October 20

I am feeling grateful this week for Sarah teaching me to cook. I mean, really cook. I could do a few things before but it wasn't really part of my skill set in the way it is now. While I still buy a few things for Carl, Amy, and I to eat on the side, primarily we eat what I make and I make everything we eat. When I was very young I used to go into the kitchen, grab a pie pan and fill it with a few ingredients. I didn't use a recipe. I baked it and served it to my amazing parents who actually sampled it! My skill level at that time was very very low. Now I chuckle as I grab a bowl and throw together ingredients for a baked good without a recipe and without measuring. Sometimes this doesn't work out, but often it does and is very good. I am more successfully creative than I used to be and I have Sarah to thank for providing a reason to do so.

One night after we read a bedtime story of If You Give a Pig a Party, Sarah started talking about some aspects of the story. She said she wanted to have a sleep over, a pillow fight, a sleep over with Pigeon. I said I didn't have Pigeon but she could have Gerald. Amy was incensed at the very suggestion of such a thing so I offered Olivia instead and Sarah snuggled up with Olivia for her sleep over.

I have overheard Sarah twice this week singing the alphabet while playing by herself. It is faster and more fluid than ever before. Meanwhile, Amy got on the piano yesterday and was playing while singing "the itsy bitsy spider."

During Carl's SR time this week, Sarah was climbing the stairs in the room (made from bricks and planks) and said "going to work." He asked what she was going to do at work and she said "work on a computer." He brilliantly created a laptop out of the two small white boards  in the room, with a keyboard on one and a screen on the other. As she pressed letters on the keyboard he wrote them on the screen. At one point he guided her to spell "m-o-m." He asked her if she knew what it spelled. She replied, "mom." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel like she is in a very spongy pre-reading stage and really likes paying attention and learning, the same way she soaked it up and enjoyed learning to speak. This is so exciting.

Carl also had an amazing session with the cookie matching game. The pieces look like oreos and you can separate them to reveal different shapes inside, such as a heart, cirlce, star, etc. You have to have the top and bottom match to assemble the cookie. I had explained and modeled and helped her in the past but not very recently. Carl spread out all the pieces and explained to her what to do. She then independently did each and every one correctly!!!!!!!! When Carl told me this I nearly fell over.

Our field trip was to a friend's home for a tea party. It went quite well, with the girls snarfing down the strawberries. Sarah didn't want tea but she pretended to sip from her piece of jerky. We all wore hats to add to the festive outdoor feel, even though we were inside because it was cold and rainy outside.

You may remember Halloween has not been our strong suite. In past years I used to wonder if Sarah would ever be interested. This year both girls are both into the Great Pumpkin story (Peanuts) and some other Halloween books. I got answers from both girls when I asked what they wanted to be for Halloween. Amy says she wants to be a cat and that is the costume we have obtained. Hopefully her frequently changed mind will hold steady on the actual day. Sarah said she wanted to be a stripe. How to do that? We had some ideas and the original plan was that I would go out with Amy to look for costumes while Carl did SR time with Sarah. Sarah, however, really wanted to go on the adventure, so we decided to make it a family outing. Last year this same family outing was fraught with tension and unhappiness. As we drove, Carl and I discussed the parameters and rules for this outing (for the girls and ourselves). We went to a used-clothing store first and they had a striped outfit that Sarah loves and it fits her (despite claiming to be size 3T). This feels like a small miracle. For Amy's costume, Amy and I went to the actual Halloween store. Sarah and Carl went to the car to wait, with Sarah still wearing the costume that she didn't want to take off and wore for the rest of the day!