March 29

I've been thinking a lot about quieting the noise. Not the noise of my children, although when they are both screaming and crying simultaneously I do consider wearing ear protection. I mean my own inner noise that follows almost any action or decision. I second guess, doubt, and should all over the place and that creates a lot of noise. What if I just assumed that what I did was good enough, fine, or even just right and excellent? 

What if I just simply enjoyed the amazing awesomeness of my life? Occasionally I have glimpses of realizing that I am the one making up or enforcing the rules that I think I must follow. 

I love it when many areas of the house are tidy and clean and I am caught up on cooking. Sometimes that doesn't happen and when it doesn't I am either stressed or calm. When I am tense about it, that is from believing it should be different and that I should do things differently. But, what if it is just ok that sometimes things are clean and sometimes they aren't? Sometimes we do playgrounds and art projects and I go to bed without cleaning the kitchen. For the first time since we started the reading and math programs I went to bed one night without refreshing my piles in preparation for the next day. And I lived. I told Carl that I was worried if I let it slip one night then I would mess things up for eternity. This was partially a joke but partially a true fear of a slippery slope of unpreparedness. Carl said that when I was out of town he had one night where he didn't prepare the word and math packs and that so far eternity was going pretty well anyway. Whew! So far things are still ok after my one night of not preparing. Last night I did prepare and I did clean the kitchen. I almost fully cleaned the family room, but not 100%. If I didn't second guess myself as much and think that I had to do the same level of everything all the time, maybe I could just easily and contentedly roll with our constantly evolving life. And maybe eternity will be ok. 

I spent some time yesterday coloring with Amy. We sat at the little art table and each colored our own page. Sometimes I helped her when she wanted to stay within the lines. When I first brought out my design coloring book and markers, Amy was clearly yearning for them. Instead of taking them or asking to use them, she said she was done with her crayons and she didn't know what she could use to color. Hmm. Carl and I talked out loud about her situation and how if we were in that situation we might ask. She still didn't. She just watched me intently as I colored. It was only when I asked her if it would help to know the answer would be yes that then she asked me if she could use my markers. Coloring together reminds me of when I was much younger and would just spend time coloring with my friends. It is very companionable and enjoyable. And it does not clean anything! It does not cook anything! So yesterday I felt very behind when I approached the kitchen after the girls were in bed. At first I felt like crying. Then I figured that since I was tired and hungry it would be good to first sit and have food. I did. Then I got up and did the cleaning. But I had also given myself permission that it would actually be ok to not clean and leave it for the next day. This is an ever evolving flexible dance of figuring out when I most will benefit by not pushing myself to clean, cook, clean, and when it is actually an enjoyable present to my future self to tidy things up a bit (and by a bit I mean possibly an hour or more). 

About Sarah... G. has noticed that at the beginning of a session is when Sarah strives to connect via statements that could be rephrased as questions. He has been casually/gently/enthusiastically/relaxedly helping her with this and she easily asks the questions once the wording is suggested to her. 

Sc. observed that Sarah seems to be faster with her conversational skills and that Sc wasn't needing to wait as long as she used to for Sarah to answer a question or make a comment.

Sonia and Sarah did an experiment regarding ice and how it would melt. They had cubes and chips in different amounts and they guessed which would melt first and then watched to see what would actually happen. 

The Dora baseball hat for Sarah finally arrived and peace reigns once more, at least where hats are concerned. Sarah mostly wears hers backwards, which gives her a slightly tough look, mitigated by the fact that the hat is pink and sparkly.

Sarah's flexibility around music has decreased. I used to be able to play all sorts of music and she would enjoy it and say what we were listening to. Now she wants dog music on my phone and nothing else. Dog music is what she calls a certain album of Disney children's music that has a picture of Pluto on the cover. This has been a favorite album since before she was 1 and her love of it has been rekindled. Almost any other music is met with screams and protests. And now Amy prefers no music. Of course. To be different from Sarah. I often suggest a compromise where we listen to dog music for a bit and then turn it off. If Amy forgets about turning it off then so do I. Because when I do turn off the music Sarah starts to yell and scream, or asks politely, anxiously, and repeatedly for it to be played again. But if it is played again then Amy gets upset. I can see they are both playing me to a certain degree, but sometimes all I want is peace and quiet. Or peace and dog music. Just please no yelling!

