July 22

I took the girls grocery shopping because I didn’t know if I would have any time to go without them. Overall trips to stores are going pretty well but Sarah doesn’t stay with me easily. It feels tricky to navigate giving the girls more freedom. Amy is more responsible and reliable. I know she is aware of where I am and can find me if I am nearby. I know Amy won’t leave the store without me. Sarah walks away to follow her interest and I don’t know if she would come back to find me if she needed me. I don’t trust her to stay in a store. Luckily, she likes to do things repetitively so often she wants to go in and out of area rather than fully leaving. Still, it feels extremely frustrating to tell Sarah to stay with me and then have her wander off. Over and over and over again. Given that we have been in stores that are mostly empty and that she doesn’t go too far (but does go out of my sight) this is ok and I feel that she is safe. But. It is the principle of the thing. If I tell the girls to stay with me then I want them to stay with me. I don’t want to have to remind them 100 times. Amy does stay with me. Sarah doesn’t. At the grocery store we did have an extraordinary moment. I realized I had forgotten something and wanted to zoom back a couple aisles to get it. It felt like pulling teeth to get Sarah to come back with me so I asked Amy to just keep an eye on her. When I came back one minute later I found Amy leading Sarah in stretching exercises. That was so brilliant and creative! I don’t know if Amy was thinking about a way to keep Sarah occupied and in one place or if she just wanted to play in the empty aisle. Either way, I’ll take it! 

A week ago Sarah had her annual audiology appointment. We have known that her hearing in her left ear hasn’t been perfect for years and that her right ear hearing has been almost perfect. The right has a tiny hearing loss and the left has significant loss. I didn’t fully understand this when the audiologist explained it. I did understand it when the ENT we saw this week went over the results again. The audiology test also suggested that Sarah has fluid or wax that isn’t draining. Given that and Sarah’s repeat ear infections earlier in the year, in late September she will get tubes put in her ears. After that we will do another audiology test. If there isn’t any improvement then we can consider a hearing aid if we want. We don’t absolutely need to because her right ear is functioning so well, but with my current frustrations due to Sarah’s unresponsiveness I am leaning in that direction. I can’t tell how much of her ignoring me is on purpose and how much is that she doesn’t hear as well as she could. 

Amy did float-swimming on her back independently! She did it so smoothly that I didn’t realize the instructor wasn’t holding her head. Sarah asked to float by herself and did so for about 1/4 of a second. The main challenge with Sarah’s swim lessons at the moment is to get her not to drink the water when she dips her face in the pool. She spits it out, but so far we haven’t been able to get her to keep her lips fully closed. 

Sometimes I am tired of small people needing things from me. I am tired of small people fighting and yelling and whining. I am tired of Sarah being a budgy nudgy older sister antagonizing Amy simply for the sake of doing it. From people who grew up with siblings I understand this is par for the course, but oh my goodness! I am so tired of it. I am tired of Sarah’s whining and screaming and anger when I tell her no about something (and end up yelling at her because she doesn’t listen to the first 5 or 10 times of my saying something nicely/calmly, so then we are both yelling and mad and I am feeling like a bad mom and like I just want to be done momming). Then I feel bad for feeling tired of it all when I have had sitters for some part of almost every day this week. Thank goodness for sitters is all I can say! (Carl has had a lot of work travel lately and is away at the moment.) 

On the plus side, last night I had a salad with my dinner and Sarah asked for some! She ate a baby spinach leaf! I cheered mightily. Amy then asked for one and took a small bite, for which I also cheered mightily. The girls have also been sweet, helpful, creative, silly, and snuggly on many occasions, both piling onto me to give me love, which fills my heart and makes up for the hard times. 

Amy and I have been cruising through the Ramona books that we have. I am really loving reading chapter books out loud. The Ramona books are so good.

Lots of love to all of you. May the sweet moments balance the challenging ones.