September 27

Overall, I rocked the week. It was Sonia’s vacation week and I kept up with the cleaning/groceries/cooking/laundry and was a creative and kind mom too. I felt like Sarah and I had a better connection than we have had in a while, probably because I was spending more time with her. I lost my flow yesterday. But it really was a great week, taking small schedule hiccups in stride multiple times with minimal grumping on my part. I also noticed that I didn’t have much spare time for exercise or reading my book or making new word cards or anything else.

I was in the room for Sarah’s gymnastics class for when/if she needed extra help. I was so impressed with how well she paid attention to the teachers when they demonstrated the routines for each area. This is not something she has always been able to do. 

One night Sarah spilled something on her shorts at dinner. We told her it was ok to keep wearing them or she could take them off. She responded with a sing-song, “pantless.”

During one session with Sc, Sarah said that Sc’s eyes looked like tunnels and that she wanted to go in them. This seems rather poetic and profound. I don’t know if that profundity was intended, but I’ll take it. 

With G, "During our conversation, her thoughts were almost poetic in reminiscence.  At one point we hit the photo with Amy sleeping on Carl.  Sarah started, “Has glasses on.”  I didn’t get it.  “I don’t see glasses.”  “Great Grandpa.”  I still wasn’t there.  Then, “Amy as baby Daddy.”  “Oh. You’re thinking about the photo with baby Daddy with sleeping Great Grandpa.”  Her smile encompassed her entire head."

One night Sc asked Amy who her best friend was. Amy said, “Sarah. Because she’s my sister.” Amy also told me I couldn’t eat Sarah (I was pretending to be that hungry) because Sarah was her sister. 

A week ago I was giving a mini Alexander Technique lesson to N. and Sarah came over and put her hands on his leg, attempting to give an AT lesson too. 

I have been re-using some old word cards so that Sarah can strengthen the words she has learned once, since many fade a bit from her memory over time. It is exciting to see how she just needs one reminder and then she has it. Last night I was reading a beginning-reader book to Amy and realized that Sarah probably knew all the words on one of the pages. I read the set-up page with sentences very similar to the ones I was going to show to Sarah. Then I held the book in front of Sarah and pointed to the words of the next sentences. She has heard the book before (but not often) and I did read the leading sentences, but still… she read every single word of three sentences in a book correctly. WOW! I feel like maybe soon we can stop with the word cards and just help her read simple books as her reading practice. 

September 20

Sarah’s kindergarten teacher says that things are going very well for Sarah in class. Sometimes she is distracted by the air conditioner but she has been focusing well on the activities the class does. Every morning there is a question for the students to answer and when I think of it I let Sarah read it rather than reading it to her. She can usually get most of it if not all.

While I didn’t do any official in-the-room SR, I did feel like I was connecting with Sarah more in an SR sort of way when I did interact with her. This seemed to help us overall with having less yelling and more snuggles. 

There was a moment when I saw something and said “that’s neat” and Sarah responded, “that’s so cool.” I love that. 

We are continuing to encourage Sarah to phrase her questions more correctly. She often says, “we can watch something today?” or something like that. We prompt her to say, “Can we…”

During a session with L., Sarah was doing something that L wanted to discourage but didn’t want to just say no. L. decided to change the game. She gave Sarah new instructions as if it was a continuation instead of a cessation of the activity. It worked! I love this creative thinking by L. This idea of changing the game helped Sc. and I think about a new possible response to Sarah when she pretends to be a screaming baby. Sc. implemented this yesterday by asking Sarah to sing “la la la” instead and it worked! In fact, Sarah didn’t play scream for the rest of the session. Woohoo!

G. wrote about when Sarah said, "'It getted to zero.'  I’ve never heard her make that kind of a developmental error.  That is, using the regular past tense form with an irregular.  Typically, Sarah either knows a word and uses it, or she doesn’t use it.  I rarely hear these wonderful little errors.”

I had a great talk with M. and we discussed helping Sarah stay focused within an activity as one of the primary goals of the year. We talked about going for my dream situation for Sarah for next year, starting now with thinking, planning, and going for it. 

Much love to all of you.

September 13

Twenty years ago, almost exactly, I decided to sign up for French class in my freshman year of college. I thought it would improve me as a person and make my life better. I was so right! It was in that class that Carl and I met. The reason I didn’t write anything last weekend is that Carl and I were in France, celebrating twenty years of knowing each other. Just the two of us. Sonia made sure everything at home with the girls went smoothly, with the help of Grandma and Grandpa, our sitters, and our volunteers. We are immensely grateful! We had an amazing time. We stayed with family and friends and also got to see some friends who came over from Germany for a day. We walked all over Paris and Versailles. At Versailles we rented a row boat and Carl easily rowed us the length of the human-made lake. I attempted to row and after many garbled moments I did get some smooth movement. We spent some time in the beautiful countryside of France (Cercier, Annecy, Chamonix). We stayed with one of my dearest friends, whom I have known since I was 4. We ate amazingly delicious and decadent food. I bravely tried many foods that I hadn’t before or didn’t think that I liked (snails, frog legs, frois gras, raw fish pickled in vinegar, and duck with olives). Carl bravely went paragliding. We practiced speaking our limited French. Now we are enjoying a calm weekend at home and recovering from jet lag. 

It was absolutely wonderful arriving at home and having both girls climb all over me while saying, “Mom’s home!” They seem to have grown up more than just the 9 days we were away could warrant. They both seem more verbal. When I gave Sarah a writing worksheet to do and then put it away, she came to me later and said, “Where is the E worksheet?” That moment explains any socks you saw flying past you. 

Amy’s school started as did her new ballet class. She is at a different place for ballet because I wanted a class she could attend when Sarah was in kindergarten. Gymnastics started a couple weeks ago for both girls. 

I hope all of you had a wonderful couple of weeks.