Amy had her 4 year well-visit with her doctor. Her doctor asked if she was getting enough servings of dairy products, mainly to give her calcium and vitamin D. Maybe this concern is routine. Maybe it is because she doesn't take a vitamin. While Amy does eat dairy, I think that perhaps the question from the doctor could be changed to encompass more sources of vitamin D and calcium. What about kids like Sarah who can't have dairy?? She gets almond flour and almond milk and juice from leafy greens, which all provide calcium. The girls eat salmon at least once a week and that is a source of vitamin D. And now that spring is here we will certainly be getting more sunshine.

I wish you all a pleasant eternity. May your moments not have too much noise of self-doubt or screaming. 

March 22

We are currently enjoying a visit from Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. Sarah has been connecting with them at almost every opportunity. She has joined games of memory matching or tea parties that Amy and Mom-Mom have been having.

Sarah continues to be a little dare devil. Earlier in the week I heard Amy yelling at Sarah to leave the shade up in their room. I found Sarah standing fully upright on top of the radiator and pulling the shade down. She got onto the radiator by carrying our large turtle stool across the room. This would be like a grown up carrying an arm chair in terms of proportions of size and weight. She also somehow got Amy's new Dora hat down from the coat rack, where I put the hat so Sarah wouldn't keep taking it. Apparently all I did was slow her down. I love her determined problem solving. I also now need to consider where she might try to go and if I really want something out of reach it needs to be behind the locked basement door.

I have ordered a Dora hat for Sarah. Not that I want to reward Sarah's screaming and taking of Amy's things, but Sarah does need a summer hat and, very selfishly, I just don't feel like refereeing this game.

During one of my SR sessions when we were playing with number cards, I started taking combinations of 3 cards and saying math equations, the way I do with the dot cards. Sarah immediately wanted to be the one saying the equations. I gave her piles with the correct combinations and she put them on the floor while saying the right words. I don't think this means she can do math yet, but I think she is understanding the concept and the language, which was my main goal with the How to Teach Your Baby Math approach. 

I think Sarah is answering casual conversational questions more. One day she knocked on the laundry room door, waited until she heard Sonia say, "come in" and then easily answered Sonia's "how are you?" with "good." This is amazing progress, and not to be sneezed at despite the fact that she completely barged through a closed bathroom door yesterday.

There was a day earlier in the week when prayers were increased for an amazing person that I know who is currently having a journey with cancer. Someone suggested doing everything we did in the day as an act of love and prayer. I did this often and I had the most Son-Risey day I have had in ages. I felt more loving, creative, and patient than I have in a long time. I realized I could have moments of loving prayer like this all the time for Sarah too, imagining her thriving and learning with ease, connecting with others with increased clarity, reading voraciously, writing up a storm, and processing not getting what she wants with calm grace.

I have been setting myself the goal of counting to 100 any time I start to feel annoyed. When I remember to do this it has a double benefit. I am able to shift my own energy and be calmer, clearer, and more how I want to be. I also am more aware of how much, or little, time passes when the girls are upset. Their upsets usually don't last long, they just can feel long. I don't think I have yet made it to 100 because so far my annoyance passes before I get there, or I totally forget to count and respond with my habitual grumpiness.

Speaking of habits, I have noticed that perhaps it is a habit for me to feel draggy and blah about my evening chores. I am noticing this and inviting myself to approach the tasks without pulling down, and perhaps even with a loving calm. They don't actually take that long and I do enjoy the results of a tidy house that is ready for the morrow.

Lots of love to all of you.

March 15

Yesterday we had Amy's birthday party (the actual day is in the middle of the week) and it was wonderful. I made a Donald Duck cake as per Amy's request. I found a recipe for white chocolate frosting that Sarah could eat and that I could dye with veggie based dyes I found at Whole Foods. 

