December 24: No More Goodnight Moon

I turned a game that Carl got for the girls into a drinking game. They don’t know that adults often play drinking games. What they know is that when we play The Fairy Game, a cooperative endeavor to save a garden, if someone draws an Old Man Winter card then everyone takes a drink of water. Keeping everyone hydrated is no easy task so clearly I just need to have us play the game daily. 

Sarah’s usual pattern with books is to love a book intensely and look at it all the time for weeks or months and then suddenly decide she is done with it and it needs to live in her closet or be given away. After years of loving Goodnight Moon and constantly wearing Goodnight Moon socks, she is done! She wants to give the book away and she actually thinks that I did already. What I did was hide it in the basement to await a change of heart. If she never wants it again that is fine but I learned my lesson after buying Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? multiple times. Sarah has also started wearing all of her other sock patterns. 

When she came home from her last day of school before winter break, Sarah walked in the door and burst into tears. She was so sad that she has to wait two weeks to see her bus driver again. She sat on my lap for half an hour crying and talking about her feelings. She only got up and took off her coat and shoes when Anna arrived, but then continued processing her feelings. She has been similarly sad after most of her naps lately, as if remembering anew that she has to wait to see her best bud. 

Amy worked her tail off doing homework before winter break. She still has one project that is due when she returns in January that involves making pages of a graphic novel to go with a book the class read. It’s not something she wants to rush, and I’m incredibly impressed with her work. I’m not surprised by her ability but I’m ever impressed with her increasing skill. 

After much deliberation and with input from my publisher, I have a new title for my book. In January 2025 you can look for Watching Sarah Rise: A Journey of Thriving with Autism. It is astonishing how much effort and debate went into the process of finding a simple title that everyone was happy with and that conveyed enough about the subject matter.