March 25

Carl and I have often joked that I could hide presents for him on top of the eggs in the fridge because in the past that area was somehow invisible to him. Now I have nothing to say for myself because last Sunday, after I sent out my update, Carl put flowers for me in the kitchen. Somehow I walked right past them, even looking at something next to them on the counter, and didn’t see them! He also wrote a birthday card that was so in line with what I had written in my update that I thought he must have read my update before writing the card, but he hadn’t. I know I had had misgivings about how the double birthday would go. It was actually a wonderful sunny day and we had a great time meeting some friends at a museum.

Wednesday brought us a snow day! We made snow angels, snow people, and snow cats. The girls had a great time playing in the snow throughout the day, culminating in Carl suggesting sledding. Somehow I had still been thinking of the girls as less capable than they are so I hadn’t wanted to take them sledding on my own. If we have snow days next winter I will definitely take them on my own. We also realized we need two more sleds. I can’t remember the last time I went sledding myself rather than just watching. It was so much fun!

Amy had three hard times throughout the snow day, one of which was when her friends were at our house. She got very upset that her art wouldn’t come out as she envisioned. This coincided with needing food, but it took me some time to make the food. Sarah’s interventions escalated Amy’s upset. The friends watched, seemingly stunned. I thought, “what do these other parents do to have such calm kids?!” Possibly they have melt-downs too, and I just don’t see them. My attempts to help Amy feel better or to explain the answer to her “why?” questions never helped. She is as strong a “yes, but”-er as I have ever been. I look back on my early days and I don’t know how my mom did it. All I could do was wait Amy out, ordering her to eat and drink. It is a good reminder to make sure she is really solidly fed every couple of hours. At least when it is up to me. Sometimes at school she doesn’t eat her lunch (she eats her treat and her fruit but runs out of time for the sandwich) and I don’t discover that until much later. 

When we are in the locker room before or after swim lessons sometimes the girls like to hide in the lockers. Sarah was climbing into one while Amy was counting. Then Amy asked “are you hiding?” and from inside Sarah’s locker you could hear, “Yes, I am!” 

Sarah’s way of saying “yes, I am” is so adorable. She pronounces “am” strongly and clearly as if saying “yam” without the y. She often says it when she is either truly sad, or pretending to be sad, and I ask if she is down in the dumps. 

I’ve been thinking about how I coach massage students to apply their body weight to their clients rather than working hard with their muscles. I encourage them to think of the client as a piece of furniture, which is an idea I got from one of my Alexander teachers forever ago. We don’t protect furniture from our weight but neither do we usually press into it muscularly. With massage, I think of enjoying the movements I make so that I feel better after the session rather than feeling all worn out. I feel like I’m on the edge of an epiphany about life. What if we didn’t try to protect people from our true full selves? Nor did we try to push or force ourselves onto people? What if we really enjoyed being ourselves and moving through our days in such a way that we felt really good at the end of our day because we enjoyed our movements and  with what/whom we were in contact? I know this sometimes happens easily and sometimes not at all. As I said, this is a fledgling epiphany. Or maybe it is nothing. But it is something about which I have been thinking.

Am I glad to be on this life journey? Yes I am! 

Am I glad to have you readers? Yes I am!

March 18

Last weekend Carl took the girls to the History Center and they pretended to have a dairy-free ice cream stand. I love how Amy adapts her pretend food to be Sarah-friendly.

For their recent swim lesson the girls practiced saving each other by throwing a floating thingie into the water while holding the other end of a tether. They also wore their clothes in the water, and Amy even wore her shoes!

Yesterday Amy had her birthday party at an art studio. I was so glad we were paying other people to run the whole thing. The noise and organized chaos was almost too much for me, and I had to step out of the room often just so I wouldn’t scream at everyone. I made cupcakes for the party and each one was decorated to look like a cat’s face. Let me tell you, that is some serious muscle work!

