Show and Tell

Olivia’s class has started doing Show and Tell. Obviously, at this point, Olivia isn’t actually taking anything to class to show her classmates. She refuses to even consider just taking something and not talking about it. She’ll just sit back and enjoy the others as they show and tell, thank you very much.

During my conference with O’s teacher, I mentioned that I wish I could take a video of Olivia at home, one she wasn’t aware of so she doesn’t get distracted by the camera itself, so that I could send it to her teacher. I want the teachers and therapists to see and get to know the wild, talkative, active girl we live with, not the shy little flower that sits quietly in their classroom.

Mrs. F thought that was a great idea. In fact, she suggested that if I emailed her some sort of video, she could show the class during Show and Tell.

Huh. Well. I’m think it would be fun for everyone to see who Olivia really is but I wondered how Olivia herself would feel about sitting in class one day and suddenly there’s this video of her being played.

Obviously, I would try and explain to her what I was doing. I’d show her whatever video I took of her first and ask if she wanted her class to see it.

But I wonder about retention? Would she remember me talking about the video before it was actually shown in class?

This is something I need to give some thought to before I decide what to do. But for now I need to get around to actually taking video of my super special snowflakes. Can’t send what we haven’t recorded, now can I?

Left Behind

When we realized that Olivia was delayed, before we had her diagnosis, I worried about how we’d all deal with her being left behind by her peers.

Of course, when she was a baby, it didn’t matter. There weren’t all that many kids around that were exactly her age.

But then my nephew was born just before O turned a year old and those old fears came back. See, when Jaxon was born, Olivia, at a year old, still wasn’t crawling. She’d JUST started showing signs of being able to sit up on her own. I had no idea when she’d crawl or walk. And at that point, I knew that the newborn we were welcoming into the world would walk before Olivia did.

And…it didn’t matter. I realized that no matter when Jaxon met his milestones (and that kid was right on target for everything, heck, he was born on his flipping due date for Pete Sakes!) Olivia wasn’t in any diminished by his accomplishments.

He did walk before Olivia did. He was about 13 months old when he started walking. Which means he walked about four months sooner than O. And again, it didn’t matter. She was crawling by then, which of course made a big difference in my own outlook. She was showing us all that she was doing things at her own pace. By that point, I knew she’d get there. With the therapies we had her doing and all the work we were putting into that kid, we knew those goals would be met.

But as O gets older, as we face down the decision to keep her in preschool another year and postpone the academic challenge of kindergarten, I feel that vague sense of being left behind. I feel like O’s challenges are becoming more obvious.

And that saddens me. Not for me, for her. I hope she doesn’t feel like she’s being left behind. I hope she doesn’t watch her peers head off for bigger, better things and feel like she’s being held back by us, by society, by genetics.

I watch her play with Jaxon, this boy she’s known her whole life, and I love it. I love how she interacts with him. I love how she rough houses with him, that sense of confidence she has as they wrestle on the floor. I tease my brother that the nicest thing he ever did for me was having his son. Jaxon has challenged Olivia from the time he was one year old and she was two. He walked first and she watched, learned and basically decided, “Hell, if he can do it, I probably can to.” And she did.

He’s been playing pretend for a couple of years and she’s watched, learned and now, she pretends too. She tells the elaborate stories of a princess who is locked away but is having a party anyway and needs presents and cupcakes and tea.

She pushes Jaxon around (he’s a short little fellow) and she feels confident running from him or after him.

I want her to have that confidence at school, which is one of the reasons we’re doing another year of preschool. Most of the kids in her class this year are younger than she is. Most of them will be in the same preschool class again next year. I feel like that gives her a boost, a shot of confidence as she faces another year in the same class with the same teachers and the same kids. And maybe by the time the 2012/2013 school year starts and all those little preschoolers become kindergarteners, she’ll be that much more ready, that much more confident, that much less likely to be left behind.

Maybe. This is a mother’s hope and prayer and dream.

