At Home Feeding Therapy

As of about a month ago, Olivia has been feeding herself everything at every meal.

This should be no big deal, right? I mean, Alyssa started feeding herself when she was, oh, about two years old. You know, that age when kids declare, “I can do it myself!”

Olivia has never been that kid. She’s never wanted to ‘do it myself.’ She’s always preferred to be babied, to let us do things for her, even things she’s perfectly capable of doing.

Eating was one of those things that, well, it was just easier to feed her at mealtime than to sit there with her and cajole, harass, beg the child to please eat. As long as someone was shoveling food into her mouth, the food was going into her stomach, not onto the floor, or just being wasted because she couldn’t be bothered to lift the spoon/fork to her own mouth.

But this summer brought some changes. After O’s tonsillectomy, we continued to feed her for all the above reasons. She was recovering, she didn’t want to eat because it hurt and so we ‘helped’ her by putting the food into her mouth for her.

A month after surgery, she and Lyss spent a day at my mom’s. When we got home, Alyssa declared that at Gram’s house, Livie always feeds herself because Gram is just too busy to sit there and do it for her.

Tom thought about this for a few days and then one day declared that from that day forward, Liv was going to feed herself.

She protested, wanting to know WHY she had to feed herself.

We answered that she was a big girl and could do it. She claimed she wasn’t big and didn’t want to do it.

We stood firm and these days, she barely fusses. She also barely makes any messes, so…hmmm. How much have we been holding this girl back?

First self-feeding and now tying her shoes? She’s proving perfectly capable of so much independence. I wonder what else she’s perfectly capable of doing that we just haven’t expected of her yet?

Now for Something Positive

Enough (for now) of the negative.

Tom taught Olivia how to tie her shoes last week. He was so proud of how patient he was during the entire process and how he figured out that if he bribed her with Reece’s Cups she was willing to work a little harder for a little longer. Brilliant.

We’ve watched a bunch of the Olympics (duh, right?) and managed to catch a little of the synchronized swimming yesterday. Olivia was fascinated. She kept asking, “How do they do that? Do they swim a lot to practice? How can they hold their breath that long?”

Later she asked if there would be more synchronized swimming for us to watch. I assured her that if there wasn’t any more shown on television, we’d go to youtube and watch videos of it. That satisfied her curiosity and need to see more, to learn more, to know more.

We went to the mall on Saturday to pick up a few things for the coming school year. While there, Olivia found a pair of Monster High skull earrings. On sale, these earrings were still $40. My mom and I agreed to split the cost and got them for her.

The lady at the jewelry counter asked Olivia if she wanted them in a bag. Olivia declared, “I want them in my ears.”

The lady started to bring over a mirror so O could change her earrings right there. My mom told the sale clerk that was okay, that I’d change the earrings for Olivia. But that moment, when the woman treated my daughter like a typical nine-year-old who would/could change her own earrings was kind of awesome. I realize how lucky we are that Olivia’s delays, her issues, the ways in which 5p- affect her are virtually invisible.

I’ve said it before that society is kinder to those who are conventionally attractive. While that’s not a fair practice, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m glad my daughter benefits from it. There are things in her life that are hard enough. If being pretty can make her life a little easier, so be it.

While at the mall, we obviously had to stop by the bookstore. Olivia immediately made her way to the back where the kids’ books are located. Alyssa went with her because the stuffed animals are back there too.

After a few minutes, they came to find me, asking me to help them find the Monster High books. I followed them back and we looked and looked but since we didn’t know the name of the person who writes the Monster High books, we were having no luck. I found a store employee and she was able to take us directly to the shelf there where were three copies of the Clea DeNile books available.

Olivia picked up that book and hugged it to her chest.

What kind of mother would I be if I refused to buy her that book? Since I was paying ten dollars for a book for O, I told A that I’d buy her the stuffed border collie she’d already picked out. I know, I’m a sucker for those girls.

But this sight make me so, so happy.

My girl, nine years old, reading books that are age-appropriate, enjoying them so much she reads them a second time and then tells me all about the story. And her joy at finding, at the end of the book, that there were blank pages on which she was encouraged to write out her own thoughts, feelings, ideas for stories, those things make me sleep a little better each night when I start to worry about her future. There’s a really good chance this girl is going to do just fine.

Ms. Negativity

I’ve been…grumpy lately. School starts a week from tomorrow. Where did our summer go?

Sure, we hit up the pool, the lake, Cedar Point (amusement park on Lake Erie in Ohio) and did a few other things, like ice cream on the porch, lunch on the deck. There are chalk drawings all over our driveway and garage right now.

