March 22

We are currently enjoying a visit from Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. Sarah has been connecting with them at almost every opportunity. She has joined games of memory matching or tea parties that Amy and Mom-Mom have been having.

Sarah continues to be a little dare devil. Earlier in the week I heard Amy yelling at Sarah to leave the shade up in their room. I found Sarah standing fully upright on top of the radiator and pulling the shade down. She got onto the radiator by carrying our large turtle stool across the room. This would be like a grown up carrying an arm chair in terms of proportions of size and weight. She also somehow got Amy's new Dora hat down from the coat rack, where I put the hat so Sarah wouldn't keep taking it. Apparently all I did was slow her down. I love her determined problem solving. I also now need to consider where she might try to go and if I really want something out of reach it needs to be behind the locked basement door.

I have ordered a Dora hat for Sarah. Not that I want to reward Sarah's screaming and taking of Amy's things, but Sarah does need a summer hat and, very selfishly, I just don't feel like refereeing this game.

During one of my SR sessions when we were playing with number cards, I started taking combinations of 3 cards and saying math equations, the way I do with the dot cards. Sarah immediately wanted to be the one saying the equations. I gave her piles with the correct combinations and she put them on the floor while saying the right words. I don't think this means she can do math yet, but I think she is understanding the concept and the language, which was my main goal with the How to Teach Your Baby Math approach. 

I think Sarah is answering casual conversational questions more. One day she knocked on the laundry room door, waited until she heard Sonia say, "come in" and then easily answered Sonia's "how are you?" with "good." This is amazing progress, and not to be sneezed at despite the fact that she completely barged through a closed bathroom door yesterday.

There was a day earlier in the week when prayers were increased for an amazing person that I know who is currently having a journey with cancer. Someone suggested doing everything we did in the day as an act of love and prayer. I did this often and I had the most Son-Risey day I have had in ages. I felt more loving, creative, and patient than I have in a long time. I realized I could have moments of loving prayer like this all the time for Sarah too, imagining her thriving and learning with ease, connecting with others with increased clarity, reading voraciously, writing up a storm, and processing not getting what she wants with calm grace.

I have been setting myself the goal of counting to 100 any time I start to feel annoyed. When I remember to do this it has a double benefit. I am able to shift my own energy and be calmer, clearer, and more how I want to be. I also am more aware of how much, or little, time passes when the girls are upset. Their upsets usually don't last long, they just can feel long. I don't think I have yet made it to 100 because so far my annoyance passes before I get there, or I totally forget to count and respond with my habitual grumpiness.

Speaking of habits, I have noticed that perhaps it is a habit for me to feel draggy and blah about my evening chores. I am noticing this and inviting myself to approach the tasks without pulling down, and perhaps even with a loving calm. They don't actually take that long and I do enjoy the results of a tidy house that is ready for the morrow.

Lots of love to all of you.

March 15

Yesterday we had Amy's birthday party (the actual day is in the middle of the week) and it was wonderful. I made a Donald Duck cake as per Amy's request. I found a recipe for white chocolate frosting that Sarah could eat and that I could dye with veggie based dyes I found at Whole Foods. 

For Amy's present from me, we went to Once Upon a Child a few days ago and bought used fancy dresses that she can wear for anything except outside running and climbing. (I got the idea from my friend R.) Sarah picked out a couple dresses and wore one for maybe an hour tops. There is so much growing awareness not to force children into stereotypical roles but I think it is good to remember that it is ok to honor them when they present themselves. Amy loves traditionally girly things and it is ok to run with that. Meanwhile, if Sarah could wear shorts or sports pants and flip flops all year long she would. We just make cold weather accommodations. For Amy's party, Amy wore a fancy dress and Sarah wore her Australian soccer jersey. I love this expression of their individual selves. 

Sarah and I had a great SR session this week. She was putting number cards into a blue bucket and I joined her. Then she dumped them and I said "splat!" She loved that. I started saying "plunk" as we put the cards back into the bucket. Then she picked up the 50 and said "safe." When she paused for a snack I made three categories. The green tissue box was "safe" and all the numbers written in green went next to the tissue box. The blue bucket was for blue numbers that went "plunk." In the middle went all the rest of the numbers with a "splat." I sorted them out loud and after a few minutes paused after holding up a card so that she could tell me where to put it. Then she came over to sort the cards herself. She needed lots of guidance but was definitely interested. When I wrote plunk, safe, and splat on the board, Sarah had a huge grin on her face. Later in the session we were looking at loose pictures and when she said "photo" I wrote it on the board. Again, she had a big grin. I love her growing delight in written words.

