September 15

Carl and I had an amazing time with the rest of our trip in Italy. We walked all over Florence. Our Airbnb was an extraordinary 4th floor room with a view out of the windows that were in each of the four walls. From our bed we could see the Duomo. In the mornings we were awakened by the sunlight streaming in and the church bells ringing. One night we climbed to the top of the Duomo and watched the sunset. I do wish the fencing around the top was higher, but I again managed the whole thing more easily than I expected. We walked through what is left of Dante’s house. It changed so much over the years that they don’t really know what it would have looked like when he was there, but they use the rooms as a museum about his life and times. They had pocket copies of his Divine Comedy that were smaller than my hand by far. I wish I could have seen the size of the text within, but they were closed and behind glass. We saw the outside of the church where Dante saw Beatrice. We went to the Galileo museum and saw his telescopes and other mathematical/scientific instruments that he made. They even have a piece of his finger. We saw paintings by Botticelli, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. We saw Michelangelo’s David. We ate lots of food. And gelato. So much gelato. Gelato makes a perfect lunch when you want to keep walking. The flight home went smoothly and I felt much less jet lag than I sometimes have with travel. 

The girls were in bed when we got home, but since it wasn’t much past their bedtime we soon heard the patter of small feet and then received wonderfully big hugs. They had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa and their sitters. Thank you again to all who made our trip possible!!!!

Overall everything about re-entry into normal life has gone more smoothly than usual. Perhaps this is because I had my sad/panicky time about it on our last night in Italy. I do like to do things ahead of time. The main struggle with being home is the same as it always is. So much of the time with Sarah is easy, but the small moments that aren’t can overshadow the rest in my estimation of how our existence with each other is. The troublesome moments are usually when I say no about something. I can say it calmly and easily and with redirection rather than a plain “no.” I can do this for many minutes to no avail. Then I get more frustrated and everything escalates. Or sometimes her response is immediately large with snatching, banging, screaming, spitting. I don’t handle that with much aplomb. When I make food and she refuses to try it or vehemently refuses to eat a vegetable that is usually a staple favorite, then I feel defensive and angry and that doesn’t go over well either. As usual, I am grateful to Carl for his calm, his creativity, his space for all of us. I hear Amy echoing both of us at various times when she speaks to Sarah. I am weary of the struggle and I’m trying to keep it in perspective that the struggly moments probably only take up 5 or 10 minutes of a day. They just feel bigger. 

Yesterday Sarah had a playdate with her friend from camp and it went well. 

Tomorrow Amy starts Girls on the Run (GOTR). This means her schedule after school will be super packed on some days. Monday she will have GOTR right after school. Immediately following pickup we will zoom to swimming and hope to be on time. Wednesday she will have GOTR and then have a short time at home before leaving for gymnastics. Tuesdays evenings we always have Sc for SR time, a highlight of the week for all. Starting soon, Amy will have girl scouts on some Tuesdays which cuts her time with Sc. Fingers crossed that this will be fun enough that she won’t be overloaded and that I won’t be too stressed.

We have realized we are in new bedtime territory. At least half of the time we just tell the girls it is time to get ready for bed and that is all we do. They do everything and sometimes we don’t even get summoned for kisses or tuck-ins. 

September 8

Sarah’s teacher told me that Sarah enjoyed reading a story she wrote to her Resource Room class. The story was two sentences about camping. Sarah also continued with her mornings going well in terms of getting ready for school. 

Amy loves her walk/run to school and dismisses me ever earlier in our walk. 

Sarah has started hugging me more and making “mmm” noises with it. She gives multiple hugs at a time with an mmm each time. I think she began by copying my, “mmmm, I love you” that I say sometimes when I hug her. 

Thanks (!!!!!!!) to Grandma and Grandpa and  some of our sitters taking care of everything at home, Carl and I are in Italy at the moment. We enjoyed a couple of days in Bologna, eating the most delicious food. We attended a wedding on a hillside, with a beautiful view and amazing food and fun dancing. Now we are heading to Florence for a couple of days. 

