December 7

We started our day with a group meeting. I am consistently amazed by my volunteers with their creativity, thoughtfulness, and dedication to our program. Seriously!!! I have the best volunteers! We have lots of new plans for our time in the room and I'm excited to change the room around a bit. We are going to get a slightly bigger table and have two chairs so we can work on having Sarah sit and do an activity at the table with her partner of the moment. We are going to bring back some games of old and introduce new games that she may be ready for. We are going to paint the walls to be chalk boards and maybe white boards. We are going to first and foremost help her express herself when she doesn't want to keep doing an activity. She is very clear about this with body language but we want to have it be verbal and then we will honor it immediately. If she tells us she doesn't want to do something, ok! Then we will gradually nudge towards expanding the length of time she sticks with something that may be challenging or slightly non-preferred. In many ways we have been doing this from the beginning, but it is new to focus on the moments when she suddenly switches to discussing bicycles or sock marks as times when she maybe could verbally say, "I don't want to do this anymore" or "this is too hard" or "help."

At the beginning of the meeting we reflected on how Sarah has changed since we each did our first session compared to our most recent session. We also noted things that felt the same. For me, there is a sparkly silent magic quality to the air in the Sarah-Rise room, and that has been present from day one. I am not always aware of it, but I often am. It is something that I don't experience anywhere else (yet).

Some highlights from the week... Sarah and I had looked at a world map and I showed her where Sb now lives in Brazil. Sarah immediately said "bicycle!" I said we could ask Sb if they have bicycles in Brazil. A couple days later, after we discussed what a tandem bicycle is, Sarah said, "Sarah squished a tandem bicycle in Brazil." Indeed! That sentence melds topics from sessions with multiple people into a creation uniquely her own.

During her session with J., Sarah spontaneously and independently went to the chalk board to draw a bike. During her session with L., Sarah was talking about a red bicycle and L. brought down paper and markers. L. asked what came first, expecting Sarah to tell her what to draw. Instead, Sarah said, "r...e...d." Sonia has been asking Sarah how various words are spelled and Sarah is nailing many of them and is quite attentive to Sonia's help for the ones she doesn't know.

At school, Sarah drew smiley faces on the easel and none of the adults saw her do it. When the teachers asked who had done the drawing Sarah didn't claim ownership, but another child said that Sarah had done it. Sonia said that they looked like Sarah's work and then Sarah did affirm that they were hers. 

Both girls are doing an amazing job of participating in gymnastics and learning new things. Sarah's strength at home on the gymnastics bar is incredible. Watching her control I am struck by how strong her hands and forearms are, along with everything else, and I think this will help with her writing and cutting skills. L. noticed that Sarah's ability to do snaps has improved dramatically in the past two weeks, and I think this is from increased hand strength.

Sarah has taken to saying she is traipsing along. She learned this word from Mo Willems' Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. I have learned from this book as well. The moral of the story, as Mo writes it, is "If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave." I have been using this as my reminder motto to leave the room when the yelling commences. Combined with just letting the kids play on their own more made this week feel much easier overall than it might have in the past. I had 3 days when I was the only grown-up for most of the day and overall I totally rocked it. We did errands, we did history lessons, we did art projects, and I stayed happy and relaxed 90% of the time. I felt like I stopped being afraid of my children and their upsets. Today there were some hiccups to this new profound simplicity, but I think I am regaining my equilibrium faster and realigning with my intentions. 

On Tuesday morning I gave two small lessons while we looked at pictures on the computer. I showed the girls pictures of the Wright Flyer, the first flight, the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop and bikes, my dad's students making the Wright Flyer, and my dad dressed as Orville. In follow-up questioning to see how much they had learned, I asked who made the first airplane. Sarah responded, "Granddad." Clearly it worked to capture her interest to see a picture of him, but I also have some work to do! (They now both know it was the Wright Brothers). We also looked at pictures of the Big Bang. Then the girls colored pictures of old bikes and glued bits of buttons and fluff on black paper to artistically represent the Big Bang. I felt so awesome and powerful in my educational prowess after the discussions while at the computer and then I noticed that both were done in 15 minutes total! It felt like we were there and focused for at least an hour. That was a bit humbling but I was still quite pleased with the day. 

Sometimes when Sarah is crying she will pause and say, "sniff." Yesterday she did this and Carl asked if that was from Snoopy. In the midst of her upset, Sarah corrected him that it was Gerald (from Pigs Make Me Sneeze by Mo Willems). 

Sarah reached her milestones belatedly and it was easy for me to despair of her ever getting to a certain point. She didn't walk independently until she was almost 3. Watching her controlled flips I am reminded that just because she can't do something today doesn't mean she isn't going to knock it out of the park in the future.