Last night before bed I read a book about a girl learning to read. I asked who in our house was learning to read. Sarah said, "Sarah." Amy said, "the birthday girl's sister!"

A few days ago we read Wacky Wednesday by Theo LeSieg (aka Dr. Seuss). The pictures have all sorts of things that are wacky and the reader's job is to find them. Amy and I found most of them but Sarah found a few. If you saw a pair of socks go flying, that was when Sarah pointed to the side-by-side traffic light that had the wrong colors paired with stop and go. I hadn't even noticed it as being wacky. For Sarah to know it was wacky means that she was definitely reading the words and knowing which word usually goes with which color. Awesome!

Both girls continue to experiment with new ways to go up and down our stairs (otherwise known as new ways to give me white hairs!). While I get nervous about them falling, I am totally impressed with how they want to make new challenges for themselves. I love that Sarah is a little daredevil. When she was a few years younger I never pictured her climbing up the stairs with one foot on the tiny ledge of the baseboard trim. Then again, perhaps she comes by this honestly. I used to climb up the outside of the staircase in my childhood home, all the way to the second floor, much to the fear of my babysitters and to the trusting credit of my parents. I think I am glad that we don't have that kind of staircase at our current house. 

Sarah's participation in simple games continues to increase and improve. She and Amy and I played Busytown, a cooperative game based on Richard Scarry's books. We played half of the game together. During my SR time, Sarah and I played several turns of Dominoes. 

When G. arrived Friday, he was wearing new jeans and we know how much Sarah loves such things. As he greeted her, G. said enthusiastically, "Go ahead, tell me I have new jeans." Sarah responded, "You are wearing new jeans!" This was totally awesome correct grammar and pronoun use. Sarah is clearly open to being corrected with her sentence structure and is increasingly using correct grammar. With L., Sarah created a game where she addressed each book and number card in the room with "Hello _____, how are you?" Within the  last week I had updated our goals to helping Sarah ask simple questions, but I didn't email them to the group until L. was in her session. And then Sarah started doing it all on her own! The next step is to help her expect, and wait for, an answer.

With Sc., Sarah initiated taping a small circular container of hand lotion to the wall and saying it was a smoke detector. With M., Sarah played a little bit of Twister and then made the Twister mat a boat. I love the conversations I have with my volunteers after their sessions, where they say things like, "after we went to the store..." or "when we were at the coffee shop..." as if these things were so real. Because they were. Pretend real. Real pretend. Full real wonderfulness. Real wonderful pretendfulness.

I wish you all wonderful realness.

March 9

I just returned from a mini-vacation in Montana visiting one of my dearest friends, G. She, her sister E., and I have all been best friends for almost 34 years. It is amazing to me to watch Amy play with her playdate buddy, realizing that I was that size when I met G. and E.

My shared birthday with Amy is fast approaching and I had more of a pang of "egad! mortality!" than I have ever experienced before. I will be turning 38, which is easy to round up to 40. While I know this is still quite young, it is certainly not 20. I am grateful with each year I get older because I so do want to get old, healthily and vibrantly old. Realizing that Carl and I have been together for longer than some of our team members have been alive is also rather staggering. We just passed 18 years of being together.

I had a wonderful time in Montana. I got to scoop horse manure, ride a horse (at a slow walk in a ring), go snowshoeing, play several rounds of Bananagrams (I lost every game), and watch many episodes of a fun tv show.  It was lovely to see Amy's joy at my return. Sarah was more in a whiney, grumpy mode so it felt harder to be snuggly with that. I also feel a tiny bit overwhelmed about getting back into the swing of things.

Carl took the girls to the art museum while I was gone and they had a wonderful time. He also took them sledding and built large snow-people with them.

My flight this morning was at 6am so I have been up for a very long time already. I slept a bit on the planes, but I am feeling quite tired. 

Carl and I figured out that Sarah has by now learned close to 185 words since we started the reading program at the end of January. Wow! That is a lot of words.

I hope you are having easy Mondays. I think this may be my shortest update ever! 