Bologna has porticos lining many of their sidewalks. All cities should do this. It is amazing and beautiful. They keep you cool and shaded or warm and dry depending on the weather. 

We have seen Europe’s oldest university, and Mozart’s written entrance exam to the music school from when he was 14. 

Bologna used to have hundreds of tall towers. Now there are only a few. We climbed one of them. I am scared of heights and don’t like feeling trapped so this was a feat of courage. The stairs were steep and narrow and everyone goes all the way up and then can turn to go down. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, in part because of the metal caging at the top so I couldn’t have my usual fears that I might suddenly fling myself into the air. 

I wore comfortable shoes for the wedding. I can’t remember the last time I attended a fancy event and didn’t have my feet happy to come out of my shoes at the end. But I was truly comfortable all night!!!! This points out how ridiculous women’s shoes often are, even when I think I have heels that are comfortable for heels. This time I wore flats that had enough toe room!! 

Gelato. The most amazingly delicious. The best I’ve ever had. Mmmmm. I love you. 

I wish for you love and mmm, amazing food, and comfy shoes. And courage to climb whatever towers you wish. 

September 1

Camping adventures and misadventures...

On the turnpike driving to the campground, we heard a loud sound and saw some things from our roof box landing on the road that was rapidly disappearing from view behind us. Luckily we were able to pull over safely, but we were concerned about our lost pillows and sleeping bags causing trouble for other drivers. We called the turnpike people. They sent someone to find and return what they could. Sarah’s pillow and sleeping bag were retrieved. Sadly, we lost two other pillows and Amy’s beloved pink sleeping bag. It is a mystery to us of where they would be, unless the roof box opened prior to the loud sound, thus shedding items before we knew it. We will keep our eyes open on our drive home, but our expectations are low. We grabbed some extra pillows and a comforter from our mountain house and continued to the campground, much later than planned. It seems that when I locked the roof box, it hadn’t been latched properly, so I spent some time feeling bad about ruining things. But overall, things still went well and Amy is resilient, as am I. We set up camp in the dark and ate a cold dinner because the wood was too damp to make much of a fire (don’t worry, we still had s’mores). 

Saturday we had a wonderful day, despite signage that was unhelpful. Note to campground people: don’t have a path with a sign on each end pointing in and saying “amphitheater” if said amphitheater is actually at one end and not in the middle. Still, once we found the bake sale there, the donuts made up for any trouble. We then had a relaxed time at the beach and a relaxed dinner with a campfire. This morning we broke camp rapidly because it was raining and we didn’t know if it would last all day. Coming and going, we now know it is possible to have way more in our car than we previously imagined. Carl as the driver was the only person without piles of things under his legs and on his lap. 

Other camping misadventures involved Sarah going to the bathroom by herself and accidentally going to the wrong campsite, luckily calling for us so we could find her. She also accidentally went to the men’s room on a different occasion. Given that in so many instances she uses bathrooms independently with no problem, this was a good check-in for us that maybe she isn’t quite as adept at some skills as we thought. When she went to the wrong campsite it was because she followed a woman out of the bathroom and when the woman realized she had a companion she asked Sarah what color car her family had. She asked if it was red. When Sarah said yes the woman left her at the site where I found her. But our car is blue. If the woman had asked what site she was in, Sarah might have answered more clearly because she knew we were in 204. Although I also would have said she knew the color of our car. Also, note to self, if I have a kid trailing me, I will make sure I get them to the right grown-up before leaving them. As Ma Ingalls would say, alls well that ends well. To give added context, our site was just across the road and up a few feet from the bathroom, so all of this happened in a smallish space. 

Now, to back up... Sarah’s first week of fifth grade went well, as far as I could tell. When I ask how her day was she always says “good.” I didn’t hear anything from her teacher. Each morning went easily with her getting ready for the bus. It felt much more like slipping into a familiar routine than other school-year starts have. Meanwhile, Amy has started to dismiss me earlier and earlier in our walk to her school. 