For Amy's present from me, we went to Once Upon a Child a few days ago and bought used fancy dresses that she can wear for anything except outside running and climbing. (I got the idea from my friend R.) Sarah picked out a couple dresses and wore one for maybe an hour tops. There is so much growing awareness not to force children into stereotypical roles but I think it is good to remember that it is ok to honor them when they present themselves. Amy loves traditionally girly things and it is ok to run with that. Meanwhile, if Sarah could wear shorts or sports pants and flip flops all year long she would. We just make cold weather accommodations. For Amy's party, Amy wore a fancy dress and Sarah wore her Australian soccer jersey. I love this expression of their individual selves. 

Sarah and I had a great SR session this week. She was putting number cards into a blue bucket and I joined her. Then she dumped them and I said "splat!" She loved that. I started saying "plunk" as we put the cards back into the bucket. Then she picked up the 50 and said "safe." When she paused for a snack I made three categories. The green tissue box was "safe" and all the numbers written in green went next to the tissue box. The blue bucket was for blue numbers that went "plunk." In the middle went all the rest of the numbers with a "splat." I sorted them out loud and after a few minutes paused after holding up a card so that she could tell me where to put it. Then she came over to sort the cards herself. She needed lots of guidance but was definitely interested. When I wrote plunk, safe, and splat on the board, Sarah had a huge grin on her face. Later in the session we were looking at loose pictures and when she said "photo" I wrote it on the board. Again, she had a big grin. I love her growing delight in written words.

Last night before bed I read a book about a girl learning to read. I asked who in our house was learning to read. Sarah said, "Sarah." Amy said, "the birthday girl's sister!"

A few days ago we read Wacky Wednesday by Theo LeSieg (aka Dr. Seuss). The pictures have all sorts of things that are wacky and the reader's job is to find them. Amy and I found most of them but Sarah found a few. If you saw a pair of socks go flying, that was when Sarah pointed to the side-by-side traffic light that had the wrong colors paired with stop and go. I hadn't even noticed it as being wacky. For Sarah to know it was wacky means that she was definitely reading the words and knowing which word usually goes with which color. Awesome!

Both girls continue to experiment with new ways to go up and down our stairs (otherwise known as new ways to give me white hairs!). While I get nervous about them falling, I am totally impressed with how they want to make new challenges for themselves. I love that Sarah is a little daredevil. When she was a few years younger I never pictured her climbing up the stairs with one foot on the tiny ledge of the baseboard trim. Then again, perhaps she comes by this honestly. I used to climb up the outside of the staircase in my childhood home, all the way to the second floor, much to the fear of my babysitters and to the trusting credit of my parents. I think I am glad that we don't have that kind of staircase at our current house. 

Sarah's participation in simple games continues to increase and improve. She and Amy and I played Busytown, a cooperative game based on Richard Scarry's books. We played half of the game together. During my SR time, Sarah and I played several turns of Dominoes. 

When G. arrived Friday, he was wearing new jeans and we know how much Sarah loves such things. As he greeted her, G. said enthusiastically, "Go ahead, tell me I have new jeans." Sarah responded, "You are wearing new jeans!" This was totally awesome correct grammar and pronoun use. Sarah is clearly open to being corrected with her sentence structure and is increasingly using correct grammar. With L., Sarah created a game where she addressed each book and number card in the room with "Hello _____, how are you?" Within the  last week I had updated our goals to helping Sarah ask simple questions, but I didn't email them to the group until L. was in her session. And then Sarah started doing it all on her own! The next step is to help her expect, and wait for, an answer.

With Sc., Sarah initiated taping a small circular container of hand lotion to the wall and saying it was a smoke detector. With M., Sarah played a little bit of Twister and then made the Twister mat a boat. I love the conversations I have with my volunteers after their sessions, where they say things like, "after we went to the store..." or "when we were at the coffee shop..." as if these things were so real. Because they were. Pretend real. Real pretend. Full real wonderfulness. Real wonderful pretendfulness.

I wish you all wonderful realness.

