November 30

When thinking about what I was grateful for on Thanksgiving, the list just went on and on. I am so very deeply blessed in so many ways. This whole journey with Sarah is a blessing in multiple directions, helping me become more of the person I want to be. As you know, one of my main struggly areas is getting mad and yelling at the girls. I noticed myself wishing that Sarah's situation was easier, thinking that would be the solution. Then I realized that whenever there is a stuck spot within me, it will find a way to make itself known so I can deal with it. So if it wasn't this then it would be something else. And if there wasn't something else, then maybe that would be unfortunate that I wouldn't notice and address it. Within the last week I have had many moments of successfully, truly staying calm when the girls are upset. It feels like playing catch with someone and deciding to just leave my arms at my side while the ball bounces off me. I just don't catch the ball of scream. Sometimes this means making a hasty retreat out of the room to an activity such as reading a good book or doing something in the kitchen. It has to be something that I find engrossing enough to help me not engage in the usual dance of whining, yelling, and grumpiness. I am already noticing a slight difference in the length of the girls' upset. I think it is a smidge shorter. Or maybe it just feels shorter because I am staying calmer. It has certainly helped to have Carl home and have all of us on vacation for the past few days. It will be just me with the girls for most of today and most of Tuesday so we will see if I can maintain the calm. While I can understand in theory that I am in control of my emotions, it often doesn't seem that way in practice. But I did have a tiny glimpse of really understanding it as true.

There was one day recently when I got mad about a situation. It wasn't about the girls or towards the girls at all. Sarah said I was a grumpsicle. That, of course, was not what I expected her to say and was cleverly funny enough to dissolve my grumps almost instantly. Sarah is very good at making connections and word substitutions to further her play. I attribute this to her own awesomeness and also to how Carl and I (and maybe others) play and substitute words ourselves. Another example of Sarah doing this happened a couple weeks ago when Sarah was holding a fork and started singing, "Old MacDonald had a fork."

I served rice spaghetti one night and when I went to put a napkin on Sarah's lap I discovered she had already done it. She said she was protecting her snail pants! I hardly ever put napkins on the lap of anyone and it is really only to protect the snail pants from certain foods, so this was wonderful that she thought of it too.

On Wednesday, I dressed up in my Colonial outfit and told a story that might have been told in the 1600s. Two days later, Amy told Carl she was going to tell him a story and sing a song. She proceeded to sing about and tell him about a dog and a ladybug (or was it a giraffe and a ladybug?) going out walking and then going home. So cute!! Then this morning Sarah combined a reference about a Dora episode with the story I had told. She said that baby jaguar (Dora) had lost her soap (Colonial story). 

We have reached the end of an era. Amy has switched to almost always saying Sarah and Sonia instead of Hara and Honia. This is exciting and I also feel a little sad.

I had a really great talk with M. that helped me shift my perspective and think more clearly about things in the SR room. I described what I thought was a less successful session with Sarah because I felt like I wasn't as in tune with Sarah, and I was pushing her too much, and we lost our fun connection. In talking to M. I realized how much I learned because of that session, remembering to get the fun connection first and to be flexible to drop something that isn't working and how to tweak things I tried to make them more effective (eg. start with a big tic tac toe board and gradually make it smaller rather than starting small). I now think this was a very successful session because of how much I learned.

I often ask myself what I could do differently to make my next session more effective. I sometimes ask this of my volunteers after their sessions too. M. helped me see that I could ask it as what could be different just to be different? to help continue building different ideas into some repeat play themes. This way feels like thinking sideways, which is what I often strive to do in the SR room.

I also had an idea while talking to M. of how to maybe teach Sarah about the Wright brothers. She loves bicycles and she often says that she goes flying. What more perfect blend of those two loves than the Wright brothers? My dad dressed as Orville Wright of course! He used to do so when teaching his students about the Wright brothers and on at least two occasions his 3rd graders built a Wright Flyer in the classroom. I was thinking pictures of someone Sarah knows and loves combined with pictures of kids might interest her in the subject. I haven't yet gone beyond my idea and getting pictures.

