Today as we were driving home from Bug’s horse riding lessons, we had the following conversation:
Bug: (looking at a map of Florida, with a picture of a manatee on it) “Why are they called MAN-atees? They can’t all be MAN-atees. Some of them have to be WOMAN-atees, because if they were all boys they couldn’t make any more, right Mom?”
Me: “That’s true”
Bug: “Because the girls are the ones with the eggs, and the boys have the sperm, right?”
Me: “Yup”
** Keep in mind, Bug is our animal-obsessed child who has watched many nature videos, including animals mating, but has yet to learn about the real “birds and the bees” **
Bug: “So, how do people get the sperm to the egg without doing anything inappropriate?”
Me: (trying my best to stifle my laughter) “What would you consider inappropriate?”
Bug: “Jumping on each other like the elephants do. It would also be inappropriate to be bottom to bottom like the doggies.”
Me: “Well….people do have a special way of doing it, and you will learn about that when you are 8” (Pulling a number out of the air and hoping she won’t hold me to it if I change my mind later)
Bug:“Ok. I just wanted to make sure you would tell me sometime. It doesn’t have to be today”
I just love her! She’s known for a while that Daddy has the sperm, I had the egg, and together they made a baby. It was only a matter of time before she analyzed it and tried to figure out just how they came together. LOL
I don’t think I have ever been more proud of my daughter than I was this past Sunday afternoon! It was an absolutely amazing achievement for her in many ways, and especially in regards to her Sensory Processing Disorder / Asperger-like challenges.
We had signed her up for a FREE “Kids First” hockey class at the Dr. Pepper Stars Center, and yesterday was the class’ first venture onto the ice (class #1 was just picking up/sizing equipment).
It was absolutely precious to see all these 5-8 year olds in their hockey gear toddling around on their skates. A few had skated before (Bug has been a total of 3 times, once a year for the past 3 years at Christmas time), but the majority of these kids had never been on the ice before, and they were all certainly beginners.
She had been looking forward to this for a couple weeks. She’s enjoyed going ice skating with us at Christmas time when we hold her hands and toddle around the rink. She loves watching hockey with us when we get a chance, and she has an older cousin who had done this class years ago. To her, this was a chance to do something “cool”.
We arrived at the rink in plenty of time to get her dressed in her equipment. We had tried on the equipment a few times at home, so she was comfortable wearing the skin pads, elbow pads, padded pants, and helmet. With the exception of a bigger helmet it wasn’t too much unlike what she wears to ride a bike. She was all smiles as she received her very own jersey to wear (and keep upon completion of the class), and couldn’t wait to get started.
UNTIL…..she saw the coaches putting out the goal nets on the ice. Suddenly, she was hit with this overwhelming fear and perfectionism as she started bawling, “I can’t hit a puck into those nets, I can’t even skate yet!”. She saw the coaches skating around, professionals that they are, and assumed she would be expected to do the same. Thankfully we were able to convince her that she didn’t have to skate like the coach yet, and that they would help her.
Here is where I have to give a HUGE shout-out to Coach Katie!! The male coach (didn’t catch his name) was giving the “welcome speech” to all the kids before they got on the ice, and Katie took Bug on out on the ice and skated around with her. She held on to her, helped her up when she fell, and taught her how to get up on her own. Most importantly, she removed Bug from the overwhelming crowd of kids anxious to get on the ice, and gave her some much needed ‘space’. That did wonders for her!! She doesn’t enjoy feeling crowded under normal circumstances, but when she’s anxious that feeling just gets worse and she gets into “fight or flight” mode. That’s where she was, all ready to quit and go home just to “get away”, when Katie rescued her. She scooped her up in her arms and skated around with her on the ice. Bug’s face lit up at the “ride”, and she was able to relax a bit.
Bug was then left to skate around a bit on her own and get used to it. Of course she fell, several times, but the coaches were quick to rescue her and encourage her.
