Today is the birthday of one of the most amazing people I know: Carl. When I was younger and searching for the person with whom I wanted to spend my life, I felt a lot of anxiety because I was so worried about relationships ending and I wanted so desperately to know that one would last forever. It is a lovely feeling to be with someone where I marvel daily at his overall wonderfulness as a human being. Carl is able to be present and loving with me through all of my ups and downs and twists and turns. He is present and loving with the girls, creatively interacting with them when I see no option for creativity.
This week there was a parenting moment where Carl really excelled… Sarah drank water from the water table. Eeew!!! Nooo!!!!! I yelled at her loudly and yanked her inside. Carl then delayed leaving for work to sit with her, waiting for her to regain equilibrium. Then he had many loops of conversation about the difference between the water in the table and the water inside, why the table water is dirty and not for drinking, and the consequences of drinking water from the table (getting sick and we will take the table away), and what to do if she got thirsty when she was outside. It took many loops of this with slight simplifications and variations because for the first several rounds, when Carl asked Sarah if she would drink the water from the table the next time she was outside and thirsty, she said “yes.” After many iterations, she finally said “no” and seemed to actually understand. We hope. I was so impressed listening to Carl’s patience and his method of mixing explanation with questions and that he kept going until Sarah seemed to have learned the lesson. This time if you saw my socks flying past your window, it was because of Carl.
We are still dealing with Sarah’s finger rashes. Whether this is just the same thing that has not ultimately healed or whether it is a reaction to food or something outside that I haven’t identified yet, I don’t know. I feel so despairing every time the rash flares, especially when I thought it was gone. Yesterday we went for a walk and half-way through I realized the rash was back and that Sarah had a new rash on one arm (which we now think might have been because of the heat). I felt like I was 2 inches tall as I trudged along. Carl gently suggested that maybe I could see myself as a scientist going forward instead of a terrible mother. Hmm. That is a radical notion that I will consider.
Recently my mom and stepdad’s beloved cat died. I was talking to my mom about it and Sarah wanted to get on the phone. We have had many conversations about pets going to the vet and not coming back, so Sarah is familiar with the scenario, though she hasn’t dealt with it personally yet. She told Mom-Mom that the kittie was going to the vet and that Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop were sad and that she would give them a kiss to help them feel better. She kissed the phone and then said she wanted to give Pop-Pop a kiss. She waited while he came to the phone and then kissed the phone again. She was attentive and focused the whole time. So sweet!
Carl brought home a soccer ball and some orange cones and the girls enjoyed playing with him. Amy evidently excelled at making very difficult goal post positions. Sarah succeeded at making several goals. Yesterday at a birthday party we realized the glaring hole in our parenting to date…our girls do not know how to hold or swing a bat. Egad! Time to remedy this post-haste! Speaking of the birthday party, Sarah did a wonderful job participating in decorating a paper bag. I felt like she didn’t get lost like she sometimes does. She had many moments of solitary play but the bag activity wasn’t one of them.
We did a round of music and movement this week. We haven’t done this in ages. I have offered it occasionally and been ignored or rejected. This time they were eager and they participated and even asked to continue when I paused to do something else. Wow. That was encouraging.
I had a wonderful SR session early in the week. I brought out number flashcards and decided to stick with them for as long as I could in whatever way that happened. We traced the numbers with our fingers, we lined them up in two matching rows. I sang many rounds of “the ants go marching” with increasing movement on my part, waving the number cards around or seeking with pretend franticness and needing her help to find a number. Sarah was sometimes very attentive and sometimes not, but I kept going because she was attentive enough. I changed the lyrics to “the sarah’s go marching” and gave directions for what to do and sometimes she followed the directions. What was most exciting and surprising was when she asked me the next day to go play in the SR room with the number cards. I attempted to do other songs with numbers on day two and that came to a grinding halt when I tried “5 little ducks went swimming one day.” Since I was feeling sick that day I let the session end. What I love about both play sessions was how much more creative I became when I decided to limit myself to one toy plus my antics and ideas for as long as I could.
Sarah has had a few doctor’s appointments recently so we have had lots of time waiting in small rooms with not much to do, and she hasn’t wanted to read the books that I brought. It was an epiphany to realize that I could sort of do SR and that time alone in a small sparse room is something I practice often, rather than something new and difficult. The difficulty is that the rooms tend to have lots of items that are reachable but off-limits.
My challenge for the week was that I felt like I had a bit of a stomach bug for a couple of days. I also had a sleep study done one night and it was more stressful than I anticipated. I thought it would be awesome to have a night by myself with no kids to wake me. I hadn’t understood how many wires would be attached to me and that I would have stuff up my nose and around my chest and waist and clipped to one finger. I slept enough for them to get enough data (I am still waiting for the results) and then I left early because I wasn’t able to fall back asleep. It was divine to crawl back into my own bed. The reason for the sleep study is to check for sleep apnea in case that could be a factor in my cluster headaches.
Recipe correction from last week: for the chocolate bread I use only 1 tbsp of ground flax per egg as an egg replacer. (I have now fixed last week’s blog entry).
Yesterday Carl helped Sarah type a message on his phone, assisting with the spelling. It seems a bit profound somehow.
“A birthday party. Having cake with Sam. Doing your fingers. Are purple. At 3 o’clock.”
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