February 28

I had thought that we were making progress with Sarah’s digestion and potty situation but it seems that we are not yet. I know that if the problem was too much gluten then it can take a few months to get it all out of her system. I had just hoped to have more clarity by now. The skin on her face is clearer than it had been a few weeks ago so that is something, whether or not it is related to anything else I don’t know. I alternate from thinking we can just chill out as we wait for homeostasis to return to thinking that I must start her on the GAPS intro again. There are cartoon pictures of Donald Duck when he is feeling glum and walks bent over with his arms dragging on the ground. That is sometimes how I feel.

I let myself notice verbally to myself one night that parenting Sarah is harder than parenting Amy. It is hard to parent someone who had a delicate digestive system but does not yet give me feedback in words about how her internals are doing. This is hard. That feels good to acknowledge. And… what if it wasn’t? what if I only think it is hard because I am believing it should be different? If I knew that I was doing the best I could and that it was somehow meant to be just as it is in all ways of Sarah’s development, then couldn’t that instead feel easy? I could just be here now and feel that I had arrived?

My headaches continue to be present off and on. Friday night I had seven hours of unbroken wonderful headache-free sleep. Last night my headache started before I went to bed, went through varying phases of intensity and has plateaued at a level 1 (mild) for what seems to be the remainder of the day. With the headache pain and my emotional pain of sometimes feeling like a lazy, not-good-enough Mom, I was able last night to hold the perspective that these are just feelings and not reality. The pain is not reality. Even when it feels deeply real, this perspective is helping me not panic another levelsworth of panic.

This past week we have done a new thing with our girl/grownup time. We have Sonia or Carl do 1/2 hour with each girl each day while I also do 1/2 hour with each. We start with one pairing and then trade part way through. This has been awesome and amazing. Just half an hour seems so easy and do-able and yet it is infinitely more than nothing. I love having the time to really focus on each girl, knowing that it won’t go on forever so I don’t need to be infinitely available, but giving me that time to work with more focus towards our goals for Sarah. I love giving myself more permission to really be with each girl with no feeling that I should do anything else, and I also give myself more credit for these times than I tend to for all the non-measured times I attend to them in varying ways, which I realize are far from nothing even as they feel intangible and invisible sometimes.

I am continuing to allow myself to have my times of sadness more often than I used to allow. I think this is helping me allow the girls to have their feelings without getting tight in an effort to shut those feelings down. Sometimes.

The most wonderful part of this week happened yesterday when I was out and Carl was with the girls. He and Sarah sang a duet of “I need a nap” from a Sandra Boynton book. This is a song Sarah has heard many times but singing a duet in this way seems new and amazingly wonderful. She has such passion.

February 21

Sarah read a level 2 beginning reader book, that she had never seen before, almost all by herself!!! The book was Miss Bindergarten and the Very Wet Day. Overall, she seems more comfortable with reading books than she sometimes has been.

I am getting better at letting the girls help with some tasks around the house. Sarah often helps fill the humidifier. This week Amy helped more with that too, using two pitchers at once. Sarah asked to help me fix dinner one night and she helped me cut strips of red pepper into chunks for cooking. Often I don’t want help, but I realize that that may be holding the girls back a bit with their capabilities.

Sarah had a rough morning on Wednesday, just as she had had a rough morning the previous week. She had lots of tears again. Thursday and Friday went mostly smoothly. We are still sorting out her digestion and dirty/clean undies situation. Setting a clear goal last week helped me move forward with removing eggs and sprouted wheat bagels from her diet (again). I think that maybe those items were ok in smaller amounts but having one or both every day in some form was not agreeing with her system. I don’t know if that is my hope or not, but I do hope to resolve the situation. My goals for Amy included having her drink more fluids and eat more fruits and veggies. Telling her specific amounts of how many servings seems to have helped tremendously and the past few days she has done an excellent job.

I had been on medication to prevent cluster headaches for quite a while and it is important not to be in a cluster for a year because my body may then get accustomed to headaches, whether they are severe or so mild that I don’t really count them. I tried to wean off of the medicine before I was clear of headaches because they were so mild it seemed safe to do. I went for few weeks without any problem but in the past week I have had real, no-joke, wake-me-up-in-the-night headaches. I am back on the meds. I have an appointment in April to have a nerve block shot in the back of my head to interrupt the cycle but I am going to call to see if I can move that appointment sooner. I am freaked out about the procedure but having two nights in a row with bad headaches helps me look past my squeamishness.