But I remember the summers of my youth lasting forever. There were long days and endless evenings. The mornings started slowly and we were outside more than we were in. There were cartwheels in the big side yard, swinging on the tire that hung from the old box elder tree. We played in the dirt with matchbox cars and rode our bikes endlessly.

I worry that my kids are missing out.

I worry that I’m failing them.

I’m sure most working moms feel this way and a lot of stay at home moms too. We all worry that we aren’t doing enough, loving enough, teaching enough.

At least that’s what I worry.

I worry I don’t speak up enough when my husband is being especially male, when he gets condescending and obnoxious. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, I shut down rather than call him out on it. Then I feel awful not just for me but for the girls because what am I teaching them? Are they learning that as women our thoughts, our opinions, our feelings don’t matter when compared to men?

I posted some quasi-political stuff over the weekend. My husband’s sister’s husband (so my husband’s brother-in-law?) got REALLY pissy over some of these posts.

I ignored his responses because…well, family and peace. But I felt like shit for doing so. What I wanted to say to him after his ‘not all men!” rant was, “Well, then, of course this post wasn’t about you!”

Something else I wanted to say was, “Okay, so NOT ALL MEN are sexist, rapist assholes. But until NO MEN are sexist, rapist assholes, we all need to step up, speak up and make the sexist, rapist assholes STOP IT.”

Also, “Okay, so YOU are not a racist pig. Great. Awesome. Here’s a fucking cookie. But until NO ONE is a racist pig, we all need to step up, speak up and let racist pigs know that we aren’t going to tolerate their bullshit anymore.”

But I didn’t say any of that and I’m mad at myself for not saying it. And now it feels too late.

I was outside finally painting the dresser I meant to paint over three weeks ago when I fell down the stairs and put a temporary stop to any painting attempts. I was taking the original hardware off the drawers. Tom was hovering around and said something about cleaning the dressers before painting them.

I thought he was talking about the drawer pulls and muttered something about throwing them away because they were ugly.

He replied, “Well, of course you think they’re ugly. You’re pretty negative about everything.”

Which…okay, so yes, I do express a lot of negativity. But, ouch. That one hurt and it made me feel like I shouldn’t be expressing emotion or thoughts at all. And I know that’s stupid. I know he probably didn’t even mean it that way, except, well, that’s what he said.

And for the record, those drawer pulls were UGLY. (How’s that for putting negativity out there? Damnit.) Not only were they ugly but two of the nine drawers had lost their pulls at one point or another so we needed new ones anyway just to make the drawers functional.

Okay, so yeah. That’s a lot of venting right there, isn’t it?

Not Ready for School

Several times this weekend, Olivia asked me if she had school on Monday.

I reminded her that Summer Intervention was over and she had all this week off; that she could stay in her pajamas all day if she wanted to.

She’d give me a small smile and then inform me, “I’m not ready for school to start back up.”

I’d tell her, “I know. Neither am I. Summer goes too fast, doesn’t it?”

She nodded and asked, “What if we lived where it was always summer?”

“You mean like you never had to go to school because summer vacation never ended?”

She grinned and nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah, what if?”

“Well,” I pretended to think about it. “You’d still have to learn stuff so I guess Dad would have to teach you here at home. Except that would be bad because you two can’t get along and you’d fight more than you’d learn.”

“Or you could teach me,” she suggested.

“I could but then we’d have to figure out a way for me to work from home because how could I teach you and go to work?”

She had a very quick solution to that one. “Dad could go to work!”

I laughed when Tom popped his head in from the kitchen, having obviously listened to this entire conversation.

“But how would everything around here get done if he had to go to work?” I wanted to know.

She didn’t have an answer to that one. But the wheels are turning.

She might not be ready for school to start back up in just over a week, but Olivia’s brain is already working hard at coming up with solutions to issues she deems problems.

New Stairs

The day after I fell down the stairs going down into our garage Tom set to work to rebuild the stairs.

Since he was there to actually see me fall, he knew I was hurt. He also realized that while yes, I was carrying THREE empty dresser drawers, if the stairs had been a little more uniform, perhaps the fall wouldn’t have happened even considering the drawers that were in my hands.

He’d hated those stairs since we moved in six years ago. They were very obviously not original to the house. They’d not been built by the builder of the main structure, they were cobbled together by the previous owner, a heating and air guy who’d decided in error to put in a furnace and an air conditioning unit that was entirely too small for the house. Since he was a heating and air guy, I’m guessing he figured he could help the units limp along over the years.

