August 26

We were away for the weekend visiting family at a beautiful house on a beautiful lake in VA. It was actually the easiest driving trip we have had with the girls in a while and it was lovely to only need to figure out Sarah's food while someone else did the cooking and cleaning for the rest of the group. And I am also glad to be done with GAPS travel for a while again. 

Sarah loved the beef jerky (aka meat cookies) that Sonia made. I gave Sarah many more strawberries than usual to assuage my guilt of having her sit at a table filled with lots of food she couldn't have. She loved it. Amy practically ate her weight in pea crackers. Amy also stole the english muffins this morning! I was in the shower and Carl was with Sarah and thought Amy was staying nearby. My uncle was upstairs and saw Amy heading down the hall with a bag of english muffins in her hand. He assumed she was following a parent. Not so for our little independent food thief!

Granddad was very impressed with how much Sarah's language has expanded and improved since he last saw her in March. Yay! 

Overall I have been feeling more relaxed and happier with less tightly scheduled days and not tracking the SR hours to the minute. We are still averaging 4-6 hours of SR per day during the week. There is a weird dynamic in my thinking that I don't fully understand but I will try to verbalize. When we were getting 8 hours per day and tracking the hours, then that was coupled sometimes with feeling an urgency to help Sarah; that we must get sufficient time or else it won't work and it needs to work. Letting go of the tracking and having more free time in the day pairs itself with less urgency. Not that I regret our 8 hour power days. They were wonderful and awesome. We may even go back to them at some point. But now that I want to make sure we get Becky's program in and play outside daily, it is much easier to do that when we have more free time. 

I made another Alexander (of the terrible, horrible, no good very bad day) game. Actually two games but one of them didn't really get off the ground farther than a minute. It was a "tape the Alexander on the Alexander" game and she did follow my lead to spin but then was most interested in removing the pieces of tape from the paper. The other game involved two red paper elevator doors and a picture of Alexander. We took turns being the elevator and Alexander and we also got our feet or hands stuck in the doors. My next thought is to encourage her to hop like he must have done after the elevator door closed on his foot.

My attitude towards parenting and running Sarah-Rise and everything reminds me of sickness vs. wellness. When I am well it is hard to comprehend really being ill and vice versa. When things are going easily and I am feeling empowered and inspired and loving then it is hard to belief how fully I can lose that feeling. And when I lose it, it can feel unattainable. Luckily, overall my times of frustration or depression are short lived, but they certainly exist. 

With snail shorts upset or door-play tantrums I usually feel mediocre in my responses, though sometimes they tap into a feeling of failure and that we are never going to progress past this point and that she is stupid (which thought I hate and then feel worse about). When meals go uneaten and she doesn't participate in Becky's movement program then I feel like a grumpy failure and I want to throw in the towel on this whole business. I can feel like sending both girls to full-time school and just being done with all of this, giving up because it is too hard and I am too tired. Owning those feelings fully helps them shift more quickly and it is also easier when Sarah does participate in some movements and eat more food and when the girls snuggle next to me while I read. Then all is right with the world and I am doing just what I should be doing. Obviously I have some more exploring and dialoguing to do!

I have been realizing that I work with Sarah differently than I did at the beginning because she has progressed so much. I want to bring some elements of my early days back, mainly my big snuggly celebrations of the tiniest effort. In the beginning it felt really easy and clear about how to help Sarah with language and how to celebrate every attempt. It sometimes feels less clear now about some of our goals and how to go for them creatively and remember to celebrate. This weekend when I was reading a book and modeled nodding my head she did her wobbly attempt and I whooped and snuzzled her like the old days. She loved it. I did too.

Tomorrow is the first day of preschool!