach. The next day they did the same thing in a paddle boat and even got snow-cones. Sarah’s was snow flavored.

Carl took Sarah on the jet ski, at her request, for a very short, gentle ride.

During our long drives Amy had a bit of a hard time, as usual. Carl came up with many wonderful, simple games to play. Sarah participated some. I came up with a hard game of singing songs that corresponded to each letter of the alphabet, so that a word in the title started with the letter we were on. This meant that Carl and I had to make up some songs because with some letters Amy would say, “oh, oh, I know! I know a word that starts with ___” and she would give us a word but sometimes we didn’t know a song with that word. Amy didn’t actually sing any song for this game. She saved her singing for when we had music playing, which meant we listened to two tunes at the same time. Amy also made up a wonderful song about waiting at a stop light, but when we tried to record it we were too late.

…

I continue to have lots of thoughts about parenting and life, often having realizations that then go flying out the window when there is whining and screaming and resisting from the girls. To help me remember some of my intentions I wrote notes on post-its and the girls helped me stick them around the house. I am surprised by how helpful they are and I plan to add more. The notes say things such as “choose compassion” and “kid screaming is not about me.”

Last night Sarah had a bit of a tummy bug and threw up a couple of times. It is interesting that I can meet those events with compassion and no regard to the inconvenience of the hour, whereas a happy healthy midnight party results in my grumpiness and resistance.

A small challenge we continue to have is that Sarah attempts to hit Sonia. Not hard and often with no actual contact. Sometimes she just says, “hit Sonia” when she is mad about something. This happens even when Sonia is not around. When we ask why, Sarah says, “because frustrated.” We ask why she is frustrated. Sarah answers, “because hit Sonia.” Hmm. This loop does not actually lead to the information we seek.