When G came to play with Sarah on Friday, Sarah promptly became the teacher, sitting on a stool and asking student G to name an animal that lives in the water. That moment seemed amazing. 

Lots of love to you all. May you find your place even if you go the wrong way at first.

August 25

We enjoyed our last two days of summer vacation with the help of our sitter A. I planned a day on Monday around the idea of parking once and walking to all of our activities. As it turned out, the parking time was limited and then due to traffic patterns, we ended up doing a short driving circuit 3 times. We went to a playground, Phipps (good food, but then too hot in the play shopping cart area so we all wilted), ice cream at Coldstone Creamery (for the first time since Sarah was maybe 5), and then a city pool. On Tuesday we went to the pool again. Amy is a veritable mermaid. Sarah did lots of excellent practice pushing off from the wall into floating and sometimes adding her backstroke. Then she would do what her swim school calls “shark arms” back to the wall. 

Tuesday evening we had Sc. back for SR time for the first time in several weeks. The girls were so excited that they started planning a surprise party, including pajamas of course! Amy spent at least an hour or more preparing the room and the sign directing Sc to the room. 

Amy’s first days of school went well. I felt teary dropping her off on Wednesday morning. I hadn’t felt that emotional and slightly nervous on her behalf since dropping her off for kindergarten. She has a couple of friends who sit at her table and she shares a locker with one of them. Some of her very best friends aren’t in her classroom, but she does get to see them at lunch and recess. She is already getting used to her new teachers and routines. There is something that feels extra special about Amy being in third grade, since my dad taught third grade for 37 years! Sarah skipped third grade because of our need to hop her forward so she won’t age out of school before finishing high school. So this is our only of having a third grader.

Sarah really really really didn’t want to walk Amy to school. Fortunately, she only had two days of doing so. So far, knock-on-asphalt-and-dirt-paths, afternoon pickups have gone more easily. It is a much farther walk for us than we had the past 3 years. Instead of ten minutes at Sarah-speed, it is more like 20 minutes each way. This is good exercise for all of us.

Sarah starts school tomorrow so we have been moving our wake-up time earlier and earlier. Yesterday you may have heard her screams of protest when I gently tried to rouse her. This morning, in stark contrast, she was up at 4:30, snuggling in bed with us, and then at 5:30 she barged back into her shared room with Amy, turned on the light and started loudly saying, “wake up! It’s Christmas!” I’m hoping that tomorrow is similar in terms of her level of energy.

I’ve been taking a John Barnes’ Myofascial Release class the past couple of days. It has been so many years since I last took one of these classes! I think it was long before having kids. I have learned so much and it has also been helping with some chronic hip pain that I’ve been having. For demonstrating one of the treatments, the instructor basically described the symptoms I’ve had. When she asked for a volunteer you can bet I was zooming to the front. I think I still need lots of work to undo years of trouble, but I feel hopeful. All of the work has been around the pelvis and hips, and yet, due to the nature of bodies and this work, the right side of my jaw is also feeling looser, though no one has worked there directly. I often get my hopes up with new possibilities of maybe helping my headache situation (currently controlled by meds) and so my hopes are up again about this because all of the hip/pelvis work feels so directly connected to my head.

August 18

Sarah will have the same bus driver she had last year! This gives me such peace of mind as we approach the start of her fifth grade year a week from tomorrow. Bus drivers are a really crucial and important part of so many people’s lives. Having someone who is prompt and reliable is so impactful. I am relieved, especially because Sarah will be in a new Resource Room with a new lead teacher, so it is nice to keep the bus situation constant. Her new teacher already knows her because it is a small school and everyone knows everyone. It will still be a big transition. I emailed Sarah’s lead teacher from her past three years to get the email for her new teacher. Her past teacher wrote back saying, “Oh I will miss Sarah so much!” I felt teary reading it. I know that Sarah was comfortable enough to push boundaries with her teacher, so it is extra meaningful to see such an expression of love. She said that Sarah was such a joy to have in class. 