March 9

I just returned from a mini-vacation in Montana visiting one of my dearest friends, G. She, her sister E., and I have all been best friends for almost 34 years. It is amazing to me to watch Amy play with her playdate buddy, realizing that I was that size when I met G. and E.

My shared birthday with Amy is fast approaching and I had more of a pang of "egad! mortality!" than I have ever experienced before. I will be turning 38, which is easy to round up to 40. While I know this is still quite young, it is certainly not 20. I am grateful with each year I get older because I so do want to get old, healthily and vibrantly old. Realizing that Carl and I have been together for longer than some of our team members have been alive is also rather staggering. We just passed 18 years of being together.

I had a wonderful time in Montana. I got to scoop horse manure, ride a horse (at a slow walk in a ring), go snowshoeing, play several rounds of Bananagrams (I lost every game), and watch many episodes of a fun tv show.  It was lovely to see Amy's joy at my return. Sarah was more in a whiney, grumpy mode so it felt harder to be snuggly with that. I also feel a tiny bit overwhelmed about getting back into the swing of things.

Carl took the girls to the art museum while I was gone and they had a wonderful time. He also took them sledding and built large snow-people with them.

My flight this morning was at 6am so I have been up for a very long time already. I slept a bit on the planes, but I am feeling quite tired. 

Carl and I figured out that Sarah has by now learned close to 185 words since we started the reading program at the end of January. Wow! That is a lot of words.

I hope you are having easy Mondays. I think this may be my shortest update ever! 

March 1

It has occurred to me recently that just because I might be unhappy in a given moment or feel struggly about something in our life or program, it doesn't mean that I am failing. This may be obvious from the outside, but it was a revelation to me. While I can speak excitedly about our success and our current program, when things feel challenging then on a deep level I am thinking it means I am failing at something because of my belief that absolute unadulterated success would have a completely joyful Jenny at the helm. And yet, the comprehensive amazingness of doing Sarah-Rise is how much I learn, grow, and change alongside of Sarah. That means that the whole process, grit and all, is what this successful journey looks like. 

I also realized that while I embrace the theory of the Option (Son-Rise) process of non-judgemental questioning of myself/actions/beliefs, I do not actually do it very often. My intention going forward is simply to ask myself why I got upset in a given moment. I don't have to go down a long road of dialogue, but I at least want to take the first step and give myself a moment to think. This is different from what I usually do of mentally shelving it for some future date when I will sit with myself for so long that I will sort out and fix everything. :)

As you know, one of my frequent challenges is when Sarah yells or whines. My current goal with these moments is simply to listen and not need to shut it down. I often feel a visceral need to shut it down, but that hasn't really been working and that isn't being as loving and accepting as I want to be. Not that I will give her what she is screaming for, but if I could at least allow it rather than bracing myself with anger, judgement, resentment, and disdain, then that would be a step in my preferred direction. Or if I need to walk away I would like to do so more cleanly.

We are still going backwards in terms of food as I try to determine the cause of her skin rash that has been present for at least two weeks. Most of the time I am ok with this but sometimes I feel sad, daunted, upset, failing, and despairing. This morning I am feeling ok and more like a detective combing through my records of food and rashes to see if I can find a pattern.... I just discovered something in this very moment and I am super excited!!! I went back to Sarah's lab results from the naturopath and relearned that Sarah is allergic to pinto beans. Half of the Beanitos I was giving her were made with pinto beans!! I had removed all Beanitos about a week ago but sometimes an allergic reaction can take a few weeks to go away. This means once everything is clear for a while I can retry the black bean Beanitos. YAY!!!! And maybe it isn't soy milk or miso (or maybe it is; I will go slow reintroducing these items)! It could still also be bananas and it will be a long time before I try one of those again for her. Another possibility is that since Beanitos and Terra chips are made with either safflower or sunflower oil, maybe she is ok with one kind of oil but not the other. Time to buy some safflower oil to test once her skin is clear. 

