May 25

It was a totally amazing and wonderful week! I had new thoughts and intentions and I kept them until Saturday morning. My new intention is to feel like I am on vacation all the time, with that ease and joy and lack of time pressure. I have a truly, deeply, amazingly, wonderful life and I want to embrace that and revel in it. I am the one making the schedule and most of the rules, so why not be gentle instead of beating myself to go faster or do more? Interestingly enough, I got in about 8 hours of Sarah-Rise time in the room. Easily! With fun and joy! Sarah didn't resist it at all. I asked Carl to help me remember my intention and he asked how he could do that because if I need a reminder then I might not be in a frame of mind to take a reminder kindly. I didn't have an answer so he created the Intention Dance, in which he cavorts around ridiculously. How can anyone stay uptight in the face of an Intention Dance? (Well, apparently I can because yesterday morning I was firmly attached to being grumpy and having a hard time, intention dance or no. I do not handle things with the greatest aplomb when Carl has to work on the weekend and the girls seem extra whiney or screamy.) 

But, really, it was an amazing Monday-Friday overall.  Awesome SR sessions, wonderful outdoor play, and a fun field trip to playground and the Aviary. We went to get hair trims for the girls and it was Amy's first cut done by someone other than me. (On the way home from the haircut Amy threw up in the car. Friday evening as I cleaned up the family room, I discovered that our cat had been peeing in the box of My Little Ponies and Barbies so I had to give all of the dolls baths. Then the cat threw up.)

I have been continuing my slow process of getting more information and organization regarding home schooling. I don't know if the core curriculum stuff is required for us, but I did look through all of the PA core curriculum standards for PreK. I had planned to look through Kindergarten standards too, but the preK stuff was enough and is clearly where we are. Some of it seems totally do-able and some of it seems like something that "in my day..." I did in first or second grade. Anyway, it has been helpful to look at and think about because it helps me think differently about how to expand my play with Sarah, which probably makes the play more interesting.

On Monday, Sarah and I created the dungeon game. She said something about poor Sarah Bucket Head in a dungeon, which is a reference to Snow White and Prince Bucket Head. I started building a dungeon around Sarah, using milk block cartons. She crawled through the space between two of them and I said she had squeezed through the bars. She found this funny and did it again. I then took on the role of the prison guard and picked her up, rocking her a few times as I threw her back into the dungeon. She escaped again! I continued to expand my responses, throwing her over my shoulder, going down an imaginary spiral staircase, having rats scurry over her feet, slamming the milk carton door closed, sliding an imaginary bolt, locking several locks, etc. She kept escaping and then would come stand right in front of me waiting for recapture. It was so cute! And so fun! And tiring. As soon as my energy waned, Sarah started isming, stepping in and out of the dungeon but without the interactive play. Maybe she was tired too. She then used the potty and escaped to her room, but I had the perfect scenario for bringing her back so I threw her over my shoulder and we resumed interactive play. Throughout the week we have returned to the dungeon play many times. We have also had many ism/joining times stepping in and out of the dungeon. I am so glad to have had that time. Having two hours is great because unexpected things can happen and I also have time to really be with myself and notice my own thoughts. With joining an ism I still go on a thought journey, reminding myself that it is perfect, it is a way to say I love you to Sarah, it is exactly the most helpful thing to do, exactly what I should be doing in that moment. What is interesting is that often once I have my thoughts clear, Sarah is ready to reconnect with me.

Sarah and I had lots of play involving eating ice cream with milk block cartons as ice cream and markers as spoons. I often offer her peanut butter ice cream to help her practice saying, "No, thanks, I'm allergic." We added several toppings, including whipped cream of the sort my family calls "shush" because of the sounds it makes coming out of the can. Sarah made the sound. We added cherries and ate them, being careful not to eat the stem. One day we made money. I held the paper and Sarah cut along the folded line I had made. She has improved immensely with her use of scissors. She can do it with one hand! She wrote numbers on the money as I dictated the denominations. Then she came to my ice cream store and sorted through her purse to find the correct bill. She bought three different things from me! This took some coaching on my part, but she was willing.

In response to last week's update, a family member sent me the following quotation from Abraham-Hicks. It seems quite perfect for me on this journey and it is what helped me with my latest intention, so I will end with it as a way of helping me reaffirm my intention once again:

"Mining the moment for something that feels good, something to appreciate, something to savor, something to take in, that's what your moments are about. They're not about justifying your existence. It's justified. You exist. It's not about proving your worthiness. It's done. You're worthy. It's not about achieving success. You never get it done. It's about "How much can this moment deliver to me?" And some of you like them fast, some of you like them slow. No one's taking score. You get to choose. The only measurement is between my desire and my allowing. And your emotions tell you everything about that." - Abraham