July 1

Summer camp is complete, so now I really feel like we are on summer vacation. Both girls had a wonderful time. I enjoyed still having some kid-free hours, but I won’t miss sitting in traffic. I did over two hours of driving per day to get Sarah to and from her camp, some of which always involved sitting in slow-moving traffic.

Most days the girls applied their own sunblock easily and without complaint. If you have ever witnessed our history with sunblock then you know this is a small miracle.

Yesterday we went to the rally to support immigrant families being kept together in the first place and reunited if they have been separated. This was the first time the girls ever joined a march or rally. Since Carl was out of town I enlisted the help of one of our sitters/friends. Her presence was really important for my mental health. We took the bus there and back, which was an accomplishment in and of itself. I don’t take buses often so to figure out when and where I am supposed to be is an achievement. I had thought I could use my bus card for all of us but was informed I couldn’t. Once we got to the rally, the girls immediately started wilting in the heat and complaining about it. It was over 90. I plied them with snacks, snacks, and more snacks. We saw some friends. We heard a counter-protester. We left. Basically, as soon as the snacks ran out, we left. Still, now that we have done one of these and survived I think I will bring them to future marches and rallies. I had promised the girls that we would get frozen yogurt afterwards so that is what we did. On our drive to fulfill that promise, Sarah asked our sitter a question and prefaced it with her full name, “C___W___, what flavor are you going to get at the frozen yogurt place?” While it is no surprise that Sarah can speak well, sometimes she puts new sentences together so fluidly and clearly that my jaw still hits the floor. This was one such case. Perhaps you heard my joints cracking as my mouth tried to open wider than it could. In general I feel like Sarah’s speaking is crisper and more fluid and plentiful. She is also much clearer and fluid with reading out loud, which usually is more challenging for her than just speaking. The challenge seems to be falling away. 

One day when I picked Sarah up from camp I thought that she looked older. I could really believe that she is going into fourth grade. It seems right. A day later, G. commented that Sarah seemed to have grown up just in the past week. (As I reread these sentences I feel all this qualifying surge forth…it’s not really fourth grade. Well, it is, but with lots of help and she is still in a special room most of the time and she really is more like a kindergartner or first grader in terms of her academic skills, and she still whines and yells so much about little things… as if somehow with all of my sharing of her growth I need to make sure you know that we are still working to grow more and that parenting her is still hard sometimes.)

The rest of yesterday after the rally involved naps, electronics, pizza, chocolate chip cookie pie a la mode (sooooooo goooood!), and generally not doing much. It felt really great. I realized that it has been a long time since I’ve done nothing except read a book all day. 

At bedtime, as I stood downstairs finishing the last few pages of my book, I heard Amy initiating a cleaning game with Sarah. When I came upstairs Amy informed me that now she liked cleaning and wanted to continue. Um…. This is amazing. What will be even more incredible is if it continues in any way today or ever. 

May you rally when you need to and rest when you need to.