Sarah didn’t always like wearing hair clips and one day I mentioned that if she had bangs then she wouldn’t need a hair clip. She started asking for bangs and she felt strongly that Sonia needed be present. On Friday afternoon we all went to get Sarah’s hair cut and now she has bangs. I am still getting used to it, but I do enjoy not needing to find lost hair clips.

I am thinking of ways to re-energize our program so that we have more specific and individualized focal points for our times with Sarah, whether in or out of the room. I am inspired by how another Son-Rise mom organizes her home schooling with each volunteer focusing on a subject. We will see how this goes, but I feel excited.

February 14

Whenever something is harder than usual with the girls or amiss in some way I usually wonder what dietary thing I have to change. As I learned with Sarah’s hands (now resolved!), it isn’t always food. Last weekend was rough, Monday was rough, Tuesday was rough but then led to wonderful things. I think Sarah was the canary in the coal mine of my emotions. I was tense, tight, grumpy, fearful, etc. Sarah had a melt down Tuesday morning so that I had to bring her home from school right away because of inconsolable crying. She had been saying she didn’t want to go to kindergarten, but she says that often enough that I wasn’t paying attention to it as real. I guess she was right that it wasn’t the best thing for her that day. What was good was trying and needing to get her because then all of my feelings came to the surface and could no longer be denied. I had a huge good cry with my mom and then a helpful conversation with M. I felt much calmer inside. By the time we got to the evening and Sarah was crying about wanting Carl, I was able to see that this was the perfect opportunity to give her the kind of session I had had in the morning. I just held her and listened to her and even was glad when Carl took longer than usual to come home. I wanted to get that sadness out so that Sarah could uncover her sparkly self again. And she did. Wednesday morning felt like we were back to normal and she easily went to school. I didn’t have to solve anything, I just had to let our storms rain.

My mom is in the wonderful process of hoisting me on my own pitard of Alexander technique wisdom as it pertains to my feelings and how I approach parenting. It isn’t that I need to try harder to do the same habitual things. It is that I need to find my ease and awareness of the whole. I need to try different things. The means whereby I get where I want to be is to let my own tears flow when they are there, not to tamp them down. I can ask myself why I have the tears and related feelings, but not in a yelling tight sort of way, which is how I sometimes do it. A good hard cry can feel so good. It is like a deep clean of my soul. Now, please don’t (do) use my own words against (for) me to remind me when I forget. :)

My work has also provided me with an insight. For years, when it comes to my work, it seems that all I have to do to change my flow of clients is to have the clear thought of what I want it to be. When I need cancellations I usually get them. When I want to be busier, I start getting calls. I recently decided that I would like to see a few more clients than I have been, perhaps seeing two instead of one during each of my general office times. As I decided this, I was contacted by 3 new people within the week. Wow. So, how can I use this to further my parenting goals? I think it is to just clearly state in my head how I want things to be and then not worry about it. This feels foreign and also like a bit of a relief. Why not try it? 

Sonia was out sick for 3 days this past week and as with past times I was totally able to rock the situation (Tuesday's meltdown counted as rocking it) and it also pointed out how I am glad I don’t have to do it that way every week. I got everyone where we needed to be and stayed on top of the cooking, groceries, cleaning, etc. I just didn’t sit down for meals or eat quite enough sometimes or read my book or snuggle with my girls as often as I usually might. This helps me see that in the weeks when I do have Sonia and feel like I’m not doing much because I sit around a lot, that is doing something and it is how I want to be. I want to be that much more relaxed in my pace and available to snuggle, read, and play games.

I have been thinking about parenting and how often and how much I judge myself. I have also been thinking of body image and how for the past several months even if I might have little self critiques especially regarding what the scale might say, when I look in the mirror I think something like, “There is no truth other than that I look fabulous.” I just won’t allow other thoughts because they are ridiculous. What if I could think the same thing about my parenting? That seems less clear, but worth a try. “There is no truth other than that I am a wonderful parent.” Even when I yell, get grumpy, cry, and don’t get my kids to eat enough vegetables. (I feel rather naked after writing this paragraph but want to share in case it is useful for other people looking in mirrors or at their parenting. Now let me put some more word clothes on.)

We are in the midst of a lovely visit with Grammy and Granddad. I love how glued to people Sarah can be sometimes. She just moves right in on their laps. Amy is usually a bit uncertain and shy to begin with and takes longer to warm up to comfort. Amy has easier connections with other children, but Sarah has social connection with grown-ups down pat.

I wish you all a happy Valentine’s Day. I have always loved this holiday and seen it as a chance to express love to everyone that I know and love. So, I love you all. Thank you so very much for your presence in my life. Your reading my words and witnessing my journey means a great deal to me and really does help support me so I can think more clearly and love more fully. 