Once it was time to get everyone on the ice, they were instructed to skate (or rather, “march” on skates) around a bit and then come together in a circle in the center. From the outsiders perspective, it looked like a comedy of errors. Kids dropping like flies, some causing domino effect as they fell into someone else knocking them down too. Up and down, they all went as they tried to figure out these things attached to the bottom of their legs.
Unfortunately, during this time, Bug had reached her limit. Our little perfectionist was frustrated that she kept falling down, and was oblivious to the fact that everyone else was falling too. Her bottom was hurting from all the falls, although I suspect not nearly as bad as her sensitive body perceived it to be, since she had some great padding on. At one point, she was sitting on the ice just bawling hysterically, and our hearts were breaking. I wanted to just run out on the ice, pick her up, take her home to cuddle and rescue her from the pain – both physical and emotional.
But we waited. The coaches were right on top of things, and Coach Katie even picked up Bug at one point and was holding her on her hip (while on skates…wow!) and talking to her. Coach Katie did her best, but eventually, Emily came rushing over to the doorway to us. She’d had enough! She was crying so hard that she could barely get out the words. “This isn’t as fun as I thought it would be!”,“I want to go home!”, “My bottom hurts because I keep falling on it!”, “This is hard!”, and “My hair keeps getting in my face!”.
I took her in my arms and told her that we loved her very much. We told her that we understood it was harder than she expected, and we pointed out that she was only one of MANY that kept falling down constantly. We told her how proud we were that she was learning to get up all by herself. We told her “You could go home, but why don’t you give it a little longer and see if it gets better. You might end up really enjoying it. You don’t have to be great at it, you are all here to learn, and the coaches will help you every step”.
We reminded her that Mommy & Daddy were right here watching her, and that God was always with her. We reminded her that she could pray to God in her head and ask Him for help.
Then, we tried a little bribery – I said, “How about you try to finish the class, and if you do, we’ll go to the store and pick out a new package of stickers?” . She lit up at the beginning of negotiations! She said “If I do good, can we go to the park as a reward?”. We said “Of course, but you don’t have to be good at hockey. We just want you to try to finish the class”.
I just knew that if she finished the first class, she would be so proud of herself. I also knew that once she knew what to expect, the next 3 classes would go so much more smoothly.
So, out she went again, to give it another try, and by the awesome grace of God, she did it!!
She kept falling, but she bounced back up and kept going. She skated fast and had several times where she skated halfway across the rink without falling. She looked back and smiled at us. She got hair in her face, and went to ask the coach for help (without tears!). Her glove fell off, and she picked it up and put it back on (without fussing!). HUGE accomplishments for an SPD kid! She had been in the middle of a meltdown, and actually recovered from it within moments. Thank you, Lord!! Hubby and I were grinning from ear to ear and I was just amazed! Normally, once she hits that meltdown mode, we are D.O.N.E – done for the day.
Then, they brought out the pucks! Soft, foam ones, not the hard “professional” ones. They tossed them all on the ice, and the kids just went to town trying to get them in the net.
Another achievement for Bug!!
She got a puck and hit it toward the net. She missed. She fell. Another kid fell and landed on her puck. She hit the puck from right in front of the net and it went way off behind the net. She lost her glove. But, she kept trying!! She chased that thing around the ice, behind the net, and back before finally making it in the net!! You should have seen the smile on her face as she turned around to look at us!! You would have thought she just won the Stanley Cup! Mommy & Daddy’s smiles were even bigger than hers as we gave her thumbs up and cheers from behind the glass! The determination she showed was incredible! She didn’t fuss, she didn’t cry, and she didn’t quit!!
This is HUGE for her. Bug does not do well when she gets something wrong, or doesn’t succeed the first time. She is a perfectionist, and often quits when the going gets rough. But she kept at it! She even fell down and lost a glove during all this, but bounced right back and kept going, determined to make that goal!
After the first one, she claimed another puck and did it again!
When class was over and she stepped off the ice, her first words were “I want to be a hockey player when I grow up!”.