7 years ago today Amy made her debut into this world, arriving on my birthday. She has been the best present ever. Birthdays can have a way of being simultaneously wonderful and stressful, at least in my experience thus far. It is easy to fall into wanting other people to make the day special and that that is somehow a way of gauging love. I know that isn’t true and some of my best birthdays have been the ones where I really just figured out what I wanted to do and I did it, without needing anything from anyone else. This year is feeling more challenging. I don’t even know if it is needing or wanting something from others. Maybe it is just that I haven’t figured out how to make it feel special for myself. Maybe it is feeling like I should make it special. I have scheduled the things I usually do to help it feel special and I’m excited about those things. Yet I still have a bit of melancholy hanging around lately. I don’t know if it is feeling eclipsed by Amy’s birthday celebration, even though she is the best present ever in the entire world, because kid’s birthdays just are more exciting than those of grown ups. I don’t know if it is turning 41 and thus feeling like I’m rounding a bend in life. I don’t know if it is because of how I’ve been struggling lately with self-judgement and body image so maybe my feelings have nothing to do with birthdays. I don’t know if it is that it is still winter!! I don’t know. I do know I’m going to attempt to just have a day and not need to make it anything extra. As soon as I say that then the things that are planned do begin to feel a bit more special. And really what is a birthday beyond changing a number and a way for people to show love to each other? One of the sweetest moments this morning was waking up next to Amy and giving each other snuggles and kisses as we wished one another happy birthday. Really, one cannot improve upon that. So today will be a day. I will carry the sweet moments in my heart. I will not need it to be the bestest day ever. I will continue to work towards more gentleness with how I see myself, my eating, my exercising, my either doing ALL of the Things that need to be done, or my doing NONE of the things that need to be done because I don’t want to put down my novel, my sometimes getting tense and mad at the girls. I will remember that I am also playful and kind and that I do at least a mediocre job of mothering. Whenever my mom tries to help me feel good about my parenting she runs into my strong “yes, but…” muscles so she has learned that the thing I will accept is to be deemed mediocre. That at least gets me to stop feeling that I am terrible and we have a good laugh together.

On a different note, I have been absolutely loving teaching. I’m teaching a neuromuscular therapy course for the first time and while I can be worried that I’m not doing a good enough job, I do think my students are learning and I truly love being with them each week.  I am certainly learning things and improving. This week I also taught my first ever continuing education class on the Alexander Technique. It went really well and all of my students enjoyed it and found it helpful.

May you all have a day.

March 11

Last Sunday we went to the Children’s Museum to see the Mo Willems exhibit. Sarah and I helped Naked Mole Rat get dressed for his fashion show. The girls wore small cardboard buses. Perhaps the best part was the Mo Willems’ recordings of how to draw his characters. We all participated and I was amazed at Sarah’s work. Now her SR volunteers are also helping her draw things by doing easy step by step directions that she can copy. Meanwhile, Amy’s characters were better than mine!

At home Sarah did more specific work with large dot markers on coloring pages than I have ever seen her do.

Last weekend the girls snuck extra phone and iPad time. When I came upstairs my bedroom door was closed and a note was written on a tissue in front of the door saying “do not enter this room” in Amy’s handwriting.

I went away for this weekend to visit my parents. Amy was sad, and I explained that when she was older she might do a trip on her own to see me. Amy was worried about who would watch her kids. I said the other parent of her kids would be with them. She anxiously said, “but Sarah and I are planning on marrying each other!” I don’t have the heart to explain how marriage usually works and that sisters don’t marry each other. The love and sweetness are just too wonderful.

During her swim lesson Sarah did her floating with “monkey, airplane, soldier” arms all by herself!

For gymnastics yesterday the girls were in a new class. Their class for the past few years has been for fun and experience but without really focusing on skill improvement. Now they are in the beginner class that does focus on skills. Carl said that both girls did well and that clearly Sarah fit in with being there. The only difference compared to other kids was that he was there to help her stay focused sometimes.

It took me a while to accept that Sarah could read. I kept proving it to myself over and over. I think it is the same now about sharing every bit of Sarah’s progress. Part of writing is to share the journey, part is so I will remember, and part is perhaps to prove to myself (a million times over) that she is progressing. She is, she is, she is. And, the biggest thing to remember is that that isn’t where her lovableness comes from. She is lovable just as she is whether or not she changes or progresses one iota more. That goes for the rest of us too. And isn’t it also wonderful to celebrate every little step towards a goal?

Speaking of which, Carl just said that he and the girls played Dragon Dash easily together. As if it was no big thing. But it is a big thing!! It is such a big thing that it is no longer a big thing! Carl wrote, “At one point Sarah got a tile with a dead end on it and she thought a bit and then put it in the right place, to block off an unneeded path and keep the main path alive. With no hints. Amy was clearly happy with Sarah. It was really great.” Wow!!!

March 4

This week I bought Sarah her first bras. She was excited. I was teary. We had pizza for dinner to celebrate. We also watched a movie, but Sarah didn’t really watch much of it. At one point she was playing in a different room, and then she ran in with a book and said she wanted to read to us. She proceeded to read almost completely unintelligibly, pausing on every page to press one foot and then the other foot against her chin. I figure that this was a pretty enormous deal for her to run in and want to share like this. She was all excited and perhaps overwhelmed, which is why she lost her enunciation and needed to press against her chin to help calm herself. She kept going through the whole book. 

Amy can now open fruit pouches by herself and she has learned to snap. With each new thing she tries to learn she always feels that it is the hardest thing she has ever tried to learn in her entire life. Then she figures it out and moves on to the new hardest thing ever.

For many weeks now Amy has been speaking cat language. Now again, this time in cat…Meor myeny myeeks myow Myamy myas myen myeaking myat myanguage.

Amy recently declared, “I know who I’m going to marry when I grow up: Sarah! We can open a bakery together and sell dairy-free cupcakes."