Sarah and I had a great time playing with number flash cards. Sometimes when she counts she doesn't touch each object being counted or she counts some twice. I made a huge hammed up deal about not missing a single square. She seemed to love the drama and spent a lot of time loving my head and then did correctly count while pointing to each square for the number 10 card. Internally I felt like I had shifted from needing her to get through a certain number of cards to wanting to help her really have fun doing just one card correctly no matter how long it took. Later that night I made new flash cards to get us up to 15 and then skipped to 20, 30, etc up through 100. I haven't yet played with these with her but I'm eager to try.

On Thanksgiving morning, Carl took the girls to a movie in a theater! Sarah hasn't been to a theater since she was maybe 18 months old. Amy has never been. They lasted for about an hour. Wow. Totally awesome. 

Thank you all for your presence in my life.

November 23

Last weekend, Sarah had a bit of a cold. She got over it in 2 days. That may be record speed for her, which would indicate that her body is indeed healing and getting stronger.

On Tuesday, Sarah and I played two consecutive full rounds of the Alexander board game I made last year (Alexander of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day). It almost seemed too easy for her. Wow. I started thinking it was time to make another game. 

On Wednesday, I made a new board game with Sonia's help. It is called Around the Wheel. You roll a die and then move your person (taken from another toy) around a wheel drawn on posterboard with different colored squares. When you land on a square you pick a card from the deck with the corresponding color written on the top. Sarah and I played a few rounds of this and she picked the correct card perfectly for each turn. She also liked almost all of the prompts from the cards that each of us picked (this was just the two of us playing), until we got to the instruction to have another player draw a shape and you color it in. I think the shape I drew was too big. Now I realize that to help her move toward the goal of coloring in a shape fully, I need to start small so that she can achieve it easily. Maybe I could start so small as to be ridiculous and we could laugh about it together. 

For school, Amy created an American Indian name for herself: Angry Buffalo. I love this so much it is hard to say. All the other kids picked dainty things like Little Star. Not that there is anything wrong with dainty names, but I adore Angry Buffalo, the name and the girl. I do think the name is perhaps more apt for Sarah, so we have Angry Buffalo 1 and Angry Buffalo 2, not to mention that that really could be my name on many occasions.

Thursday morning I was a very angry buffalo as the girls were resisting getting ready for the day and Carl was out of town so it was just me to get them ready and make breakfast. The thing that puzzles me is why I got so mad and tense, given that we didn't actually have anything scheduled for the entire day except having Sonia come over to help as usual. I often attribute my anger to tension about time, but I think it is sometimes more about feeling powerless and disrespected. So, I threatened very loudly that maybe they wouldn't get breakfast. It was not my finest moment. They did get breakfast and we had a good day overall, it just wasn't the day I had envisioned during my Wednesday night Zumba when I was having all sorts of revelations that meant I was going to be happy and empowered forever. Instead of my going in the SR room for my envisioned 5 hours, we did no SR time at all. We had a relaxed day hanging out and then I went to work (my paid work as an MT, where I know what I'm doing, people love what I do and never yell). At one point on Thursday I was resting on the floor of the family room. The girls came in and the delight in their eyes to see me on the floor was wonderful to behold. They each took turns climbing on me and giving me chin presses and face mushes, fighting with each other for space on my person. So it seems that even when I yell for a few minutes of unglory in the morning, we have lost no love, and perhaps that is a great lesson too.

On Friday afternoon, Sarah was isming in the family room with Minnie cards from a Minnie Mouse matching game. I don't often join her when she is isming outside of the SR room because I figure she is occupied and I can do some cleaning or cooking. This time I did join her (meaning I did the same thing she was doing with no attempt to engage her). She began looking at me and smiling immediately. I then followed her lead and invitation to play the game. We played for at least 30 min, maybe 45, with Amy. After a short time, Amy brought a doll into the game to take turns too. I told Sarah she could have a toy elephant take a turn and I had an elephant myself. It was really like 6 people playing. It was very hard to actually get matches because there were so many cards and small individuals sometimes moved cards to new locations. I was the one to end the game because I realized I was getting frustrated and tight about enforcing turns and how to leave the cards in place, but I think the girls would have kept going had I stayed with it. Sarah mostly turns over the same two cards each turn unless I prompt her to turn over a new card for one of them, but she stayed with the game the whole time. This is really amazing. My next goal in this area is for me to be more relaxed about enjoying the process of the time together rather than worrying about playing the game right. 

