August 27

Remember my list of things I would do when the girls were in school? hahahahahahahahahahaha. 

By the time I got to Friday, in a week where I only saw one client (though I also taught for one morning), I was so exhausted that I didn’t have any oomph to do much of anything except be in bed. I didn’t even care about having a book. I wasn’t asleep and I wasn’t awake. I was just wiped out. I know part of this was probably due to the stress of the week because so much was new and getting myself stressed about it is currently how I roll. Being stressed meant that my brain would get going in the middle of the night for a few hours so even if I went to bed early I still wasn’t getting good sleep. Or, Thursday night, I couldn’t fall asleep right away but neither could I pin down what things were spinning in my brain for more than a couple of minutes. I was busy trying to remember things and then couldn’t even remember what I was trying to remember. 

But let me back up. On Monday I managed not to dissolve into tears until after we had dropped off both girls. It was tough as we drove away after leaving Sarah with her teacher, but I didn’t want to worry Amy with my crying. After we left Amy then I just held Carl’s hand tightly as we walked home and tears spilled out. I don’t think my tears were about my girls growing up so much as just worry about them being ok and having a good time. Amy was a bit teary as we were saying our goodbyes so that added to my concern. The day went well overall. Pickup at Sarah’s school seemed like a very very very confusing system that I totally didn’t understand despite two explanations. It felt so overwhelming that as soon as I was driving away with her I burst into tears. So, day one of school, I cried the most of anyone. Until that night when Sarah realized she had to go back the next day. Then she cried for 45 minutes, stopping only when Amy brought out a favorite book. Tuesday Sarah cried a bit at dinner. Friday she cried a lot at school. I think she felt as worn out as I did. Amy had a wonderful week. She loves school. She runs there in the morning and has energy to run home in the afternoon. Pickups at Sarah’s school are still not my favorite, but I do finally understand the system and will arrange my timing so I am not sitting for as long in a hot car just waiting.

I spoke with Sarah’s teacher Friday afternoon and gave some ideas of how to help Sarah when she is overloaded or crying and I am going to send in some of her favorite books. Overall though I felt so pleased listening to how her teacher responded to her. It affirmed that she is in very good hands. 

Thursday evening Amy said she was super excited to be brave and try something new Friday morning. We asked what it was. She didn’t remember. When I picked her up Friday afternoon I asked what the new thing had been. She said it was a lock-down drill. I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. I just wanted to vomit. I know that doing the drill doesn’t mean the bad thing is going to happen, just like a fire drill doesn’t mean there is going to be a fire. But I hate that this is something schools need to do.

Sarah’s palate expander journey added to the intensity of this week. At the beginning of the week she was having extreme difficulty eating anything other than yogurt or fruit/veggie pouches or drinks. I found some yogurts at our coop that she could have so that it wasn’t all the soy yogurt that I make. Daiya now makes a yogurt and there is a hemp milk kind as well, though both aren’t quite ideal. By Friday Sarah’s eating seemed back to normal so that is huge progress. The clarity of her speaking still isn’t back to normal, but at least she is excellent at being persistent when we don’t understand. I feel wobbly about food stuff overall as I try to adjust to me being the only person eating at home during the day, but needing to make sure we have enough food on the weekend and for lunches, but not wanting food to go bad. The girls take a lot less with them for lunches than they would eat at home if they were here for the same amount of time. 

This morning, while I was writing, Sarah dumped out a container of small toys that Amy had collected. This is a common occurrence but the dumping ground was the dining room floor, which is not ok with me. I told them to move the small items to the family room. Sarah then picked up a handful and threw them. I yelled loudly. She went away crying. I sat feeling like a bad mom. A few minutes later Sarah came in, looked at me and said sweetly, “Mom, I’m sorry for throwing.” Knock me over with a feather! Usually when she apologizes she says what she expects me to say, such as, “I’m sorry for yelling.” And this was all on her own with no prompting!!!!!! Is this due to learning something at school? Whatever it is, I love it. Now I just have to get myself in more centered balance so I’m not yelling at my nearest and dearest for throwing plastic muffins.

I do love the quiet time when the girls are at school. I do trust that this will get less intense and that I will be able to schedule more things in my life beyond just maintaining the house and managing the food situation. I am readjusting my expectations already about how organized and clean everything will be. I feel my cluster headache beast knocking at the bars of its prescription meds cage (despite the meds, this is a common time of year for them especially given the higher stress and irregular sleep) so I am scheduling more self care immediately.

Anyway, I hope your weeks were good.

