May 5

This week we got 13 hours and 45 min. This past month has been rough in terms of getting regular hours. It was just a month ago that most of us were dealing with a tummy bug; 2 weeks ago Sarah had the episode of anaphylaxis, and now this past week Sarah, Amy, Sonia, and one of our volunteers all had colds bad enough to cancel most SR hours. Sarah is also dealing with seasonal allergies that sometimes are so intense that even Benadryl doesn't do much. We have some new options to try and the worst seems to be over, but it all resulted in a week that didn't have much SR time. Somehow I have managed to stay healthy this time around and I hope that can continue. As with other times when Sonia has been away, it is a good reminder of how helpful her presence is. I can do the housework, etc, but then I'm not spending as much time with the girls, and I'm not getting my usual number of SR hours, never mind the SR hours that Sonia usually does. I'm looking forward to everyone being healthy again.

I am also looking forward to a handful of potential new volunteers. I signed up for a service through ASD Climber that matches families running Son-Rise Programs with people who want to be Son-Rise volunteers. Within a week of my posting an ad I had 4 inquiries, two of which are strong possibilities and I'm interviewing them today. So if any of you who read these updates ever want to be involved (or know someone who would like to be involved) with someone's Son-Rise program let me know and I can get you connected to ASD Climber and I can post on the Son-Rise Facebook groups. There are Son-Rise families all over the world.

Sarah understands and repeats language so much more rapidly and clearly than she used to. Yesterday Sb said that she was going to take a friend to the airport. A moment later Sarah said, "take fend to duh air-port." I want to be clear that Sarah is not and never has been echolalic (repeating what she hears without spontaneous creation). She repeats a lot of what she hears but she also creates new phrases or uses old phrases at new times. It is thrilling to me how much she tries to say any new word or phrase that she hears. 

Another exciting moment that shows how much our little sponge absorbs happened yesterday. I brought a lilac bunch into the house to see if that was problematic for Sarah's allergies (we seem to be ok). Sarah looked at it and said "fuh-lower." Then she pointed to the stem and leaves and said "stem... leaves." Sb has been drawing flowers and explaining the different parts while drawing. I love that Sarah could understand that so far as to then apply it to a real flower. 

I have been noticing how I can handle certain things the kids do much better than some other things and I'd like to get more relaxed across the board. When Amy is asking for help moving a large stack of books that she just created, I know that she can move the stack the same way she made it and that she doesn't need my help. So I don't help and she cries buckets and buckets of tears and I stay relaxed because I know my response is actually reasonable. This points out that the times I get more flustered I must be doubting the reasonableness of my responses. When it comes to potty times or meal times or dealing with middle-of-the-night anything, I am much less relaxed and get much more annoyed at my children because deep down I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and should probably be doing something different/better. This week there was a lot more time of just the girls and me. One day around a meal time, and with both kids wanting things and being upset, I just had nothing left. I sat in front of the fridge (to block Sarah's repeated attempts to get something I didn't want her to have) and the girls sat on my lap and we all cried together. I was actually sort of pleased that I could soften into tears instead of yelling at them. Plus my crying definitely got their attention and I could talk about how sometimes I feel sad too and that that is ok. 

We have so many amazing moments and so many wonderful times when my heart is full of the wonder of my girls and our amazing life. And there are so many times when I am tired and don't want to be running this restaurant for tiny people and I don't want to hear "hep, mom...hep, mom" (help, mom) a million times an hour from Amy and I don't want to have the circular conversations with Sarah asking for something she can't have for whatever reason but she just keeps asking no matter how much and how differently I explain or how much I don't respond. There are times that I can (and do) handle all the mess, requests, tears, yelling, etc with grace and ease and no ruffled feathers. And there are times when my feathers are down right bent. I'm not sure where I am this morning. Maybe I'm in the middle. 

May your feathers be easily where you want them.