March 1

It has occurred to me recently that just because I might be unhappy in a given moment or feel struggly about something in our life or program, it doesn't mean that I am failing. This may be obvious from the outside, but it was a revelation to me. While I can speak excitedly about our success and our current program, when things feel challenging then on a deep level I am thinking it means I am failing at something because of my belief that absolute unadulterated success would have a completely joyful Jenny at the helm. And yet, the comprehensive amazingness of doing Sarah-Rise is how much I learn, grow, and change alongside of Sarah. That means that the whole process, grit and all, is what this successful journey looks like. 

I also realized that while I embrace the theory of the Option (Son-Rise) process of non-judgemental questioning of myself/actions/beliefs, I do not actually do it very often. My intention going forward is simply to ask myself why I got upset in a given moment. I don't have to go down a long road of dialogue, but I at least want to take the first step and give myself a moment to think. This is different from what I usually do of mentally shelving it for some future date when I will sit with myself for so long that I will sort out and fix everything. :)

As you know, one of my frequent challenges is when Sarah yells or whines. My current goal with these moments is simply to listen and not need to shut it down. I often feel a visceral need to shut it down, but that hasn't really been working and that isn't being as loving and accepting as I want to be. Not that I will give her what she is screaming for, but if I could at least allow it rather than bracing myself with anger, judgement, resentment, and disdain, then that would be a step in my preferred direction. Or if I need to walk away I would like to do so more cleanly.

We are still going backwards in terms of food as I try to determine the cause of her skin rash that has been present for at least two weeks. Most of the time I am ok with this but sometimes I feel sad, daunted, upset, failing, and despairing. This morning I am feeling ok and more like a detective combing through my records of food and rashes to see if I can find a pattern.... I just discovered something in this very moment and I am super excited!!! I went back to Sarah's lab results from the naturopath and relearned that Sarah is allergic to pinto beans. Half of the Beanitos I was giving her were made with pinto beans!! I had removed all Beanitos about a week ago but sometimes an allergic reaction can take a few weeks to go away. This means once everything is clear for a while I can retry the black bean Beanitos. YAY!!!! And maybe it isn't soy milk or miso (or maybe it is; I will go slow reintroducing these items)! It could still also be bananas and it will be a long time before I try one of those again for her. Another possibility is that since Beanitos and Terra chips are made with either safflower or sunflower oil, maybe she is ok with one kind of oil but not the other. Time to buy some safflower oil to test once her skin is clear. 

I am experimenting with being gluten-free in my own eating. This is relatively easy since most of what we have in the house is grain-free and thus gluten-free. It has been interesting going to parties and realizing that I can't just eat anything and everything. I have more appreciation for Sarah and what her experience might be and why she likes her preferred foods so much. I think I am feeling better being gluten-free but sometimes I think I'm making it all up. I'm going to stick with it for at least a few months. If I do in fact feel better, then that is exciting. I also notice I feel much better when I tidy the house each night. And... I also feel like throwing a tantrum. I don't want to feel better being gluten-free! I don't want to feel better when I clean the house every night! I want to eat wheat bread and have a messy house and be happy with that! La la la! (as Sarah used to yell in protest).

Part of my evening routine involves refreshing the packs of word cards, dot number cards, and math equations. I'm still not confident about how much math is being retained but I think the concept of addition is probably getting through. I haven't presented any opportunities for Sarah to show what she knows because I feel scared of the answer. This is so different from the word card experience where I often give her chances to show what she knows and I am comfortable when there are a few words she doesn't yet know. 

At school Sarah was touching the numbers on the calendar while saying each number. Since the calendar is for teachers only, she was redirected. She went to the word board and pointed to a word and said what is was. Awesome! Another day the teacher asked her what a letter was in a word that they were going to read and Sarah just said the whole word. Yesterday Sc wrote some words on the board during her SR time and Sarah spelled them out and said what they were. 

We now have part of one wall in the SR room painted as a white board. Sarah's favorite book right now is You Are (Not) Small by Anna Kang. During some of my SR time I wrote "big" and "small" on the board in various sentences (Sarah is small. Sarah is big. Amy is small. Amy is big. Mom is big). Sarah read them and wrote her own "Big" in the clearest writing of "B" and "g" I have yet seen from her. One day there was water on the kitchen counter and Sarah started writing numbers with the water with her finger. She did the clearest "5" I have ever seen her do. With Sonia, Sarah copied words that Sonia wrote on the white board. I have a theory that Sarah's writing will improve the more she learns to read because conveying words will be more interesting and desirable.

