Take a breath!

I kept thinking time was getting away from me, and mentally counting up the days since the last post - hard to believe I let three weeks go by!

So - we've been busy with horseback riding, extra rehearsals, performance at the fair, fundraising for the ballet academy's fall production, preparations for school, repairs (and some more repairs) to my van, a couple of home projects, a day trip north to visit family, checking on Mom more often while her caregiver was out of town, helping my oldest daughter and her family move out of the house next door :-(

Yes, the last item on the list was hard - still is - and has been an interesting thing to experience on many levels. I tried to ignore that it was happening right up 'til the first night they didn't sleep in their beds next door, just because there was no way I could get myself emotionally ready for it to be real.  It took the kids even longer; Girlie mentioned a couple times that she was waiting to give something to her niece and I had to remind her they really didn't live there any more. It's been most of the three weeks now, and I'm less often thinking along the lines of running next door to chat, and getting used to not hearing the squeak of the gate and fast little footsteps on my porch.

Milo 7 months - 6/12

It's a good thing - shouldn't that make it easy? No; in fact, I just realized the three weeks of not writing here was a way to delay the very last reality of it, which is putting it down in black and white. And I may have just stepped away from the computer for a bit to grab a tissue. Of course we still talk every day in some manner, but I don't have access to an immediate fix of hugs from the grandkids. And no more giggles and squeals from the yard.

All right, enough of the maudlin, let's move on to the practical. When Girlie's schedule came in the mail I noticed immediately that she'd been assigned a locker. In considering for a while it seemed like a plausible way to work on a new life skill in preparation for starting high school (!) next year. I had Girlie sit down at the table to practice with a combination lock and found she could only open it on the first try about 50% of the time. I don't even want to know how that would translate in a hallway full of kids with a time limit, so no locker for Girlie. It wasn't a problem; the school counselor had assigned it by mistake and Girlie can continue to keep her things in a cubby in the life skills classroom. The problem with the combination lock is due to her dyspraxia, which is a huge variable at any time. Girlie can sit in her room and do some beadwork in a quiet, relaxed environment, but when she is stressed or in a hurry she still has difficulty manipulating buttons on her clothes. If she must have a locker at any point, it will have to be with a keyed lock.

School got off to a great start; now it's time to get all we can out of the last sun-shiny weekend of summer with one more road trip before the real extra quiet time starts for me next week. Well, it will provide the perfect opportunity to learn how to use the knitting machine a friend gave me last week...

Spring Fever!

We all have it. And it's about time! We had more periods of severe (for us) weather than usual this winter, and spring has finally begun showing up in the buds on my ornamental pear and other flowering trees, the daffodils in full bloom, the decreasing number of birds at our feeders, and the repetitive THWACK! and Sproing! noise of a basketball being dribbled and bounced off the rim in the driveway. Today was beautiful, and I was able to take this shot of tiny purple anenome flowers amongst the relatively giant daffodils. I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with the photo considering grandson Milo, who is now four-and-a-half months old and getting very grabby, 'helped' me take it.

Dearest spent a lot of time turning over the raised beds, and Girlie will be out carefully checking on her 'baby' trees and the volunteer snapdragons she lovingly took out of the vegetable garden last fall and planted in pots. I ponied up for new garden gloves (Costco has packs of SIX PAIRS of nitrile coated gloves for $7.99 - about what you'd pay for two pairs in a hardware store) because I can't stand it when the dirt starts getting caked on the inside of the fingertips. I'm not a habitual gardener, but I do love cleaning out my few bulb and peony planters in the spring, with an earbud playing an audiobook in one ear and birds singing courtship songs in the other.

Sounds like all is right with the world, yes? No. In fact, Girlie will be saying good-bye to The Pup at the end of April after all. He is going back to California early because he is large and smart and needs expert schooling - he has the makings of an exceptional guide dog, but his 'teenage rebellion' is hard to handle in a family setting. Reportedly, at least one of his litter mates is in the same situation. Guide dogs are bred to have initiative, and to show 'intelligent disobedience'. Consider this - if something unexpected is in the road and the blind handler tells the dog to go forward, the dog has to be smart enough to force the handler into a different, safer path. (Not all dogs will do that; some are dropped from the program because they don't have enough initiative to disobey when necessary.) But when that dog is a young upstart with a sassy attitude, he learns very quickly that he can try to boss some of his family members around, and it's clear that he needs a real job before he gets in trouble. 

Our coordinator came to talk with Girlie today and show her a few more tricks to handle The Pup for the next several weeks before he goes. She also asked Girlie to continue with the program even after The Pup leaves, by helping handle the coordinator's new puppy-in-training while she's leading the classes (it's great how the promise of puppy cuddles can take some of the sting out of a problem!). The Pup will still be here to help Girlie celebrate her 14th birthday next month, and they'll get to go on one more training outing together with the group. Girlie will be fine, in the long run, but I'm stocking up on Kleenex because she is already tearing up at random times when she thinks about him leaving. Thankfully it will happen at a time of year when there are so many other things that Girlie loves capturing her attention.

Spring fever affects my knitting, too - who wants to think about winter knits when it's finally warm enough to take my sweater off? I fell in love with this Mini Mania Scarf pattern and decided to knit it as a table runner with all my left over sock yarn. I've never knitted linen stitch before and I absolutely love it; it's repetitive and soothing (that means 'boring' to many knitters), but very fun to see the color development. I always want to keep knitting to see what will happen when I add the next yarn!

300 stitches wide, about 1.5 inches of fabric so far, using 7 different sock yarns.

Y is for...

Yes.

How often do we encounter this word?  How often do our children hear ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’?

Somehow, I was conditioned to say ‘no’.  I don’t know how it happened, or why, but it was a startling realization.  Again I found myself grateful that I was not the only person parenting the two older kids!  Also, that the two younger kids are young enough that I probably didn’t do any permanent damage.  :-)

When I decided to listen to myself, I realized ‘no’ was a habit.  I rarely even stopped to consider whether the request was practical, not to mention occasionally even a good idea!  Yes, it is OK to have another sheet of paper (even though she's already had 5 and we can practically hear the trees falling, because the more drawing and coloring Girlie does, the better her fine motor control will be).  Yes, you can go outside and play even though it’s raining (because the more energy Boyo uses up outside, the less we’ll have to deal with inside).  Yes, you can have more milk or juice (no matter how close it is to meal time, because neither of them drink enough and both take medications that recommend they drink more than usual, as well as both having difficulty keeping everything, um… moving).  Yes, you can sleep on top of your covers or under your bed (because why not?).

So, do we always say ‘yes’? No! In fact, ‘no’ probably does have to be used here more than in the average home.  We hardly ever let the kids stay up any later on weekends than during the week because it’s an aberration in the routine that requires time and effort from which to recover.  We don’t let Girlie eat as much bread, tortillas, and crackers as she wants, even though it’s hard to get enough calories into her, because she doesn’t take in enough liquid, fats, protein, and fiber to compensate calorically and keep the ‘white food’ from clogging up the works.

Sometimes, we find out that ‘yes’ leads to something that doesn’t work out as we’d hoped, but more often I find it was worth a stretch in my parenting muscles.  Do I pay more attention, now?  Definitely, yes.

I say ‘yes’ to the grandkids more often, too.  Here are two of the littles, helping me felt an oven mitt for their grandpa.

Felting is a perfect activity for kids because, first of all, what could be better than playing with soap suds in the sink?  For younger kids it's great because squishing and rubbing the knitted item is great for preparing those little hand muscles for the hard job of writing.  And yes, they can have another piece of paper.  :-)