Amy starts school this Wednesday and will be in a new building with a new teacher. This is a big transition. She is eager and nervous, as am I. We can still walk, which is lovely.

Last weekend through the beginning of this week, we took a mini-vacation. It was wonderful, even if my shoes broke. I only had them for 20 years!! I think they are fixable with the right glue. We went to the beach and a small zoo where the girls rode ponies. We watched movies and ate ice cream. We went to Idlewild and the girls loved the ball pit and the wave pool. Turns in the ball pit are timed, and this year Sarah hardly needed any nudging to get out and get in line at the end of a turn. Sarah was heartbroken when the wave pool closed, but after twenty minutes of upset she was ready to get dressed. 

Friday was a lovely open day with not much scheduled. Sometimes this is a great situation and other times it spells doom. This time was good. They got back-to-school hair trims. We went out for lunch and had Rita’s custard for dessert. At home, I brought up many toys from the basement so they could refresh what was in the SR room and family room and possibly get rid of some things. The miracle was that they agreed on several items to give away. They played with lots of the games. They fought some. Sarah was grabby and then I tried to grab the thing she had snatched from Amy, and then the thing broke. Sigh. I would like to say our lesson was learned, but this was the second time we have had that happen. Some days Sarah and I have yelly-screamy moments and the day is overshadowed by them. Friday had several rough moments but they passed as moments and the feel of the day was still good. 

Yesterday the girls had an all-day playdate with a neighborhood friend. Sometimes they were all at her house, sometimes at our house. That sort of easy situation still feels magical. Carl and I got lots of cleaning done and lots of relocating of messes into the basement. So the house looks beautiful but the basement is scary! I often deal with the overwhelm of piles of tiny toys/game pieces/miscellaneous crap by just shoving it in a bag and putting the bag in the basement. There are many such bags in the basement.

Sarah rekindled her love of a board book called Clifford’s Peek-a-Boo. We gave away our copy years ago so I ordered a new one, but didn’t tell her it was coming. She was so joyful when it arrived. She reads it many times a day and wants a Clifford birthday cake when we reach the end of January. 

Sarah’s favorite music lately is a compilation of Christmas carols sung by kids. The girls have been drawing pictures of Christmas trees. It’s never to early to get prepared. 

Amy wanted me to make pancakes yesterday, but instead of asking with words she drew a picture of me as a mama cat making pancakes with a daughter cat jumping for joy.

August 11

When Sarah and I are having hard times multiple times a day for days in a row, it is hard to remember anything different. I think we are finally emerging from our extra hard time. Monday was a loooong day without enough planned and without help. Tuesday I worked a lot so that was easier. Wednesday I had afternoon help, but the morning still felt hard. Overall, I was still feeling like an awful mom. Once I hit a moment where I realize that even if an angel were to materialize in front of me and tell me I am a good person, that I wouldn’t believe them, then I know I have to change something in my thinking. So I did make a change. I  pulled up my emotional bootstraps and stepped into a bit more confidence about who I am. I also was busier and had more help. 

Then we had Grammy and Granddad visiting. When they are here then Sarah just wants to play with Grammy and Grammy is able to achieve results that I can’t. This seems to be the case often, that others can get results that I can’t. It is sort of odd to accept this, knowing that years ago I was just the right person to do so many things with her. But I’m not anymore. We can still have snuggly times, but they are very ismy. They are repetitive in the moment and moment to moment. Doing new things just isn’t our forte unless it
is something that Sarah really wants to do. 

Yesterday we went to Fort Ligonier. It was quite a struggle to get Sarah to get in the car to go there. Once there, she had a good time. The girls got stuffed animal bears courtesy of Grammy. Sarah named her bear Chester and Amy’s is Lily. 

Sarah and I both just really want to control situations and we don’t like giving up control. There are also many moments when Sarah says she wants a certain thing and I start to act on that and then she changes her mind. It is hard to keep up. 