August 21

Today is first-day-of-school eve! The girls and I put their uniforms in their drawers and closet yesterday. Sarah promptly wore her gym uniform, which she will have the good fortune to wear all day every Wednesday, and Amy put on one of her jumpers and t-shirts. I made them wear smocks for eating, even though I realize they are just clothes and that I do in fact have laundry facilities in my house. I’m glad they are so excited to wear their uniforms. They are both wearing them again this morning. It may be interesting tomorrow morning when Sarah has to wear something other than her gym clothes.

The girls got back-to-school haircuts. They both wanted their hair to be short like mine is. Really? Are you sure? Are you sure you’re sure? Are you really sure you’re sure? Well, ok. I think we all love the cuts!

On Wednesday I did a little bit of SR time. I was on the floor and told Sarah I was tired. I asked how she was. Silence. I asked again. “Awake.” 

On Thursday we did a practice school run, getting up at 6am and out of the door by 7:15. We made it to Sarah’s school perfectly on time and there was very little traffic. Amy and I did a practice walk to her school and I was the limiting factor for speed. Amy ran the whole way. It took us 6 minutes.

Friday was the last day at daycare, possibly forever or at least for a while. There may be a day when one girl has no school and I have a client when I will still take them to daycare but that won’t happen often. I know I have said this before, but really, the church that runs their daycare (and Sarah’s preschool and Kindergarten) has been such an amazingly wonderful part of our life. I have always felt a warm welcome from everyone and they want me to let them know how the girls do in school. It means so much to me to have a place where I know everyone loves Sarah and truly has appreciated her presence in their midst. I know this situation actually happens in many areas of our life, but it is still something I see as a true blessing and there have certainly been places we considered for her that were not ready to delight in her. So, thank you forever to this church school!

Sarah has recently been going to an orthodontist because she has such a narrow mouth and some of her grown-up teeth don’t have the room they need to come down. Apparently doing some orthodontia now will be less painful for her than if we did it later. I’m not sure if it is less painful for the adults in her life though! She just got a palate expander on Thursday. This means she has a metal bracket on two of her upper molars and a metal device spanning the roof of her mouth. This is a perfect thing to catch food and make her gag or spit food out! It makes her salivate more so she also needs to spit a lot and sometimes just sort of overflows (onto my face and Carl’s face this morning). Things do seem to be improving with each day that passes but it has been quite challenging to find foods that she can eat without too much trouble. Even favorite foods are proving difficult. And we haven’t even gotten to the exciting part of needing to get in her mouth with a tool to turn the screw in the middle of her mouth! I’m sure Carl cannot even wait for that part to begin. Because, you know that Sarah will want him to be the one who does it. And you know I will want him to be the one who does it! And you know he…um… will be the one to do it!

Yesterday I was busy all afternoon and evening. My evening was spent volunteering at a night market festival to register people to vote. My shift was 3 hours. I spent an hour diligently asking people. I got two registrations. Many people were nice, some were not. It was harder and I felt more tired and lonely at times than I expected. Then a neighbor and friend (and her kids) from our old street walked by and we got to catch up for half an hour of wonderfulness. Then I decided to walk down to where another friend was playing music (and there were 3 other friends too). It was such a delight to hear her sing and remember times from college of listening to her sing. She has a beautiful voice and presence and hearing one of the songs from our college days had me leaking tears all over my cheeks. On the walk back to turn in my registrations I saw Sarah’s PT from when she was less than a year old through when she was 3. When this woman last worked with Sarah, Sarah was just beginning to walk independently. Now I could share that I probably get white hair from the daring physical acts that Sarah does around the house. Then I saw someone from the massage school. Then I went to my office to get some things I had left there earlier. As I was leaving the building I saw my friend and office-mate. All of my encounters with friends and acquaintances (all 10 of them!) felt so fortuitous and wonderful!

Carl took the girls to a Little Italy festival (read: bounce house) and to do errands while I was out. He asked if they wanted to get cards for me and they each picked a card, completely on their own, and decorated them and wrote in them without any help aside from Sarah needing to know how to spell clock. She signed her card “Sarah Clock.” When I got home from my evening, Carl had the kitchen clean with the cards waiting on the counter. But I had so much to tell him about all the people I had seen! So it was many minutes of talking and him keeping a secret before I discovered the cards, at which point I just imploded with the love of it all and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Seriously. My heart was just melting and overflowing. I just stood there saying, “oh….oh….oh…” and then hugging Carl and then repeating myself.

My goals for this coming school year for me…rest, hydrate, get massages and AT lessons, read, maybe consider writing a book about our Sarah-Rise intensive years or turning my updates into a book. Oh, and do laundry, groceries, food prep, house tidying, and lunch packing so that when the girls come home I am free to be with them fully when they aren’t otherwise committed. We do have quite a few after-school things and I’m hoping they have the energy. They are good things with wonderful people, continuing time with SR volunteers and seeing Sarah’s OT, who has SR love energy, so I am optimistic that we can keep everything as planned.