Yesterday, Carl took Sarah with him to REI. She saw the climbing wall they have there and wanted to do it. She just barely squeaks by with the minimum weight requirement. She climbed up a  very short way. I love that she saw the activity and wanted to do it and that Carl arranged it so she could. I love how he loves expeditions with Sarah and has her help pay for purchases and parking and hold the parking garage ticket. I often don't so such outings, or when I do I don't have the internal space or thought to let Sarah do as much. 

When I was in high school I often felt like there were different parts of me and that something was wrong that I couldn't choose whether I wanted to always be one way or another. For example, I loved Colonial times and garb but I also loved sometimes being trendy and modern. I felt like I should pick one and stick with it.  One of my boyfriends said that maybe I didn't have to choose. That was helpful then and it is helpful now as I berate myself for not being able to stick to eating only healthy home cooking or being happy and loving all the time, etc. I realized last night that maybe it is the same idea and that once again, maybe it is ok and all the parts of me can exist and I don't have to always be one way. 

My hand lotion has taught me a lesson recently. In the winter I struggle to keep my hands from cracking and bleeding. I also struggle to put lotion on often enough because I usually expect to be washing dishes or my hands right away again so why bother with lotion? I realize that I need to apply lotion as often as I think of it and that the solution will only come through each tiny moment of remembering. The same is true of being the loving mother I want to be. It is made up of each tiny moment. It isn't something I can achieve in one lump. Each tiny moment of remembering lotion or love can be celebrated as a step forward. If I forget lotion or forget the love in some moments it doesn't undo the times I remember. 

Carl pointed out that in just over two years we will have a ten year old (Sarah turns 8 at the end of January). I don't know how to spell the sound of air being sucked out of me and feeling internally thrown backward. I'm also not sure why this is such a stunning revelation, but it is. It is moments likes these where I feel like I am standing on the top of a windy mountain ridge and I can look one way and see an abyss of how far behind Sarah is compared to her age peers, and I see my fears of messing up with this path we are on as if we will fall later because of my choices now. If I turn the other way I see how far we have come and how this is the best path I know and that if my choices now mean homeschooling for Sarah's whole school career then I will do it. It is the choice of comparing to some norm or should about what age indicates, verses being present and moving forward peacefully from where we are. It is such a strange sensation to see the veil between my choices of thoughts. It is not always so clear.

May your veils be thin and your choices clear and peaceful.

November 16

We have had many amazing moments this week. 

The last night that Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop were visiting, they played with the girls and Carl with toy cars that can zoom forward if you first drive them backward. I was at Zumba, but apparently Sarah's involvement was focused and relational, so that everyone was really playing a racing game together, rather than Sarah being focused on the cars to the exclusion of everyone else. These cars are a new favorite, especially because the doors open and close, and often Sarah does ism fairly exclusively with them. 

During Carl's SR session, he and Sarah built tunnels for the cars to drive through and Sarah followed his instructions and copied the initial design that he built. During my session I attempted to add in drawing a road with stoplights to color. Sarah did participate but it felt like a bit more work on my part to encourage the participation. She wanted to move on to playing with pictures of flags, which turned into a small history lesson about the numbers of stars and stripes in the past and on our current flag. I'm not sure how much she retained, but I felt like she was listening and I felt pleased that we could work in history connected with one of her great loves.

I realized that while I may not be the best at following someone else's curriculum or coming up with my own, I am really good at thinking on my feet to weave in all sorts of academic skill practice based on whatever Sarah wants to do.

I refreshed some of the toys in the Sarah-Rise room and during L.'s session she brought down the math flash cards from Handwriting Without Tears, which Sarah hadn't played with for months. L. said that Sarah eagerly and diligently started going through the cards, tracing the numbers with her finger and then counting the objects on the opposite side. Sarah went through the whole deck and would have done more if we had them. 

Sonia had the idea to give Sarah measurable tasks now and then again at the end of the school year. I gave Sarah a choice during one of my sessions about which kind of activity she wanted to do. She chose cutting. I drew a few straight lines across a page and asked her to cut following the lines. She cut a straight line that wasn't on a drawn line and then did some attempts to follow the lines. This by itself seemed amazing to me. Then she wanted to keep cutting so I took a new piece of paper and drew three straight lines across it and asked again if she could cut following the lines. This time she did it perfectly all by herself!!!!! I had no idea she had this level of skill. Doing anything beyond a straight line, such as a zigzag or curve, is now the challenge. 