Issues

I have issues. I’ve never denied that. In fact, I’m probably more likely to go on and on about them than to deny that they exist.

I have body-image issues. I have an issue with apologizing too much. I’m on the passive-aggressive side of life.

And much to my husband’s disgust, I tend to make HIS issues all about me.

See, he has issues too. He is currently at what we both consider his idea weight. And yet…he can pinch some skin on his stomach and he feels this is ‘fatty’ skin rather than just skin.

But trust me, it’s just skin. He is not fat in any way.

So when he starts going on and on about that little bit of ‘fat’ I can’t help but make it about me. I can’t help but think, “Damn, if he thinks he’s fat, what must he think of me?”

See, even with 34 pounds lost, I’m still tens of pounds away from any sort of goal weight, let alone what is considered a medically ideal weight for a woman my age and height.

So I get frustrated and I get discouraged and I feel awful about myself because he has issues with himself.

But I’m vowing here and now to try and stop that. I’m going to try and stop making his issues about me. Because I know, intellectually, that they’re not about me. It’s about his own need for perfection in himself. And yet, knowing that, my heart breaks every time he mentions how far from perfect he is because it makes me feel like by extension, he’s saying that I’m even farther from perfection and I’ll never, reach it.

I don’t actually want perfection. I want happiness. And I know that perfection is out of reach and so to strive for it, is to give up being happy. And that’s why I can’t let his issues become my own. I don’t want to give up the possibility of happiness in an attempt to attain something that isn’t possible.

So I’ll let him go on and on about that little roll of fat that doesn’t even exist and I won’t listen to the bitch in my head who asks what he must think of me if he thinks he’s fat. It doesn’t matter. None of us expect nearly as much from those around us as we expect from ourselves.

He can get up at 4am every morning and exercise if he wants. That’s his thing. Sleep is my thing and haven’t gotten nearly enough in, oh about nine years so I’ll pass on the 4am workout sessions, thank you very much. I’ll also pass on the peppermint patties, for now. It’s a compromise.

Isn’t everything?

On the Mend

Alyssa finished her round of antibiotics on Saturday.

Olivia and I started our very own rounds of antibiotics today.

See, Olivia didn't seem sick. Not during the day anyway. But at night, she coughed and coughed and each morning for the past few mornings she's had to clear her through repeatedly. And, worst of all, her appetite was dimished greatly. Olivia is our good eater. She eats a large variety of good foods and she eats a lot of it. Except, in the last week or so, she hasn't.

So off to the doctor we went.

And she's got some sort of bronchial infection. And so she's on medication. Whee!

I just hope it kicks in soon so we can all sleep better. When Olivia doesn't sleep, gues who else doesn't sleep. That's right, the mama. And I'm so, so tired.

So that's where we are. She only has to take the medicine for five days. It really helped Alyssa bounce right back so I have high hopes for little Miss O.

And then came Bomber

We had another fish die earlier this week. She was a sweet little black and white fish we'd had for over a month.

Because we're not big on furry animals in the house, fish are the only pet Alyssa's ever known. She wasn't nearly as upset over the demise of the latest fish as she was over the first. We'd had that first fish for almost a year.

Anyway, today, we headed back to Meijer and looked at the fish. And this time...we actually got a helpful accociate working with us. She explained which fish work in the bowl we have and which ones need a bubbling tank.

Sadly, the fish we had last time...needed a bubbling tank. We have a fish bowl. I feel awful that we sentences that poor fish to die a slow death of asphyxiation. This time, we came home wtih a blue and red betta. He's been deemed "Bomber" by Alyssa. Her school mascot is the Bomber, so that's cute and neat and I'm proud of her for not naming him Bluey.

We're hoping Bomber fares better than Lily, Lillian, Lillianna and Molly. I know, but Alyssa's only eight, remember?

Bomber is feisty so far. He likes to hide behind Gary the snail that sits that the bottom of his bowl.