She went from this sad, dejected, frustrated, miserable, confused & hurt little girl at her meltdown point……
…..to THIS – proud, confident, happy, excited, determined & accomplished ice hockey class participant!!
(Sorry the pictures aren’t great. It was low-light, and we were behind the glass. The “after” picture was taken from a video, but even so, you can just SEE the glowing in her face!)
Here is the video (1 min, 39 sec) of her chasing down her first puck and making her first goal! (She's the one with the blonde ponytail hanging out of her helmet!)
We’ve had a couple of busy couple of days around here, and that means a very haphazard schedule, which makes our SPD kiddo all the more sensitive and out of sorts. Even after a bath tonight (which normally does wonders for calming her down and desensitizing her), she just could not find any panties that were comfortable for bedtime tonight. She tried on about 7 pair of panties including her old favorite standbys, a couple pair of bike shorts, and even her swimsuit shorts (since she wears those sans panties), but none of them worked.
Finally, she decided on a nightgown without panties. What are you going to do? In this case, sensory needs far outweigh modesty. I did remind her that this was only ok because it was bedtime, but that we had to have *something* on over our bottom to go to church tomorrow. If we don’t make it to church, you’ll know why!
I will say that I am oh-so-proud of her for actually using her WORDS to tell us how she was struggling tonight. Usually we get a lot of tears, whining, and flailing. Tonight, she was able to stay in control enough to say “these just don’t feel good” and “those have seams so they bother me”, and finally, “can you give me a massage to keep my legs from hurting tonight so I can sleep?”. WOW. I made sure to praise her highly for her awesome communication skills in the middle of such an uncomfortable period for her.
This past Saturday night, just before Bug went to bed, I was rocking her in the rocking chair. I feel so incredibly blessed that she still lets me do this from time to time, even at 5 (and a half!).
Suddenly, she burst into tears! She said “I don’t want to grow up. I want to stay a kid forever.” I assured her that she had tons of time to enjoy being a kid, and when it was time for her to be a grownup, she would WANT to be a grownup! She was worried about outgrowing her bunk bed (a twin!), so I told her about how I slept on a bed that size until I was a much older grownup and it fit just fine.
Then the conversation got around to us moving (ahhh! the real worry!). We know that about a year from now our family will be moving. We don’t know where yet. Most of the time, Emily is super excited about it. God blessed her with an amazing sense of adventure and curiosity. She wants to visit more countries and states than I think I even knew existed at her age.
However, this time, she was bawling. She was scared and worried about the move. I held her close and told her she could ask me anything. That Daddy and I had both moved many, many times in our life, so we could tell her all about it. She’s moved before, but she was too young to remember it. Now, she’s starting to process the concept of moving, and trying to figure it all out. See, she’s a detail person and a planner. That’s who she is. So, rather than focusing on the adventure of it, right now she was focused on the little details.
What was she worried about? Well, here were a couple of her questions.
* What if my new bedroom doesn’t have a window? I assured her that her bedroom, would in fact, have a window! She loves to look out her bedroom window!
* What if we are driving to our new home and we have to stop, but we can’t sleep in the van….where will we sleep? Obviously she had forgotten the many times we’ve slept in a hotel room on the way to a destination! I reminded her of the hotel stops when we went to Florida this past year, and that settled her mind.
Last time she did this, she was concerned because she “would never get to go to the zoo again!”, but was fine once I showed her that there are zoos in or near most cities, and that she would definitely get to go to the zoo again!
She was also curious about having a yard to play in, and since I don’t know if we’ll be in a house or apartment at first, I couldn’t promise that. But once I told her that apartments have swimming pools, she said she wanted us to live there!
Our sweet girl is not a big fan of change. She likes to plan ahead and know what’s going to happen….exactly how it’s going to happen. So this first move will be challenging for us. We’ll have to give her lots of details, without giving her ones she doesn’t need to know at her age.
As she was worrying about whether or not her bedroom would have a window, I was reminded of Christ in Matthew 6:25-39. He tells us not to worry because he will take care of us, even more than he does the birds and the flowers. He’s already in the details. He sees the big picture, when we only see what’s right in front of us.