Sarah had a session with one of our new volunteers, J., and she was saying "the curtains are closed." He wasn't understanding the word "curtains" so after a few attempts Sarah said, "the shutters are closed." I didn't even know she knew that word! I often think that what we are aiming for is to smart-up our time with her, rather than ever dumbing-down. The more varied our vocabulary the better. I love that Sarah had the calm, thoughtful, flexibility and the determination to be understood that allowed her to think of saying shutters.

We have been working with Sarah to say "yes" instead of "yeah" because sometimes her "yeah" can almost sound like "no." When she says "yes" clearly we often celebrate. Amy, who is just starting to be able to pronounce "s" but only if you don't draw any attention to this fact, has started saying, "Hara, you did a really good job haying 'es.'" Amy now gets the "s" sound in maybe 1/2 of her words. I am so curious about what will happen to how she says Sarah's name. I love how Amy currently says, "Hara," as if calling Sarah the energy center of a person's body.

Yesterday I received a large empty basket that I thought would be perfect for the girls to store toys in and help keep the family room clean. Amy had another vision. She rapidly filled it with all sorts of things (socks, undies, stuffed animals, steppin' stones, toy cups, a plethora of small toys, pajamas, and dress-up clothing). She told me she was packing for a trip and that then she and Hello Kitty were going to sit in the egg chair and pretend to drive somewhere.

Last night when Carl was helping the girls get ready for bed, he picked up Sarah, counted to three, and tossed her on the bed. Sarah immediately returned to him, backing into him, and saying, "one, one two three again." After giving the girls several turns each, Carl said he was done. The girls then picked up stuffed animals and started counting and tossing the animals on the bed.

Yesterday morning I got out supplies for the girls to do an art project with craypas and watercolors. Amy, who loves to color, immediately got down to business. Sarah did a few cursory scribbles but mainly wanted to hold a handful of craypas and then slide new craypas into the bundle in her hand. While I usually allow this, I also usually feel disappointed that she isn't doing the activity I envisioned. Yesterday I was able to truly let go of judgement and I felt peaceful acceptance about what Sarah wanted to do. Both girls then added water color to their work and then we moved on with our day. Two hours later, Sarah independently returned to the art table and asked me for new paper. She proceeded to color with intention and focus. Wow. 

I spoke to Sarah's naturopath about the most recent test to see how her body is doing. We still have a long way to go, but progress has been made! The doctor said if we consider that when we started we had 100% of the way to go, now we have about 80% of the way to go. Speaking of our food journey, a reader asked me if I would write about the dietary changes we have made for Sarah and what results we have seen. Here is our journey in a nutshell...

Diagnosed before age 1 as Failure to Thrive, Sarah was also diagnosed with mild acid reflux. She was put on medications for acid reflux and constipation, and she was given an appetite stimulant. We fed Sarah the highest calorie foods I could find, with no regard to health because my main concern was getting calories and avoiding a feeding tube and I did the best I knew to do at the time. For years her food involved adding powdered oil and other calorie supplements to her food in addition to giving her fortified drinks. I plied her with fast food fries and donuts and she ate butter pats straight. We always had at least 10 pints of ice cream in the house, but only the highest calorie varieties. I used to sing in trade for bites. I used to walk her in a stroller or drive for an hour at at time just because she ate better in those situations.

When we started Son-Rise, I spoke to other parents about GAPS I decided to try it after about a year of our SR program. Son-Rise helped me have the courage and framework to change the eating of the whole family radically. Having Sonia by my side for it was enormously helpful. It is a ton of kitchen work. I am in awe of parents who do this who don't have as much help as I do.

