“Mama, is it an alligator or a crocodile?”
“Well, that depends… when are you going to see it next?”
…pause… Sarah smiles as she gets the joke and belts out, “After a while!”
I have started telling Sarah, “I’ll see you after a while” when she gets on the bus. When she comes home I greet her with, “it’s been a while, crocodile!” So now her favorite thing to do when we snuggle is to trade repetitions of “it’s been a while, crocodile.” Sometimes she asks me why I said that when she came home. I explain that it had, in fact, been a while. On a normal day it is 8 hours between when she leaves in the morning and when she gets home. I also tell Sarah goodbye with “See you soon, Goodnight Moon” and I’m trying to think of parting phrases that might rhyme with “musical note” or “panda.” If you have any inspiration, please share it.
This past Monday I was teaching in the afternoon so Anna met Sarah’s bus and took the kids to swimming. Normally Sarah is fine with such an arrangement, but on Monday she was missing me and crying a lot. I appreciated that Anna let me know about Sarah’s feelings before they got back. The advanced notice allowed me to prep dinner and make school lunches before they got back from swimming, so when Sarah walked in full of tears and needing to snuggle, I didn’t have anything else I needed to be doing.
Sarah is in the final count-down as a seventh grader. She has 6 days of school remaining, but the last day has dismissal at 10am so it barely counts. On Thursday Sarah felt sick at school with too much phlegm and a headache. This happens regularly enough that her teacher doesn’t always call me right away, but tries to help Sarah get through it because then she is usually fine. On Thursday the usual tactics weren’t working so I was called. I was in the middle of teaching so I didn’t want to leave. I checked with my in-laws and they were available, but I also suggested giving Sarah ten minutes with an iPad. Evidently that did the trick of shifting her attention long enough that she reached equilibrium and didn’t need to come home early. I’m so grateful for Sarah’s teacher being calm and flexible in the face of Sarah’s routine bouts of not feeling well.
Sarah’s love of crocodiles has meant that she now wants to read all of our books that feature crocodiles. She remembered that Little Fox Goes To The End of The World by Ann Tompert has crocodiles and she found it on our shelves. I unfortunately remembered that there is a poem about a crocodile in Play Rhymes by Marc Brown, which we gave away months ago. This is not a book you can just buy new, but luckily I was able to order a used copy, and Sarah is thrilled to have it.
Amy’s fifth grade year is also winding to a close but she has more days than Sarah until she is done so she still has plenty of homework. I can see that my challenge going forward is to guide her and nudge her but not take too much responsibility for her doing her work because then I get frustrated and upset when she gets distracted by texting her BFF or playing on her iPod or who knows what else. I also need to become more comfortable with the idea that she might be late to school one morning because she is taking longer to get ready because who knows why. It has always been important to me to be on time and have my work done ahead of time, so it’s hard to realize that not everyone is quite as driven to achieve such things as I am. I need to let go and let Amy be herself. I know she also likes being on time and having her work done, but maybe doesn’t yet realize how to fully take ownership over the steps required to reach those goals. And how would she if I have always been the one driving things?
Last night Amy and Carl had a misunderstanding regarding bedtime and when Carl would read to Amy. They each were frustrated and Amy went to her room in tears after being unable to articulate why she was upset. Carl followed a few minutes later and it warmed my heart to hear them talking through the whole thing. Carl led beautifully by explaining how he had interpreted things and how he would have done things differently if they could have a redo. By then Amy had regained her calm and was able to share her side of things. It was so respectful and loving on both sides, with neither side assigning blame. Then they ended up having their usual nice time together with Carl reading out loud while Amy got ready for bed.
I did two one-hour massages (on separate days) for the first time since before my surgery and they went well! I think I still need to be conservative and not do more than two per week for a while, but it felt great to be working again. So if you are a client of mine, we can now look at our calendars, knowing that it may take a while to match up given how few massages I will do per week and that we are about to hit the summer, which means slightly less constant childcare than when the kids are in school. For the evening that I was out working, Carl reported that Sarah initiated unloading the dishwasher and proceeded to do all of it by herself, even using a stool to reach shelves that were too high. My jaw could not have dropped further as I learned this news.
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