March 31

This week we got 32 hours. The number of hours continues to be an interesting thing for me to contemplate. I think some of why our program has been successful is my drive to get hours. That said, I want to make sure that I can track it and notice it gently and loosely, without getting tight about needing to achieve a certain number to feel successful. I want to track it in part because I have always wondered how many hours went into other success stories. I know each child and each journey is different and I also know that the number of hours is not nothing. I want to notice it and record it and remember it; I also want to notice that we are doing other things to support the growth of our children that I am not necessarily tracking (or not in the same way), such as preschool, play dates, gymnastics, and general lifestyle choices. Having Sonia here makes it so much easier to live Son-Rise for most of the day. Not always. I can still get tight, anxious, and judgmental, but that is ever decreasing and my active feeling of gratitude and love for my life situation is ever increasing.

Reflecting further upon my decision to have a good birthday regardless of what anyone else did brings me to the radical idea that I could do that with each day and each moment. Whoa! 

Last night I caught myself feeling annoyed that Sarah was underfoot and watching everything as I fixed dinner. Then I realized how awesome it is that she is so interested and wants to watch what I am doing, especially as it pertains to food. Yesterday was another day for a new food success: almond butter-zucchini-egg pancakes. They are surprisingly tasty and the right texture for a pancake. We all loved them and it is a great way to get in extra veggies. I didn't make up the list of ingredients so I can't take credit for that, but I did apparently guess correctly at the amount of each ingredient. If you want to try them, I blended 1 small raw zucchini with 2 eggs and 4 heaping tablespoons of raw almond butter. Then just cook as you would any other pancake. Another food success was meatballs on a stick. This was again the culmination of adult thinking: Carl's initial idea of putting something on a toothpick and calling it a lollipop, my made-up meatloaf recipe (mix 1 lb ground meat with pureed mix of 1 onion, 1 tomato, and 1 clove of garlic), and Sonia's suggestion to make tiny meatballs and put them on toothpicks. Sarah ate 4 last night and Amy loves them too. In fact, last night's dinner was a huge success: both girls ate some of each item that I served! Cooked peas, cooked zucchini, meatballs, and avocado egg salad (hard boiled egg mashed up with avocado). I love it when that happens.

As I mentioned last week, we had Granddad and Grammy visiting. It was so wonderful to have their company and extra help with the girls and around the house. They each did Sarah-Rise sessions and generally had wonderful playtime with both girls. 

I have slightly changed my plan for preschool next year in that now Sarah will attend 2 days a week. I'll go with her for one of the days and have Sonia or another SR-trained volunteer go with her for the other day. I realized that if I am trying to integrate her a bit with a typical classroom then it doesn't make sense to do so in a truncated way. If the other kids all attend 2 days a week and she just attends for 1, then she would get behind in projects and knowing some of the routine. 

Sarah drew a chameleon this week! One of her favorite books stars a chameleon and Sb drew one on the white board for Sarah to color. After it was thoroughly colored, little S erased it and then picked up a marker and drew the head and body. Sb then coached her to add a tail, legs, eyes, ears, and hair. Sarah did so. If you saw the picture and didn't know what you were seeing, you might have no idea what it was. What I find exciting, though, is the intentionality Sarah had in executing her picture. She knew where each item went and that she needed to draw 4 legs. Later in the week, Sarah demonstrated the same intentionality when she said "wite note" (write note) and drew lots of little black squiggly marks. We may have a ways to go to achieve clarity, but I think the desire and intention are the most important part. As with so much of the Son-Rise Program, the goal is to have Sarah want to learn things because she will then have the internal drive to make the neural connections required. And we will put in the hours (!) of play and practice to help her get where she wants to go. 

When I was little, one of my favorite books was Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. One of the pages involves the mother bunny saying that if the young bunny turns into a sailboat to run away from her then she will turn into the wind and blow him where she wants him to go. My mom altered our text to say that the mother would blow him where he wanted to go. I love this. While I have specific goals for Sarah's development, it is really all with the bigger intention of helping to blow her where she wants to go. To that end I am so deeply grateful for my amazing team. AMAZING. The creativity and thoughtfulness astounds me every week.

One of our goals is for Sarah to participate more physically in play. I feel like this is really starting to come along. In tiny pieces, but it is coming. The same way that her language started in tiny pieces. What I find notable is that every time I really clarify a goal for the program, then we start working for it much more powerfully and effectively and Sarah starts responding almost immediately. 

In one of my play sessions we had a really interesting 1/2 hour chunk of reciting little pieces of books just from our memory. Sarah and I share a love of Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie books and his Pigeon books. She was sitting on my lap and I had a mild headache so I was really following her flow more than I might otherwise have done without the headache. She kept bouncing around to different books, some of which we haven't read in ages. She stores so much in her memory! And luckily, I do too. At least where these books are concerned. 

I started thinking about some of her repetitions slightly differently, really seeing them as practice and really trusting that she knows what she is doing. I know, I keep sharing this insight and then I have the same insight again, just a bit more deeply each time. This time I was remembering when I was in first grade and for most of the year I wrote basically the same story every morning during our writing time. It was about a girl going outside. It was only a couple of sentences, but still, I must have liked my story and enjoyed writing about it. And I think I turned out to be a pretty good writer. So maybe Sarah's repetition is exactly what she needs to do to get her where she wants to go.

May the wind blow you where you want to go.