I phased out junk food and didn't re-buy when we ran out of favored items. I put the whole family on full GAPS. Then I took Sarah down to the intro level and initially progressed under the guidance of a GAPS practitioner.  It was 2 steps forward and 1 step back and it continues to feel that way but overall we are in a much healthier place. Sarah is off of all medications and she gains weight slowly but steadily and healthily. I no longer worry about her calorie intake or weight gain. Her bowel movements are mostly regular but I still have to make sure she gets the right balance of foods and enough water. and time to sit on the toilet while we read to her. She eats a mostly full GAPS diet but with these variations: she eats rice or rice pasta maybe once a month, she eats sweet potato and white potatoes a couple times a month, she eats chocolate (as long as I make it myself with raw cocao powder), and she has soy yogurt a couple times a week, she eats no dairy and no eggs. 

We are working with a naturopath and did testing on various bodily outputs. The results showed that Sarah was not absorbing nutrients from her food well nor was she detoxing well. She has a leaky gut and is missing some gut flora. We learned that she is allergic to eggs and dairy so she doesn't get any of those anymore. Now I make soy yogurt (another departure from GAPS). We gave (and give) her lots of supplements (probiotics, fish oil, digestive enzymes, electrolytes, a custom vitamin, and a custom amino acid blend). There may have been skin rashes in response to some of the supplements or it could have been bad coincidental timing and due to something else yet undetermined. Certain supplements may or may not lead to some disfluency in Sarah's speech. There are too many factors and not enough clear data, but it is one of my hypotheses. It seems best for Sarah not to do chewable enzymes but just to swallow a pill. Luckily she is amazing at swallowing pills. 

We did not see huge behavioral changes as some families notice, but I am still glad to have Sarah and the whole family eating more healthily. A summary of Sarah's current diet: grain-free with the exception of occasional rice, dairy-free, egg-free, refined-sugar-free. I make almost all of her food myself from scratch. I track her food daily as I have been for almost two years.

My most recent Alexander Technique reading of Indirect Procedures by Pedro de Alcantara had the following line, "The Technique is not about keeping your balance, but about losing it and not being disturbed by this loss. To work on yourself is to work willingly and gladly for ways of losing your balance and dealing with it." I love the perspective of gladness. So often with the food journey I get frustrated by what I see as set backs. Maybe I could be glad for the questions and the information that we do gain. Maybe I could also approach my emotional struggles with gladness rather than thinking I should maintain more balance than I do. Every loss of equilibrium in whatever realm, if followed by more understanding as that equilibrium is rediscovered, is a gain. And all of this certainly keeps life interesting. (Remind me later that I have said this!)

November 9

One of our volunteers, N., has felt like Sarah is clearer each week in her communication, both in terms of pronunciation and also in terms of her thoughts. Awesome!

There are some words where Sarah loses her clarity because she gets so excited. I often request that she slow down a tiny bit so we can understand her better and she almost always can do this. Her willingness to practice language has always been and continues to be amazing. G. figured out that she maintained more clarity with words similar to bicycle rather than bicycle itself, since that is her favorite word of late. They did lots of practicing with motorcycle, unicycle, and tricycle. 

Last weekend Sarah was sitting on Carl's lap and they were watching a video of a light show set to music. As is customary, Sarah's jaw and hands were moving excitedly and there was rigidity in her whole body. Carl started counting out a beat and moving her arms to it. After about 10 minutes, she was much more relaxed through her whole body and he was able to stop the movements and she stayed relaxed. She was still watching but somehow she was able to process the information more easily. 

One of Sarah's current favorite books is a Dora book. One page has the numbers 1-7 written and the idea is to count in Spanish. One evening, totally independently and with no prompting, Sarah counted 1-7 in Spanish, correctly, while pointing at the numbers. Holy moly! We never thought to focus on more than English for Sarah, since getting one language seemed miraculous enough. Now she is easily incorporating parts of a second language without us even trying! 

Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop are visiting and Sarah is loving pretending to be a crying baby who receives comfort from her grandparents, especially Pop-Pop. For all of the most recent grandparent visits, Sarah has wanted to pretend to cry while snuggling into her grandfathers, all 3 of them plus her great-grandfather. During this visit, when she is done in  the SR room or sleeping, as she comes downstairs she says, "Pop-Pop, Pop-Pop, Pop-Pop."

My headaches seem to be gone (shhh. knock on wood. yay). This is probably a combination of timing, medication, and figuring out that for whatever reason I should not sleep on my right side during cluster headache season. 