I’m not certain what to do once school is underway in terms of my blog and updates. I like writing every week and I know many people like reading what I write. I’m not sure it will continue to count as a Son-Rise journey though so maybe I will no longer share it on those FB groups. Or maybe I should switch to a different host website that would make it easier to follow? Or change the name? I know I don’t have to decide immediately, but it is on my mind. Thoughts and input are welcome.

One day I was sitting at my desk. Sarah came over saying, “Mom, can I…? can I…?…YES!” She never finished her question and I didn’t immediately answer. I loved her complete delight with her assumption that I would say yes, which luckily I did once she completed her question. What if we could all approach our goals this way? Even if we don’t actually always get what we want, what if we assumed with delight that we could have our dreams and turned to the world with that smiling YES!?

YES! to all of you.

August 14

I recently read an article about different kinds of grief, acknowledging that there can be grief over things changing. I am feeling that a bit. I have the scared excitement about the girls being in full time school. With that comes some grief over changes. We will no longer have Sonia at our house daily during the week. Sonia has been THE MOST AMAZING. I tell people that she is the best helper I can ever imagine. This is not me exaggerating. This is the honest truth. She has been a supportive friend, a thoughtful organizer, a stupendous laundry-folder, a loving and creative and patient aunt, modeling for me how I could stay calm while enforcing rules (I still need some work in this area!), a sister, a problem-solver, and an overall helper extraordinaire. What a gift of herself she has given us for the past 4 years.

We will no longer go to the daycare that has been at the same church as Sarah’s preschool and kindergarten. It is a place that has been so warm, welcoming, and amazing for the past 4 years. I know there may be an occasional day in this next year when one or both girls go to daycare, but they will be few and far between if at all. I know this timing is right and it is wonderful that my heart is so full of gratitude even if I also feel sadness. 

I am scared that the girls will have a hard time at their schools. I am most scared that it won’t work out for Sarah and that I will need to go with her or home school again. I feel so ready to be done with that.

This weekend we are having a wonderful visit with Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. Yesterday Sarah was quite interested while Pop-Pop explained his Sudoku to her. She paid attention for at least 10 minutes. There have also been fun moments where both girls piled on top of Mom-Mom to give her tons of snuggles.

There has also been a lot of screaming and upset on Sarah’s part (and some yelling and tight upset on my part). I feel like she isn’t responding as easily to my directions given in a normal tone of voice and that to get her to stop being rough with Amy or taking Amy’s toys I have to yell. This is no fun for either of us. I am hoping that it is just that I was having a tougher week being me and thus had less time for creative and relaxed parenting. 

August 7

One day this week I went to make Sarah’s protein shake and was going to use hemp milk (something new we are trying in our attempt to get more variety for her). As I was pouring she said “tumpt.” I thought she said “trump” and was puzzled (and aghast). I thought maybe she was misremembering how to say “hemp.” Then I looked at the box. In large sideways letters it says “tempt.” I nearly fell over from delighted shock as I realized she had read this word that no one had ever said to her before (to my knowledge anyway).

Carl got the girls a bike to share that does not have training wheels and is much lighter and better than their clunky bike that does have training wheels. At the moment the new bike doesn’t have pedals either so they can practice the balancing part. When they were younger we tried a balance bike for them and neither was particularly interested. This new bike is more suited to their current size and Sarah loves it and even practices lifting her feet for short bits of time. She also likes to practice with the kickstand and with gently having the bike tip over in between her standing legs while saying, “oh no!” Amy is much more tentative. 

I finally got the camera in the SR room working again so I could work with a friend and with her kid. I think of it as an SR sampler session and I have done some in the past with different friends and their kids. I love doing it. It is a good reminder of SR basics and how to be really present. With Sarah I often know what she might like to do or might choose to do. With a new kid I have no idea so I have to be more flexible and quick on my thinking feet. 

I hadn’t had the observation camera working in a while and hadn’t worried about it because all of our volunteers are amazing and have been with us for years so I don’t feel they need much supervision or guidance. But here was a gift of observing… on Monday evening I observed Sc and it was just the most wonderful and beautiful thing. There was a moment, among many great moments, that was just an exquisite work of loving artful human interaction. Sarah was upset because she wanted to go outside to join kids playing in a sprinkler. Amy was in the room with Sc and Sarah. Sc scooped Sarah up into her arms while saying “I love that you can see something you want to do and want to join in the fun…now is the time to play in the SR room.” It was just so lovingly done. Sc then came up with different pretend sprinkler ideas. The girls didn’t go for that, but the art was in the loving response and creative offerings. WOW! I love being reminded vividly of just how amazing my team members are and that is a gift that comes with observing them even after so many years.

Buckets of love to all of you.