Last week was simply amazing as the girls attended Camp A in our house and yard. Our sitter A. is super duper amazingly awesome. They ran a camp for the week with different themes and activities. Some of the projects from the week included coloring Camp A bandanas, collecting flowers and other natural items to make prints with paint on blank wrap skirts made by A., scooter trips to the playground, baking bread from scratch, making rainbow cookies to celebrate Pride month, having a lemonade stand to raise money for a good cause, and creating a circus performance that included gymnastics, juggling, hula hooping, and a dice game that helps Sarah practice math.
During facetime with Sc, the girls directed Sc to draw various pictures. Sc, like A, is an artist, so she can just create amazing things as if it is no big deal. She dropped the drawings off the next day. There are princesses, mice, cats, dogs, plaid, plaid, plaid, and umbrellas made from separate paper glued on top of the original paper so they seem more real.
During her call with G, Sarah initiated a tour of the patterns she could find in our house. Then she requested that G give her a plaid tour and he discovered some plaid pajamas, one pair of which will make its way here. It is wonderful how these facetime sessions can be so effective and can continue to evolve.
As has happened so often through the years, I am in awe of the people we have as part of our life. They are just so jaw-droppingly amazing as they go through the world being themselves. What an incredible gift to have them as members of our family.
Amy has created an alter-ego named Kayla who comes to babysit Sarah sometimes. They go to “the park” in our family room and ride on see-saws of our folded gymnastics mats. The mats aren’t tilted in anyway so the see-sawing is all imaginative and somehow results in both girls falling off repeatedly.
Sarah borrowed a floral, sparkly shirt from A (thus large for Sarah) and donned her musical note scarf while also wearing some of Carl’s old plaid boxers as pajama bottoms. As Carl said, this was such a common look for her that we neglected to take a picture. And yet. It was such an awesome look and it had me thinking she looked like The Dude from The Big Lebowski.
Olivia’s birthday was yesterday and Carl’s birthday is tomorrow so this is a birthday weekend. Yesterday Carl and the girls created a cardboard palace for Olivia to explore. Olivia and our Sarah and Amy cats all enjoyed it.
Carl went running with both girls yesterday and they were joined by someone’s cat! The cat ran along next to Sarah for a notable amount of time and when it left Sarah thanked it for running with her.
Sarah has started showering more often, easily, of her own volition! This possibly started after a difficult moment regarding her showering when she was resisting. But then yesterday and today she has said, out of the blue, “ok, I will take my shower now.” We still need to help her shampoo and scrub more thoroughly but she currently doesn’t like any coaching or even just talking about it completely separate from the event. Still, this seems like a huge win. Maybe eventually all strands of her hair will actually get clean.
Yesterday I was despairing somewhat because I felt like I had forgotten my newest revelations and that Sarah and I weren’t connecting as well as we had been. Then something in me shifted and I could see that sometimes it just means reaching out for an extra moment of snuggling or playing. Or deciding we can have a fresh start. It is ok if we aren’t always perfectly nice mice together. It doesn’t negate the good moments.
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