I started trimming some of the word cards to fit in the storage box (which is almost full) and Sarah wanted to do it. I drew a line for her to follow and she cut at least 3 cards, doing a great job following the line. This was through poster board so I was extra impressed. That takes some serious strength for little hands. After a while Sarah wanted to be the one drawing the line so I let her do so and she did a good job with that too. 

Sometimes I draw circles and model filling them in with circular movements, following a suggestion from another Son-Rise mom who developed a program called "Writing Made Easy." So far Sarah is quite interested in doing her best to do the same movements.

Sarah has now zipped her coat zipper many times all by herself. Sonia and I figured out that there are two key ingredients towards a successful zip: hair in a ponytail and good lighting.

Sarah and I had a full USA geography session where we had a laminated map and scotch tape. I gave her small pieces of tape and pointed to a state to tape while saying the name. We taped the whole US. I don't know how much she retained but I think the exposure to all the names and state shapes was probably good. And it was fun and interactive.

Sonia has been doing a science experience with the girls involving 4 small cups, each containing one of the following: sand, clay, dirt, small rocks. There are cards with labels and Sarah places them correctly each time. The first week they felt the contents. The second week they looked at pictures and said what they thought each picture contained (eg. a picture of a desert). This week they added water to each cup to see what would happen to the contents. 

One night, Carl was reading from a book of Peanuts comics to Amy for her bedtime story. The story involved Linus having trouble with math. Sarah, from her position of already trying to go to sleep reached out her hand and said "For Linus." Carl asked what she gave him and she said "math cards." I love this so much!! I also love Carl so much. When I hear him creatively connecting and trying new approaches to get cooperation with getting dressed I am just so amazed and in love. I also delight in the moments when we give the girls rides up or down stairs, pretending to be horses, ducks, boats, bicycles, or planes depending on the request of the moment. These rides sometimes come after frustrating moments or venting to each other about our stresses and then we shift into play and I marvel at the shift. I love our general delight in play. 

I recently observed a few moments of the girls in their gymnastics class. Sarah used to refuse to even attempt going sideways across uneven parallel bars but now she does it like a pro.

May you be a pro today at any challenge from yesterday (or at least make a wobbly attempt).

February 22

Sometimes I feel like I am weeding a garden as I continue to strive towards more loving responses to my family, especially Sarah. Yesterday I noticed a moment when I was attempting to mask judgement and frustration but I think I was just mean and that Sarah probably felt it. I didn't like it, but I am glad to have noticed it so that I can hopefully not repeat it in that exact form. My garden here is mostly flowers, but there are definitely still some weeds with broad root structures.

On Tuesday I took Sarah to the library with me to pick up a book that was being held for me. I took her to the shelves of held books and off-handedly mentioned that we were looking for my name. She pointed to the book with my name before I had found it! I nearly fell over right then and there. I didn't know she knew my name in print, though I am sure I wrote it in past SR sessions.

My latest success with the word and math cards, when Sarah is otherwise engaged but I feel like I need to get them done for the timing of the day, is to say I have items to go in her dump truck. One of her favorite songs now is about a dump truck ("It's so cozy to ride in my dump truck"). I give her the card while I say what it is and then she places it to one side of herself. Or sometimes we have a game of squishing words. Earlier in the week during my SR time, Sarah and I went through the entire box of retired words taking turns squishing them (pressing down on the flat surface). For most of hers I would hold it out so she could read it before I gave it to her to squish. As with other opportunities for her to show what she knows, she gets most of them right and a few wrong. When she gets a word wrong she is always saying a word that starts with the same letter as the card I am holding. Carl pointed out that this is a huge success to have her looking at the initial letter to help her know the word. She didn't always do this. I think she is ready for any future cards that I make to be smaller than the huge cards that I made initially. When we play squishing or dump truck games I think it is too hard to read the word when it is so close to her. I'm excited about recognizing this because when we began I didn't know how I would know when it was time to shift the size. The words will still be large but they will be more like the ones that came with the How to TeachYour Baby to Read kit.

Amy still mostly averts her eyes when I do words but now she also covertly peaks or asks to see a specific word that she liked. 

I have started having 1 small math session each day where I show addition equations with the dot cards. So far so good in terms of interest. Even if the specifics aren't remembered I think this is still a good demonstration of the concept.