There is no truth other than that you are all fabulous.

February 7

Last week when I wrote I wanted to keep everything focused on the positive side because all of what I wrote was so true and I didn’t want to take away from it at all. The details that didn’t make it in had to do with our ongoing potty journey that is most of the time fine and not an issue but every once in a while is an issue. I felt discouraged and as if we will never figure out the food situation or the possibly related potty situation. I think having the nine year mark made things seem more desperate because if it has been nine years we should have this figured out by now. But why? It was incredibly helpful once I realized that it will actually be ok if Sarah and I spend our whole lives trying to figure out the right food situation for her and if she never gets the potty stuff 100%. She is at 95% and if she is there for her whole life that is actually really ok.

I was also a bit grumpy about some misinformation regarding food that I had been giving Sarah. We order half hogs from a local place and when I first started doing this it was because the description passed muster and the sausages were seasoned only with salt and pepper. Or so I was told. Thanks to an error with my latest hog order, instead of being given sausage links I was given bags of ground sausage. Bags with the ingredients printed. Ingredients such as MSG. ACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do not know if these were the same ingredients in the links, but I do know the links were not just with salt and pepper as I had been told. Argh!! I try to be so careful and then this!?!?!?! On the plus side, I am so glad that there was the error so I could find out the bigger error and this will be the last hog we get from these people. Apparently, Sarah is also ok with those crappy ingredients, though I still want to avoid them for all of us.

Yesterday was a very hard day. I was with the kids a lot all week and most of the time it was easy and in flow and even when I had to tell them no it felt ok for me. Having a hard time yesterday seemed like it came from nowhere, but maybe I was just ready to not be so available to the kids. The food and potty situation for both is also on my mind and I’m stressing a lot about it. I try so hard to give them a variety of healthy options and to make sure they get enough fruits and vegetables. They often do have choices which then makes it harder if and when I want to say, “this is what we are having.” They also have different preferences of how they eat their fruits, veggies, and protein and there isn’t a ton of overlap. Most of the time this is ok. But when I do so much and then they still aren’t regular with their bodily functions and then they turn up their noses at something they used to like, then grrrr. I also feel so uncertain about moving forward with Sarah’s food options. I want to much to keep expanding them and I worry that I am doing so both too quickly and too slowly/controllingly. I have been tracking Sarah’s food daily for maybe 3 or more years and I still feel like I know nothing. I know that isn’t precisely true, but that is my feeling. So I had a good cry yesterday and that helped. Before the cry I also growled loudly into the kitchen air while the girls were in the dining room. It seemed to help diffuse things when I turned and assured them that I wasn’t mad at them, I was just feeling mad and frustrated in general.

I have been feeling renewed grief regarding William’s death. I just don’t understand how he isn’t around anymore. It’s not that I spoke with him often or saw him often, but his presence in this world was deeply important to me. He was just one of the best people to have ever existed. I also feel like my belief in the power of prayer and happiness and healthy choices is shaken. If so many prayers from around the world couldn’t change things for William and if his amazing outlook on life and love couldn’t change things then what hope do I have?! This feels very selfish to write because I know there are many who feel his absence more acutely than I do. But it is still on my mind and influencing my being and since this is the forum for sharing all of that, there it is.

Now the flip side… I was teaching Alexander Technique at the massage school earlier in the week and felt myself wanting to protect myself by inwardly judging some of the students or disliking them when I feared they disliked me/the work. I paused. I noticed. I let it go and chose to love them all with no changes to any of us needed. We had a great class. I had a good connection with the students I was nervous about. I felt like I was able to turn on my best Son-Rise self because of practicing that muscle with Sarah, because of thinking about how William moved through the world, because of knowing Sarah and I will be ok if we deal with food issues forever. That moment was such a gift.

Sarah had an awesome day on Thursday. It was her 100th day of kindergarten so they had cupcakes and hot chocolate and marshmallows. They made crazy hats. They wore pajamas. And when she came home there was a Gustavus sweatshirt waiting for her! Gustavus Adolphus is a college in MN that some of the girls' relatives attended. When Sarah was 2 her great grandmother got her a sweatsuit that was gray with black letters spelling Gustavus and stripes down the arms and legs. She loved it. Recently she has been asking for the sweatshirt and no substitute has been good enough. The college doesn’t make the same sweatshirts anymore. So Sarah’s amazing Grandma made her a sweatshirt. Sarah loooooves it. She was ecstatic as she pulled it over her head. Then she asked, “where are the sweatpants?” Ha! Luckily she seems to have let that slide, which is good since she had never mentioned wanting them before.

I hope your days are going well with space for all of your feelings and thoughts and being.