I am experimenting with being gluten-free in my own eating. This is relatively easy since most of what we have in the house is grain-free and thus gluten-free. It has been interesting going to parties and realizing that I can't just eat anything and everything. I have more appreciation for Sarah and what her experience might be and why she likes her preferred foods so much. I think I am feeling better being gluten-free but sometimes I think I'm making it all up. I'm going to stick with it for at least a few months. If I do in fact feel better, then that is exciting. I also notice I feel much better when I tidy the house each night. And... I also feel like throwing a tantrum. I don't want to feel better being gluten-free! I don't want to feel better when I clean the house every night! I want to eat wheat bread and have a messy house and be happy with that! La la la! (as Sarah used to yell in protest).

Part of my evening routine involves refreshing the packs of word cards, dot number cards, and math equations. I'm still not confident about how much math is being retained but I think the concept of addition is probably getting through. I haven't presented any opportunities for Sarah to show what she knows because I feel scared of the answer. This is so different from the word card experience where I often give her chances to show what she knows and I am comfortable when there are a few words she doesn't yet know. 

At school Sarah was touching the numbers on the calendar while saying each number. Since the calendar is for teachers only, she was redirected. She went to the word board and pointed to a word and said what is was. Awesome! Another day the teacher asked her what a letter was in a word that they were going to read and Sarah just said the whole word. Yesterday Sc wrote some words on the board during her SR time and Sarah spelled them out and said what they were. 

We now have part of one wall in the SR room painted as a white board. Sarah's favorite book right now is You Are (Not) Small by Anna Kang. During some of my SR time I wrote "big" and "small" on the board in various sentences (Sarah is small. Sarah is big. Amy is small. Amy is big. Mom is big). Sarah read them and wrote her own "Big" in the clearest writing of "B" and "g" I have yet seen from her. One day there was water on the kitchen counter and Sarah started writing numbers with the water with her finger. She did the clearest "5" I have ever seen her do. With Sonia, Sarah copied words that Sonia wrote on the white board. I have a theory that Sarah's writing will improve the more she learns to read because conveying words will be more interesting and desirable.

I started trimming some of the word cards to fit in the storage box (which is almost full) and Sarah wanted to do it. I drew a line for her to follow and she cut at least 3 cards, doing a great job following the line. This was through poster board so I was extra impressed. That takes some serious strength for little hands. After a while Sarah wanted to be the one drawing the line so I let her do so and she did a good job with that too. 

Sometimes I draw circles and model filling them in with circular movements, following a suggestion from another Son-Rise mom who developed a program called "Writing Made Easy." So far Sarah is quite interested in doing her best to do the same movements.

Sarah has now zipped her coat zipper many times all by herself. Sonia and I figured out that there are two key ingredients towards a successful zip: hair in a ponytail and good lighting.

Sarah and I had a full USA geography session where we had a laminated map and scotch tape. I gave her small pieces of tape and pointed to a state to tape while saying the name. We taped the whole US. I don't know how much she retained but I think the exposure to all the names and state shapes was probably good. And it was fun and interactive.

Sonia has been doing a science experience with the girls involving 4 small cups, each containing one of the following: sand, clay, dirt, small rocks. There are cards with labels and Sarah places them correctly each time. The first week they felt the contents. The second week they looked at pictures and said what they thought each picture contained (eg. a picture of a desert). This week they added water to each cup to see what would happen to the contents. 

One night, Carl was reading from a book of Peanuts comics to Amy for her bedtime story. The story involved Linus having trouble with math. Sarah, from her position of already trying to go to sleep reached out her hand and said "For Linus." Carl asked what she gave him and she said "math cards." I love this so much!! I also love Carl so much. When I hear him creatively connecting and trying new approaches to get cooperation with getting dressed I am just so amazed and in love. I also delight in the moments when we give the girls rides up or down stairs, pretending to be horses, ducks, boats, bicycles, or planes depending on the request of the moment. These rides sometimes come after frustrating moments or venting to each other about our stresses and then we shift into play and I marvel at the shift. I love our general delight in play. 

I recently observed a few moments of the girls in their gymnastics class. Sarah used to refuse to even attempt going sideways across uneven parallel bars but now she does it like a pro.

May you be a pro today at any challenge from yesterday (or at least make a wobbly attempt).