Yesterday Carl took a wood building kit into his SR session and guided Sarah through the process of making a box. He said she improved her technique and purposefulness as the session continued. 

On Monday my stepmother asked me what I would do with time just for me. At first I thought I get plenty of that, and I do, but I often fill it with productivity rather than something that might feel indulgent. So I took some time to write while my parents were with the girls. I have always loved e.e. cummings' "the greedy the people" so I used that as my inspiration for the following poem.

The tired the parents
(as when as can more)
they cook and they clean
and they try for because
though the kids in their playroom
say Come

The busy the frazzled
(as now as can then)
they plan and they pack
and they turn for a hug
when the kids in their rumples
say Now

The happy the parents
(as snuggled as tested)
they indulge and set limits
to tears and to screams
though the laundry in its piles
says Fold

The creative the parents
(as sing as can dance)
they think and they play
and they plan for until
while the kids in their growing
say How

The weary the parents
(as proud as can be)
they strive and they slump
and they bow to a guess
while the kids in their love
say Why

February 15

We began today with another wonderful group meeting. Every time I think about our amazing team of people I am just stunned at what a gift these people bring into my (our) life. Such love, dedication, creativity, thoughtfulness, and openness. We talked about what we bring to our sessions in terms of our intentions and thoughts ahead of time. We talked about how we deal with challenging moments when things don't feel like they are going easily and how it is good to be genuine and give ourselves a minute or two of a break of nothing if we need it. After all, that is very similar to what Sarah achieves for herself when she isms. 

We also had wonderful Grammy and Granddad babysitters! Sarah is extra excited to have Granddad around and we are slowly making progress with her learning to ask to snuggle with him without fake crying or truly working herself into a state of upset.

Yesterday Carl gave the girls valentines with a few words on the back. Sarah read hers all by herself except for the word "from." Wow!! She read "To Sarah (from) Dad. I love you." The word packs continue to go well and whenever I give Sarah the option to read them she chooses to do so and often knows all of them except for the newest word. Sometimes she knows even the newest word after only learning it once. Sometimes there is confusion when two words are slightly similar (Piggie/piano, snake/sneeze). One day I dumped out several retired words and pretended they were snow that we had to shovel. I asked her to shovel specific words to me and she did at least 10 before wanting to switch to number snow.

Number cards continue to be the favorite item. Sometimes we use them to build the outline of a small house, sometimes she pretends my arm is a door (this started with a volunteer) and she goes back and forth as often as she does when she plays with real doors. Sometimes she takes numbers to the moon.

The math dot cards seem a bit more challenging than the word cards so I don't often ask Sarah if she wants to read them, though perhaps I should do so more often and then maybe slow my rate of changing the cards (though only two number cards get retired per day and two new ones added). Sarah does seem to have a general sense of when the amounts is smaller vs larger.

We do bit cards of information almost each day now and so far they are all about inventors. When we are done I put the card in the back of the pile. Amy commented recently, "Maybe tomorrow we can learn who he is. We don't even know what his name is or when he was born or what he printed." Wow! I am so impressed with Amy's generalizing the types of information we learn.

Sonia did a small science project with the girls involving cups of sand, dirt, clay, and rocks with cards for labels. On the second day, Sonia put out the cups and gave the cards to Sarah to see if she remembered where they went. Sarah did all of them perfectly.

Sarah has been having lots of itchy skin areas so I have backed off some of the newer foods and I reduced some of the supplements just in case that will help. This may all be a reaction to a banana that I tried for her recently, hoping that she could eat bananas again. I think not yet.

When Sarah arrived at gymnastics on Tuesday she said loudly and enthusiastically, "hi guys!" just like R. does when we see her and her kids for playdates. Sonia says that Sarah continues to do new things at gymnastics that she used to not feel comfortable doing.

For Sarah's school Valentine party her class was having ice cream with chocolate sauce and sprinkles. I made an equivalent that she could have and she ate every bite. As Carl pointed out, these efforts on my part not only help Sarah feel included but perhaps they help other people see her as less different, if that makes sense. Sure she can't eat what everyone else does, but she can eat something that looks the same and can be called the same thing.

I hope you are all having a snuggly Sunday. 

