Sarah’s newest snuggle-time favorite is for us to trade saying, “you are my dear, my dear.” It is very sweet. I have tried building more rhymes, such as “water is clear dear,” but that hasn’t taken off like the things that rhyme with “four.” She also says that the snuggling is giving her more forks (mental health energy). I have realized that often when she asks to do “my dear, my dear” it is best if I can accommodate even if just for 5 minutes. It doesn’t have to be a long break time, but she does request such times after doing a chunk of work or live meetings.
This week we had Mama Mouse School House as we did not have Anna here. Anna has created such a wonderful framework for Sarah’s school days that Sarah was open to my presence in a way that was vastly different from our time in March. I think she would happily spend all day doing step-by-step drawings of mice and musical notes, cutting out the musical notes, and taping them to her mice drawings. She made art for Carl, Amy, and herself and delivered it under doors and to our front porch. It is simultaneously amazing and humdrum that she can spend so much time attending to something I am doing and copying it. Her cutting, writing, and reading skills knock my socks off. She did a little math each day with a game Anna created called Mathematical Emergency. Sarah rolls large wooden dice, then Sarah writes the numbers as an equation in a notebook and uses a colorful step number line and a magnetic Paper-Sarah-Wearing-Musical-Notes figure to move up the number line and solve the equation. Then she writes the answer in her notebook. Anna created the materials and the game. Anna also works on writing and reading by using a white board to write sentences based on what Sarah has just been talking about. Sarah reads the sentences which are thus both new and familiar. For writing, Anna writes sentences in a notebook in pen with a dark line underneath on which Sarah can copy the text. I used both of these ideas, adapting them to help Sarah learn something about praying mantises. Whenever I would mention Science or History and suggest that I could read from a kids’ book and she could listen, Sarah would adamantly refuse with much screaming. But… if I surreptitiously read some of the text for myself and wrote out what I learned on the white board and in Sarah’s writing notebook then Sarah happily read and wrote about science. I feel sneaky and clever. Also, a baby praying mantis is very tiny. Sarah loves talking about how tiny she was as a baby and how the nurses called her “Peanut.” So it is easy to connect new information to a beloved topic.
Sarah helped me make my bed and hers with clean sheets, working on getting the fitted corner around the mattress corner. She also gets cereal for herself completely independently. She did 5 minutes of gym/PE daily including plank, push-ups, running in place or around the room, and jumping jacks. She read Goodnight Moon out loud many times. She practiced piano without (much) pushback. She did her live times without needing assistance from me, thus freeing me to check on Amy or do work in the kitchen. She did let me read (out loud) half of a book about Ben Franklin and remembered from earlier times with Anna that Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod. We had a good time together overall and it felt amicable and easy, especially once I learned not to mention words like Science or History. Each afternoon Amy led us in a Magic Class. We had Potions, Transfiguration, and Care of Magical Creatures. After the latter class, Amy rewarded the stuffed cats with toasted mice from our Mousetrap game.
Amy tried the Barracuda pre-swim-team class and HATED it. She felt new and awkward and like she wasn’t as good as the other kids. From my vantage point I had no idea she was struggling until I saw her face at the end. She was absolutely as strong a swimmer as the rest, if not stronger than some. She absolutely kept up with all that was going on. However, given that is was 1/2 hour drive each way and the class is at 7pm, I’m totally in support of her not joining this class and just continuing as a Shark 2 once her usual class resumes when covid-restrictions loosen again. I also don’t want to force her to do anything she hates. I feel like there is a profound lesson here somehow about how many of us can be struggling in various ways and thinking we aren’t up to snuff when we are doing splendidly to the view of observers. At the same time, if something feels too hard and not fun, it is actually ok to stop and not force it. There’s no formula that I know of for when to push through and when to stop, but I know I have certainly had moments of each throughout my life and was glad for each choice I made in whatever direction.
Yesterday Sarah and Amy decorated a gingerbread house that I had made over the course of a couple of days. The walls are so large that it needs two days of assembly and drying to be sturdy enough for decoration. I assisted Sarah in making musical notes out of nonpareils and candy canes. Amy made a face on her side of the roof. When we were done Amy had a great time acting out all of the emotions from Inside Out. Later in the afternoon we had a family zoom reunion with my step-mother’s side of the family and we all delighted in watching a slide-show of family members and seeing each other’s faces in live time. Sarah’s favorite part was racing wind-up reindeer that had been mailed to each household ahead of time. After the zoom, Sarah and Carl made a toy Goodnight Moon house from Legos. The roof opens and Sarah keeps putting a foot inside because she wants to be in the house. We finished the day with a snuggly evening of pizza and "The Muppet’s Christmas Carol.”
May you feel supported in all that you do, whether in stopping or persevering, or finding new paths to your goals.
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