July 18

Sarah has been making amazing progress in the pool. She now loves walking all around in the area where the water just comes to her chin. She lets us pick her up, she lets me sometimes encourage her legs to be behind her. She is skilled at spitting out water accidentally ingested. Amy continues with her love of water, though she is doing less supported swimming than before and more water play on her own. They both love holding onto the rope marking the lap lane and using that to support themselves. I figure all of this is good for being comfortable in the water and the more they explore then the more they will understand how to move their bodies in water to do what they want. I have been enjoying getting to swim some laps too.

This week we went on the Just Ducky duck bus tour of Pittsburgh. When the bus was in the water, kids were allowed to take turns sitting at the wheel. Amy wasn’t interested at all. Sarah took to it like a duck to water. Most of the kids just kept their hands pretty still on the wheel. Sarah was steering for real and I think she surprised the driver a bit because he chuckled as he straightened our course. Sarah didn’t want her turn to end, but handled that pretty well considering the volume of protest she can sometimes attain.

For ballet class, I spoke with the teacher before class started about staying a bit at the end to help Sarah transition. The teacher was very supportive of this idea. So, of course, there was no screaming or running away and Sarah didn’t even quite finish the class. She was still quite distracted at moments throughout class and didn’t want to do some of the activities. For the last activity that she didn’t want to do, I went in and said she could do the leaping over the pond or she could come sit outside of the room with me. She opted to come with me and enjoyed watching traffic. Ballet class helps me access such feelings of pride, frustration, despair, anger, and hopelessness. It is actually refreshing to notice that that used to be how I felt a lot of the time and now I hardly ever feel that whole packet of feelings.  I figure that this is like when I palpate a muscle and am glad to find sore spots so I know where to focus. This gives me good practice at affirming, reaffirming, and reaching again for loving Sarah regardless of her level of participation, and being happy and at ease regardless of her participation. The teacher is lovely and still seems happy to have us there so that is awesome and isn’t to be taken for granted. 

When I showed Sarah a word card that had “through” as part of the phrase that was new for the day, she said, “enough.” I am so thrilled that she seems to be learning some phonic rules even when we are focusing so strongly on sight word memorization and even if English is such a crazy language that “ough” has different sounds depending on the word. 

I still had many rough emotional moments throughout the week, but overall I felt like I was in an upswing. Part of this was due to a helpful suggestion from a friend following my last update. She suggested that I allow myself to feel the heartbreak. As soon as I stopped resisting that there could be heartbreak left within me, then it eased and I felt better. I so much wanted to be done with heartbreak that then I was keeping myself stuck feeling it instead of moving through it. 

Yesterday I was having a bit of a struggly moment again and I experimented with telling myself in my head, “I’m doing a good job.” I was rather surprised by how good this felt to my being, as if I was a wilting plant receiving water. Sometimes I can feel silly saying such affirmations, but they can be so helpful in counteracting the silent shouting voice of criticism in my head. That inward shouting can be so constant that I don’t notice it is happening and I only notice I am feeling crappy, believing my doubts to be true instead of just mean things I am saying to myself. So, my goal for this week is to say nice things to myself, even if it just to remind myself occasionally that I am doing a good job. This is all subjective, but I have a sneaking suspicion that telling myself I am doing well will actually better help me attain my goals. Darn it all! :)