February 8

I am aware that there are a million therapies, diets, and treatments available to try for anyone with developmental/autistic/gut challenges. What is fascinating to me is how I often have felt I should try xyz that other families were trying and raving about, but for whatever reason I would feel overwhelmed and draggy at the thought of adding something more, so then I didn't add anything. A couple times I attempted to add something but then didn't actually start or continue implementing whatever it was. And then... I heard about the How to Teach Your Baby to Read, which I have mentioned in the past two updates. Suddenly I wanted to add this new thing. It seemed perfect for Sarah and for me and our life. I have energy to implement it and it feels relatively easy and fun. People are so different and this is a good reminder for me that it is ok, advisable even, to wait until something speaks to me so loudly that the path is clear and exciting. There is no reason to force something that doesn't fit. Forcing comes out of fear. Following something that feels exciting comes from hope. Perhaps this is all obvious, but it is something I can forget.

We continue to do our word packs and have also had play times in the SR room with the retired words. Sarah and G. made soup with the words, adding "carrots" and "salt." Then Sarah added "the," and G. cracked up with delight (as did I while observing remotely). Sarah is so good at thinking outside the box with intentional playfulness, not limiting herself to words that usually would be in soup.

Yesterday I began the How to Teach Your Baby Math program. This is a similar approach to the word cards in terms of how I show Sarah cards with information. The first several days have cards with dots of varying numbers. Then as I build in more of those cards (retiring old cards and adding new on a daily basis so there are only a 5 in each pack), I will also begin showing addition and then eventually subtraction, multiplication, and division. I have no idea if this will work since she isn't a baby, but when I showed her the first pack of dot cards she had a delighted grin on her face, just as she did when I started the word cards.

Inspired by this method of teaching in tiny moments, today I began writing practice in a similar way. My goal is that three times a day I will give her a blank paper and ask her to write a given letter or number, with hand-over-hand or verbal guidance as needed. The first session went well and she seemed quite pleased to do it. I feel like this approach to teaching Sarah just fell into my lap and I am so very grateful to the friend who mentioned it, to the people who developed it, to Carl for supporting each new thing I want to do, and to me for recognizing that this could be an effective path and running with it. I am so thankful to the Son-Rise Program for giving me the framework and support for trying new things, trusting myself, and continuing to help Sarah with social connection overall. 

Lately when Amy cries, Sarah pretends to be on the phone and says, "Hello. Amy is sad." 

Sarah can now read the book I made for her birthday with minimal help. Yay!

I have felt generally successful with attending to my own use (body/mind) and I think it has helped me become even more effective when giving massages and more effective at not reacting to the girls in anger when I might usually do so. This is not a constant, but it has definitely helped in certain situations. I am mainly focusing on thinking from my hands back into my back and whole self. When I have my hands on someone then I have the sense that my hands are emptying of anything except an invitation to expand into space. I have this same intention with the girls even when I'm not touching them, mainly to hold onto my own sense of a grounded self while giving them space to be where they are and perhaps choose more ease. One one occasion with Sarah in the SR room this gave me the space to see her whiney upset as a veil and I could glimpse her behind it, which gave me more space of my own to react with creativity instead of defensiveness. Instead of telling her firmly that she had to wait till later to watch something I grabbed her playfully and said, "is that any way to talk to your mother?!" We had some nice snuggles and laughs together after that.

During another SR session it became clear that she was in a very exclusive mode and it was time for me to join. Initially I felt annoyed and resistant because I wanted to connect. I talked myself through why joining is good and how it is like watching her movie with her, just as I enjoy watching movies with Carl. I acclimated and felt good about the joining. Then after a few minutes Sarah was ready for connection and she initiated making a number pizza. Because I had gotten myself feeling relaxed and comfortable, I think I had more creative flexibility so I started pretending the number pizza cards had really stringy cheese. I pulled my face away from the card while making an exaggerated face. Sarah cracked up. When she is fully laughing and delighted there is nothing better. I will make faces over and over again to see her sweet laughing face. This time was a great reminder for me of the importance of joining instead of forcing connection. Joining is the way in. Comfortable, relaxed, creativity is the way out (out of exclusivity, into inclusive connection).

Over Christmas I added a new food to Sarah's diet and it seems to be ok to keep it. I am so pleased! We have added Beanitos chips. These are chips made from beans and rice with a little bit of oil and salt. Sarah loves them. We all do. I love love love being able to buy snacks. I also love making all the things I make, but it feels luxurious to have something I can buy that is ready to go and that also feels more normal in terms of dietary options. 