Alyssa has already reminded us all not to put a mirror in front of Bomber for fear he'll smash himself to death trying to get at his reflection.

Speaking of furry pets, though...I'm still working on Tom and that kitten for Alyssa's 9th birthday. I hope the kitten that Alyssa picks out likes to watch fish but not eat them. That would be...unpleasant.

Awkward

I am socially awkward. Sometimes I laugh too loud or too late at jokes told in a group. Sometimes I laugh even if I don’t get the joke, just to feel included. I’ve been known to say something I think is funny only to be met with silence because, yeah, it wasn’t funny at all. If I don’t get to sit next to someone I know on a plane, I’ve had more than one flight where I don’t talk at all, unless it’s to the flight attendant who asked me a direct question.

Which is why it’s not surprise that my girls are on the shy side. They come by it naturally. And even as I try to help ease Alyssa out of her tendency not to speak to people when spoken to, I understand what she’s going through. I know that she WANTS to be one of those outgoing, fun girls, but she just isn’t and it’s not something you can force.

On top of the social awkwardness, I’m also fashion-challenged. I can often be found with a pant leg stuck in a sock. Or I’ll go to the bathroom at work after being there for two hours and find that the stupid collar of my shirt has been folded weird all morning long.

I have no instincts when it comes to fashion. I’m just lucky that jeans are considered pretty acceptable anywhere I go. I’m a jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt kind of girl. Anything more than that feels experimental and it never, ever goes over well.

Further evidence of the challenge fashion gives me is that once, I left the bathroom with my skirt tucked into my underwear. Thankfully, I was with kind friends who promptly pulled my skirt out of my underwear before we left the bathroom. But really? Come on!! It isn’t like I was five when that happened. I was actually 25, if you must know.

I’ve always hoped that maturity and age would give me a semblance of fashion sense and the ability to fit into a crowd. Alas, that isn’t to be. Just this morning, one of my co-workers had to fix the hood on my sweater. Apparently, I’d been walking around work all morning long with it inside out, the hood, not the sweater. But yeah, I had no idea that anything was wrong. I was just going about my business, thinking I was fine but no, I was having a fashion ‘moment.’

I can only hope that since my shyness and social awkwardness didn’t skip the next generation, that perhaps we’ll get lucky and my inability to grasp even the simplest facets of fashion will have skipped over Alyssa and Olivia and they’ll be able to go through life without having to check their collars, their pant legs, their skirts and their underwear for any fashion faux pas.

Conference - part 2

Somehow, when the scheduling of conferences happened, I managed to be scheduled for a conference with O's teacher last Thursday and a conference with A's teacher today. So I had the privledge of driving from work to the school (about twenty miles away) twice. Perhaps in the coming years, the scheduling will be kinder to my gas budget.

But today's conference was all that I'd expected. Alyssa's a joy, she's a delight, if we could clone her about twenty times we'd have a perfect classroom.

Of course, this meeting was followed by me getting to my mom's an hour early to be greeted by a sullen Alyssa who didn't want to come home early, thank you very much.

But again, that's perfectly normal. She's the picture of perfection at school because she's still learning her place among the teachers and her peers. But here at home? She's comfortable in the place that she believes she holds, that of the leader, the boss, the ruler of the house.

Ohh, that silly, silly girl.

But seriously, it was a good conference. Alyssa is at the top of her class in reading, in math, in social studies, in science. She's kind of her classmates and obeys the rules of the classroom and the school.

The only thing her teacher wants her to work on is her handwriting. This doesn't surprise me. When I check her homework, I often suggest to her that she might wand to slow down when she's writing because her handwriting is less than pretty. It's actually sort of messy. Her teacher said that she tries to remind the class that their handwriting is a form of communication and that they need to remember that people reading their work aren't just reading what they wrote, they're also reading how they wrote it.

Such good advice! I'm definitely going to use that as we work on Alyssa's handwriting.

But honestly, if handwriting is the only thing she has to work on? That's pretty darned good.