When Sarah is focused she can do many things correctly and seemingly easily. When she is not focused then she struggles to do the very same things correctly and if you didn't know she could do whatever skill then you would think she couldn't do it. For example, we have a game called Quack Quack. There are 8 little flat wooden animals, each made up of a unique combination of 3 colors. There are 3 dice and when you roll you look for the animal that matches the color combination of the dice. Sarah and I play a little less competitively than the rules dictate so we just take turns rolling and finding animals. The last time we played she found her first 3 animals quickly and correctly on her first pick. For her last turn she was in theory focused on the game with her body and head orientation but her focus was not actually there anymore and she couldn't get the last animal at all. She kept picking animals that weren't right. If she hadn't done her first three turns so cleanly then I would just think the game was too challenging. Maybe she used up her focusing oomph or maybe she just lost interest. I'm not sure. She has skills, it is just a matter of harnessing the right moment and environment for her abilities to shine. 

Whenever people ask me how home schooling is going I pause and say that I think it is going ok. Inwardly I think, "Ack, I'm still not sure! we don't do lots of academics." But I also think, I've been rocking this whole home schooling thing for 3 years in the form of Sarah-Rise. Am I getting in tons of academics? No. Am I addressing Sarah's special needs and trying to help her strengthen the clarity of her language, her social connection, her attention span, her ability to focus, her ability to digest her food well and process it daily, and a little reading, writing, and math? Absolutely. I feel like a split pie where half is uncertain and panicky and hoping for approval from the societal powers-that-be. The other half is capable, confident, and perhaps a bit mama-bear defensive wanting to roar out our accomplishments and knowing that Carl and I are the powers-that-be that should have the ultimate say in what helps our daughter the most. So, homeschooling from the viewpoint of adding new components to our SR program, is going sort of stiltingly and slowly. Homeschooling from the viewpoint that that is what we have been doing already just not in name until now, is going beautifully and we have an amazing team to do it.

I have also been feeling like a split pie in terms of how to take care of myself. Half of the time I want to (but rarely do) hide in a room by myself and not be with my kids. The other half of the time I think the answer is to be in the SR room. I guess either one eliminates the daily grind of whining, yelling kids who don't listen to what I say. In the SR room I am able to roll with Sarah not wanting to do what I suggest. That is the framework and I can easily let go and creatively try in new ways. Outside the room I have more distractions and things I "should" do so I don't roll with resistance very easily, to put it mildly. I haven't been in the SR room a ton lately, but when I am in there I often have a meta awareness that I am really really good at it. Maybe I just want to feel good about what I do and like I know what I'm doing. In the SR room or on my own or at my office giving massages, I can feel more in charge of my life and more confident in my abilities. In the rest of parenting life I do not have that ease and confidence as often as I would like. I think it is time to do more outsourcing when possible, letting Carl and Sonia handle the areas where I feel like giving up or yelling. It is at least time to take more breaks and get more sleep. I seem to learn this lesson over and over again. Maybe it is like Sarah with the Quack Quack game. Sometimes I totally rock it and clearly navigate to the right answer and other times I lose my oomph and my focus and can't move forward clearly for the life of me. I have skills, it is just a matter of harnessing the right moment and environment for my abilities to shine. Well, like daughter like mother.

November 2

I have been feeling much better compared to last week! Thank you for the well-wishes. My headaches aren't gone but sometimes I get two nights off in a row and feel like a normal person.