Alas, he was a brilliant about stairs as he was about heating and air. He’d either built or had them built so that there were three steps from the garage floor to the small landing that led to the kitchen door. These three steps were, from bottom to top, an eleven inch step, an eight and a half inch step and the last step up to the landing was five and a half inches.

Yeah, not so great when you can’t watch your feet and you’re expecting the next step down to be the same as the first step you took.

Anyway, Tom took off the offending stair structure and began building an entirely new set of stairs, four steps in all that are all six and a quarter inches from one step to the next.

He also made the steps deeper, as in, my size eight and a half feet actually fit on each step now rather than my hobbit-ish toes hanging off each one of the other, horrible stairs.

He angled the steps so that each stair going down is a little wider than the one at the top, so if you’re carrying something up the stairs, you don’t have to angle quite so sharply at that first step. The rail on the outside of the stairs is also much wider and sturdier.

All this to say that he’s my hero, once again. He worked so hard to make steps that are safe and functional for us. I’m reminded once again that I really got lucky when I met and eventually married this guy.

Here is evidence of his carpentry genius:

Last Week of Summer Intervention

Olivia is less than enthusiastic that she has to go to Summer Intervention this week.

It’s the last week it’s available. School starts on August 18 for reals, as in all day long. So she goes half days this week, is off next week and half of the week after and then, HELLO THIRD GRADE.

No fewer than five thousand times in the past days she’s asked, “Why do you think Summer Intervention is good for me?”

And every single time I’ve patiently answered, “Because it reminds you of what you learned last year in second grade and helps you get ready to learn more awesome stuff in third grade.”

Because it’s all true. She needs this time in school to remind her that being social is important, that sitting still and listening to the teacher is important, that taking it all in and then being able to spit it all back out is important.

School isn’t easy for Olivia. She doesn’t enjoy sitting still for hours at a time, socializing with her peers is almost painful for her. The work itself doesn’t come easily like it did for me when I was her age or the way it does for Alyssa.

But she tries. She gets up with a sigh every single day and trudges to school and enjoys the snacks at Summer Intervention and writes little snippets because she’s told to do so.

She tries. She tries so hard and for that I am grateful. I praise her and hug her and tell her how amazing she is.

She always hugs me back, smiles at my silliness and then launches into an tale about the Monster High crew and their imaginary visit to our house.

This girl…I wish I could smooth the way for her, make things a little easier, make them less stressful. But since I can’t go to school for her I can listen to her stories, laugh with her at dinner as she laments the unfairness of having to feed herself dinner (a tale for another day) and hug her as much as she’ll let me, reminding her every single day how much she is loved, how lucky I feel to be her mom, how she fits so perfectly into our little family, how without her, we just wouldn’t be complete.

Catch Up

With a vacation last week and school looming on the horizon, I’ve been lax here.

The girls and I along with my mom, my nephew Jaxon and Alyssa’s friend Amelia loaded my mom’s truck and drove a couple of hours to Sandusky, Ohio where we stayed a couple of days at Cedar Point, the amusement park of the Midwest. Well, okay, so the amusement park of northern Ohio.

Fun was had by all.

My back settled pretty well once we were on the road, with nary a twinge. There was a minor dull ache in the area I hurt the most but mostly that was controlled by over the counter Aleve.

Our day at the park was pretty awesome for everyone involved. This was Amelia’s first time ever visiting Cedar Point and she took it all in. She’s a bit more adventurous that Alyssa and wanted to ride the bigger roller coasters. Alyssa wasn’t so into it so I ended up riding Amelia’s first roller coaster with her. That was kind of awesome.

It amused me that she was more freaked out by the Ocean Motion than by the Gatekeeper. For reference, here is a picture of the Ocean Motion.

And here is a picture of the Gate Keeper.

But I get it. Not all rides are for everyone. And not everyone enjoys all rides…so there. Once we all accepted that, everyone relaxed a bit and had that much more fun.

We walked miles that day. I wish I’d had a pedometer or fitbit or whatever so I could say exactly how much we walked but I can say that the next morning my entire body hurt from all the movement. But it was a good hurt this time, a pain that meant we’d moved and exercised and had a blast.

I think maybe, for me at least, that’s what vacation is supposed to be. We’re supposed to have so much fun that we hurt the next day. We’re supposed to walk so far and so much that we have blisters on our feet and we fall into bed when the sun finally goes down.

It works for us…for now. And if/when it stops working? We’ll change it up and find something new that works.