A culinary success that Carl and I have been enjoying is sunflower seed cake (my usual eggless adaptation from the recipe in Internal Bliss) with cardamom and blueberries (my change). In my old life of using flour, sugar, butter, and eggs, I used to make blueberry cardamom bread that was super delicious. I recently bought floss that smells like cardamom so that inspired me to try to make a currently acceptable version of blueberry cardamom bread. Here is the recipe. It is grain-free, egg-free, dairy-free, refined-white sugar-free.

Soak 2 1/2 cups sunflower seeds for at least 4 hrs. Drain and rinse. 

Heat oven to 350. Grease pan (8x8 for moister cake, 11x9 for slightly drier cake). Take bag of frozen blueberries out of freezer.

In a food processor, blend sunflower seeds to a lumpy paste.

Add 4 tbsp flax meal plus 8 tbsp water (or you could do 4 eggs)

Add 3 tsp ground cardamom

Add 1/3 cup maple syrup

Add 2 tbsp coconut oil

Blend again.

In a bowl, combine by hand the blueberries and the sunflower seed mixture. Put in baking pan. Bake for 60 ish minutes. 

Yesterday I made chocolates in the shape of hearts, rectangles, and lollipops. I wrapped them in red foil that I found at a kitchen store. I am so excited about this! Even when I am the one that wrapped them it is still exciting to unwrap them. The girls love them. I also changed my usual recipe by using maple syrup instead of honey and I like the taste much better. No eating restrictions are going to limit Valentine's Day candy options for my Sarah! (the girls get to have two shapes per day or one lollipop). I suppose I should limit myself similarly or else we won't have any left for tomorrow. 

We have been making some Valentines. Amy is very thorough and likes to cover the front and sometimes back of her work entirely. Sarah is much less thorough and every time I ask her who something is for she says, "Sarah." At least her first Valentine had a different designation (Sonia). I had a vision of Sarah making Valentines for all of her volunteers and writing their names herself. I am attempting to stay relaxed and let her do what she wants rather than imposing my own desires. This may mean that she doesn't actually make many Valentines at all. And that is ok. 

We have been renovating our basement bathroom and with each step of the process Carl takes the girls on a bathroom explorer trip. It is now done enough that Sarah could just be down there while Carl worked. Sarah wanted her tools (she got a tool bag for Christmas) and she pretended to fix the bathroom floor with her hammer, pliers, and screw driver. So cute!

Sonia and I took the girls on a field trip to the art museum and we all enjoyed it. Wednesday night Sarah had a reaction to something (we don't know what) that gave her some hives and a red face for a while. I postponed going to Zumba until I felt like it was clearly not an emergency. She was fine. My adrenals had a work out. For our Thursday field trip I knew I didn't want to go anywhere that challenged my fears and almost all field trip places have some element that scares the pants off me (zoo - super long escalator or elevator to very high platform; a child has died by falling into an animal enclosure. science center - spiraling walk way to get between floors - what if the girls climbed over the railing and plunged to their death? history center - all of their stairs freak me out. children's center -didn't want to deal with the water room and general crowded chaos. aviary - ok! but I wanted something new. Phipps - stairs again.). Anyway, I digress. I know this may seem ridiculous and these fears are usually something I override and handle, but after the hives scare I didn't want to pressure myself. Thus, the art museum, where I didn't remember it well enough to be scared. Now I can add it to my list of places that have scary stairs. Sigh. I'm glad there are people in my life who seem less terrified than I am by these things. With Carl and Sonia by my side we will at least continue to take the girls to interesting places even if there are parts that I fear. 

Something we are working on but not certain about how to change is Sarah's nightly routine of waking up, getting tucked in, waiting a few minutes and then screaming, "ah! mommy! mommy! mommy!" Then she says she had a bad dream. But she hadn't gone back to sleep to have that dream. Several months ago she actually did have a bad dream and screamed as she woke and we came running because this was so unusual. Now she keeps trying to have us come running. We don't. In this chess match of moves, we then offer to take her to the potty. Silence. Then she tries again to call loudly for us. We offer to take her to the potty. Silence. Then she gets up and comes into our room. Carl offers to take her to the potty. She says she wants to go to bed. He tucks her in. He tells her if she calls out again we will take her to the potty. Usually this is the end of things. Last night we considered changing our initial move to be taking her to the potty when she calls out the first time. Maybe this will be enough of a change to alter the script.

Much love to all of you. May you all have things you are excited about as you move toward your goals.