Happy New Year! We celebrated New Year’s Eve at home with two other families. They are families of some of Amy’s best friends so she was not ready for the night to end at midnight. They could have played for many more hours. Meanwhile, Sarah went to bed at her usual 8:30! To pass the time until midnight Amy and her friends created a Bingo game based on events or important things from the year. Whoever won the game then got to tell everyone else to put on items of clothing or costumes from our dress-up bin. It was hilarious, with bunny ears balancing atop hats, and cat-paw mittens shoved onto feet.
It was a short school week with Sarah starting Wednesday and Amy starting Thursday. Amy used her few days before school started to finish her graphic novel pages based on chapters from How I Became a Ghost, which her class read. It is about the Trail of Tears. Amy was upset with herself for not spreading the work out more over winter break because then she could have done a panel a night instead of having to spend the better part of two days making many panels per day. That said, she got it done and her work was beautiful.
Sarah had a difficult time in art class on Thursday, being asked thrice by her teacher to stop what she was doing, and eventually being taken out of the class early. What was she doing? Putting charcoal on her face. For some reason that cracks me up. I understand the bigger point is that they want her to respond the first time they ask her to do or not do something. I feel the same way. And yet, at home it is not uncommon for Sarah and Amy to decorate their faces, especially if one wants to have stripes like a tiger. Or, maybe it started with Sarah wanting to decorate her face but when asked to stop she doubled down, as can happen at home. For the rest of the art project they will have her use different materials instead of charcoal.
Thursday afternoon we had our customary dentist appointment field trip where the girls and I all had appointments one right after the other. As we were sitting in the waiting room, Sarah’s kindergarten teacher walked out, having finished her dentist appointment! The teacher and I did a double take after the initial polite hellos of strangers in a waiting room. It has been about 8 years since we have seen her, but she recognized us. And Sarah recognized her right away. We have often seen friends when we go to the orthodontist but this is the first time our social meeting area was at the dentist.
Carl was away for a business trip for a few days which meant that Sarah slept in my bed. In the past it has worked to tuck her in, finish cleaning the kitchen or whatever else I want to do downstairs and then going to bed at my normal time. This time Sarah wouldn’t go to bed without me so one night she started helping me clean the kitchen so I could be ready for bed earlier.
Now I am the one away for a short trip so I wasn’t at home yesterday when it snowed. At one point Carl wondered where Sarah was. Then he heard a scraping noise and went to investigate. Sarah was outside and had shoveled nearly our entire sidewalk! Later she initiated standing on the dining room windowsill and was quickly joined by Amy. The window frames point out how much taller Amy is than Sarah because she has to scrunch to be contained by the window, whereas Sarah has window room above her head.
Lastly, there was one morning when I nudged myself to be more present with Sarah as she was repeating the usual things she likes to say. I reminded myself of how wonderful it was to have time with her and just felt a lot of love for her whole being. As I became more aligned with that energy and way of being in myself, she suddenly looked at me with more sparkly presence in her own eyes. It was a good reminder of how I want to be more often and that Sarah can feel it without my saying a word.
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