As with so many moments, I don’t feel that I have any wisdom to share or any answers to anything. What my stepmom (aka Grammy) pointed out is that sharing my journey here is a way of offering companionship to others on similar journeys. Maybe we don’t need to have answers. We just need to show up and witness the moments. As always, thank you to those of you who witness and love and try to combat my emotional gremlins. Thank you to those who get even closer, helping us out of the trenches, offering love and yourself to our messy selves. You really make such a difference.

August 4

We had wonderful visits with some friends in Seattle before the girls and I flew home on Tuesday. The hardest parts of Tuesday were getting Sarah up in the morning and arriving at home. The airports and flights went extremely easily, aided by donuts, chocolate, and ipods. When we got home, Sarah desperately wanted cargo shorts. She had seen a woman wearing some on our last night of the trip. Carl said he could get some for her so I kept telling her it was a thing she would do with him. When G. did his SR time on Friday, he fashioned paper pockets that he taped to a pair of khaki shorts of Carl’s. This temporarily solved the problem. Sarah is such an interesting mix of specific passionate clothing demands and extreme flexibility (sometimes) to meet those demands with paper creations. 

Amy was flexible and helpful throughout our day of travel and the day after. When we went to get groceries on our first day home and Sarah needed to use the bathroom, Amy took her! This was at our small local coop, but still. That was a first. More than ever, Amy is assuming the role of big sister (except in physical fights and then Sarah always wins). This past week marked the first time that others have assumed Amy was the older of the two. Airport security randomly picked Sarah for a hand-swab test, but when they told me one of my kids got picked they said, “the little one.” I assumed they meant Amy and was surprised that they meant Sarah. When we went to get art supplies on Wednesday, the check-out person asked which child was older. I’m not sure why I’m more surprised by this than by people asking if they are twins. Certainly, developmentally, Amy is the older of the two. Amy is the younger sister and she is the older sister. Sarah is the older sister and she is the younger sister. They are both and.

Sarah and I are once again aligned with when we get our periods. She is a seasoned pro with using pads, but her new preference is the special period-undies from Knixteen. I only bought a few pairs as a test, but now have ordered several more. They are reusable, so this is also better for the environment. Being aligned with our cycles makes it easier to know when hers will start, but it also means we turn up the volume knob on our already-often-fraught interactions. Despite knowing how helpful it can be to have a good cry, I usually don’t do it. This week I have had two intense crying sessions. I wish they magically fixed everything. They didn’t, but they do help me feel calmer and clearer, which does lead to better interactions with Sarah. Carl has the perspective to know that Sarah and I are both dealing with hormones in our system making everything feel harder. Despite knowing that in theory, it can be really hard to comprehend when I’m in the midst of it. In the thick of feelings yesterday, I just couldn’t understand Carl wanting to be with me or anyone wanting to be around me ever. Extreme, I know. But I’m sure most of you can relate to that feeling of being pond scum, and even if you know it isn’t reality, it can be hard to shake the feeling. Luckily, after many tears and then some house cleaning, I felt much better. I am so incredibly blessed to have Carl and his patient, loving, creative heart that can give space and support to all of us, even when at least two of us are snarly/screamy/short-fused/grumpy/crying/mad/feeling-like-pond-scum.

Carl took the girls out for a long bike ride yesterday. Sarah is doing a beautiful job with her balance bike. Amy (with pedals and no training wheels) is working on making turns with control. While they were out, Amy made a piece of art using flowers and greens. She called it “The Sunset of Nature.” It was on the pavement in front of Three Rivers Outdoor Company, bringing a joyful surprise to one of the owners after a run. Earlier in the day we all went to Target to get cargo pants and school supplies for Sarah (Amy hasn’t needed any supplies for the past three years; the letter with her list of needed items arrived just after our return from Target!). Sarah helped with the scanning and the checkout person was lovely in allowing her to do so. He clearly enjoyed her, which is not to be sneezed at, because not all check-out people want “help.” I love that they each brought joy to people they didn’t know just by doing what they love to do.

Much love to all of you. If you are feeling like pond scum, I will remind you that you are not.