August 25

We enjoyed our last two days of summer vacation with the help of our sitter A. I planned a day on Monday around the idea of parking once and walking to all of our activities. As it turned out, the parking time was limited and then due to traffic patterns, we ended up doing a short driving circuit 3 times. We went to a playground, Phipps (good food, but then too hot in the play shopping cart area so we all wilted), ice cream at Coldstone Creamery (for the first time since Sarah was maybe 5), and then a city pool. On Tuesday we went to the pool again. Amy is a veritable mermaid. Sarah did lots of excellent practice pushing off from the wall into floating and sometimes adding her backstroke. Then she would do what her swim school calls “shark arms” back to the wall. 

Tuesday evening we had Sc. back for SR time for the first time in several weeks. The girls were so excited that they started planning a surprise party, including pajamas of course! Amy spent at least an hour or more preparing the room and the sign directing Sc to the room. 

Amy’s first days of school went well. I felt teary dropping her off on Wednesday morning. I hadn’t felt that emotional and slightly nervous on her behalf since dropping her off for kindergarten. She has a couple of friends who sit at her table and she shares a locker with one of them. Some of her very best friends aren’t in her classroom, but she does get to see them at lunch and recess. She is already getting used to her new teachers and routines. There is something that feels extra special about Amy being in third grade, since my dad taught third grade for 37 years! Sarah skipped third grade because of our need to hop her forward so she won’t age out of school before finishing high school. So this is our only of having a third grader.

Sarah really really really didn’t want to walk Amy to school. Fortunately, she only had two days of doing so. So far, knock-on-asphalt-and-dirt-paths, afternoon pickups have gone more easily. It is a much farther walk for us than we had the past 3 years. Instead of ten minutes at Sarah-speed, it is more like 20 minutes each way. This is good exercise for all of us.

Sarah starts school tomorrow so we have been moving our wake-up time earlier and earlier. Yesterday you may have heard her screams of protest when I gently tried to rouse her. This morning, in stark contrast, she was up at 4:30, snuggling in bed with us, and then at 5:30 she barged back into her shared room with Amy, turned on the light and started loudly saying, “wake up! It’s Christmas!” I’m hoping that tomorrow is similar in terms of her level of energy.

I’ve been taking a John Barnes’ Myofascial Release class the past couple of days. It has been so many years since I last took one of these classes! I think it was long before having kids. I have learned so much and it has also been helping with some chronic hip pain that I’ve been having. For demonstrating one of the treatments, the instructor basically described the symptoms I’ve had. When she asked for a volunteer you can bet I was zooming to the front. I think I still need lots of work to undo years of trouble, but I feel hopeful. All of the work has been around the pelvis and hips, and yet, due to the nature of bodies and this work, the right side of my jaw is also feeling looser, though no one has worked there directly. I often get my hopes up with new possibilities of maybe helping my headache situation (currently controlled by meds) and so my hopes are up again about this because all of the hip/pelvis work feels so directly connected to my head.