This week, Carl and I had SR sessions that were totally awesome in terms of engaged play combined with practicing various skills (coloring, cutting, taping, planning, and copying and making shapes). Upon my entering the room Wednesday, Sarah started saying "a bicycle!" in her usual super excited way. I got out paper and markers and asked if she could draw two circles to be the wheels of a bicycle. She did. I drew a seat and asked her to draw lines connecting the seat to the wheels. She did this but had trouble following my actual directions. I added a stick figure Sarah and asked her to add hair and a helmet. She added both in scribbly crazy ways, but with clear intentions. I drew spaces so she could write her name and she did so with my prompting, though not getting the letters in the designated spot. Her S continues to be backwards a lot. I used an idea from the group meeting of drawing dotted lines for letters and having the marker be a bike and she had to stay on the path. She readily attempted but went off the path many a time. I think she veered off not to get my fun reaction of falling over but just because it is still a big challenge. We did some letters together. Then I asked her to draw a bush on a new piece of paper because she had been talking about a bush (a bike running into a bush). She drew quite a lot of stuff that was unclear in subject matter but very clear in intention. I drew a large bike seat and she decorated it. Then I got scissors and she cut out the seat while I steered the paper. Then we used magnetic Handwriting Without Tears pieces to build a bike. I made a wheel with spokes and asked her to make one too. She made a very good attempt. Then I gave her small arches to be pedals. Then I made a scooter and kept falling off.  Carl's Thursday morning session built upon my session. He and Sarah made a bike out of large stacking bricks and planks! Sarah had to get the bike the right height for the seat. She said it needed handle bars so Carl added those. Then he put the blue boards against the bike and asked Sarah to add wheels. Then she said it needed a light stick. Carl drew a rectangle on paper. Sarah colored it and cut it out by herself (entirely) and taped it to the back of the bike by herself! Then they practiced directions as she pretended to bike around. This amazingness was following a royal flop on Tuesday morning of my printing pages about Pennsylvania for both girls to color. Amy loved it and Sarah would have none of it. I cried and felt helpless and hopeless and then realized that this totally proved why Sarah needs a special home schooling situation and not a typical school situation. The SR sessions proved to me how awesome we can be at teaching Sarah when we follow her motivation and have a low--distraction environment.

For Halloween, both girls were Dora the Explorer. Carl was The Map. I was going to be the Grumpy Old Troll but didn't get that costume made (though I have the personality down pat) so I just went with a dirndl that my mom got when she was in high school (I think). I pretended to be a dairy maid who had lost her cow and needed Dora's help. Sarah loved Carl as The Map. Amy wouldn't touch him!

In past years, Sarah's trick or treating has mainly involved wanting to go into houses. This year she still had some of that desire but was also interested in getting candy. Two years ago her favorite treat was a pencil. Last year she sometimes tried to put candy from her basket into the baskets of the people handing out candy. This year she came home with a much bigger haul than what Amy collected! At our house, we gave out toy spiders and skeletons. To trade for the girls' bounty, I made chocolates in all sorts of shapes and wrapped them in aluminum foil. I also had maple sugar candy that the girls could have and mini pumpkin pies with whipped coconut cream. Luckily, once they started on the goods that I prepared all was well. Sarah seemed totally fine with the whole deal. Amy really wanted to have what she received in her pumpkin basket. Technically, Amy could have it, but I wanted the girls to have the same treats and I don't think Sarah's body is yet ready for typical Halloween candy. I was a bit concerned that giving them treats first would mean they wouldn't eat dinner but when I brought out roasted chicken they dove in with as much exuberance as when I held the bags of chocolates.

The beginning of November marks the official 3 year anniversary of our Sarah-Rise Program.

3 years ago: Sarah had a handful of complete words, she could sign, and she could say the first sound of many words. She was not potty trained. She did not play imaginatively. She ate mostly junk food (ice cream, fries, donuts, butter pats). She was on some medication to help with appetite and digestion.

Now: Sarah speaks in sentences that most people can understand. She sings. She plays imaginatively. She is potty trained. She eats healthy, homemade foods. She is off all medication. Her physical abilities have increased (running, jumping, flipping around a gymnastics bar, riding a tricycle and a bike with training wheels). Her attention span and eye contact have increased. She is learning to read and write. She is learning to use scissors. She is beginning to learn some math.

Sarah's prowess in screaming has been a bit of a constant. This past week it seems to have increased. I'm not sure whether it is the chicken or the egg that I have had less space to deal with it gracefully or proactively. Sometimes I really don't enjoy being a mom or being here with the screaming. And sometimes it is pure heaven to have both girls climbing on me, Sarah giving me chin presses, Amy touching my face gently with her palm, and Sarah giving me kisses while Amy says, "Mom, I love you." Thank goodness for the balance. Even on the hard days I try to remember how healthy we probably all are, how much loving one on one time Sarah gets thanks to our amazing team of volunteers, how much our life is richly full and loving even when I might not meet my ideal standards at every moment (or at hardly any moment). We have a really amazing life.

Thank you all for being part of our amazing life!