Just the same, I can worry about where we are going to be stationed, what our house will look like, if it will have a microwave built in, whether I’ll have a bathtub or just a shower…..Or I can just relax, take it as it comes, and trust that God has it all planned out for us.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:6-7)
I had more ideas than I had time to implement for this week!
We studied Christopher Columbus (history), contentment (Bible), the calendar (math).
In Science, we studied crabs, and did an experiment with celery. You know the one where you put the celery in a glass of water with food coloring? Then you get to see the food coloring moving up the stalk as the celery absorbs water. Never gets old!
We made cookies, chicken pot pie, and ate chocolate! I altered the pot pie recipe a bit, and made my crust from scratch, but I’ll type that out later.
We had our dear friend “Aunt Chelle” over for dinner. Not just because it was “C” week, but it worked out nicely!
Bug clipped her fingernails for the first time all by herself! (No blood! Yay!)
She made a cat craft where the legs and tail were all made out of letter Cs. I turned her loose with the glue on this one, and let’s just say that it’s a good thing that stuff comes cheap! Ha Ha!
She also decorated a letter C with cereal. I was so proud when she said “Look Mommy! I made patterns!”.
For sensory development, we played with clothespins, played catch with a ball, and made sensory balloons (I guess I should have done those on B week!)).
I made 2 sets of sensory balloons filled with popcorn kernels, salt, birdseed, oatmeal, pinto beans, and lentils. The idea was for Bug to simply feel the balloons and match one from the pink group to the same one from the orange group. She amazed me by completing this in record time! I don’t know why I was surprised. This is the girl that notices every little detail, and can tell if there is a single stitch out of place inside her shoe. Later, she used the balloons and an empty laundry basket to make a tossing game in the hall. That was a little trickier, as motor skills were involved. Great practice though!
Other snacks included crackers, cheese, oranges (citrus), & more chocolate! Also pictured is the sewing card I made for the week.
I also bought a new set of cookie cutters! 101 of them, to be exact! They were at Walmart for only $10, and I’ve been eyeing them for a while. If you follow that link, those are the same cutters, but my box did not have a see-through window, and I paid $10, not $14.99!
I have to say, I was super impressed with this set! I fully expected them to be teeny tiny cutters for the price, but I was surprised to see how large they were. I wanted a set of alphabet cutters, so I was willing to deal with them being on the small side, but they are actually a good size. Some of the cutters, like the gingerbread people and the pumpkin, are 4-5 inches. There are several sizes of hearts and circles, and a great variety of other items. I LOVE it!! Bug had a great time spreading them all out on the floor and playing too.
Here is what we woke up to on Friday morning! It snowed the ENTIRE day on Thursday, and overnight covered up most of our tracks from the day before.
It even covered up our snowgirl we made the day before! She’s got on a pink cowgirl hat, but you can’t tell!
We all (mostly my hubby!) worked hard in the front yard to built a snow fort. The plan was to make it taller, but Bug and her friend from next door decided it should be a slide, so the plans got redrawn!
Bug had a blast with her good friend from next door. We are blessed with some of the most wonderful next door neighbors! This little girl is their granddaughter, and she and Bug just adore each other. They played in the snow for hours before I finally lured them in to decorate cookies and warm up.
Finally, they wore out enough to sit still for a movie….for all of 30 minutes….before getting back up to play!
For many of you, snow is just a given at this time of year. However, for us in Texas, these past few days have been a real treat! For an area that deals with temperatures in the 100’s for so many days in the summer, it’s nice to experience the colder side of things from time to time.
DFW just set a new record with over a foot of snow falling in 24 hours! We built snowmen, ate snow ice cream, snow cones, went sledding, and just all around enjoyed it!
If you aren’t from Texas and you are wondering why we are so excited it’s because it is a RARE treat that we get real SNOW. Usually it’s this icy, slushy, mixed with dirt stuff that Texans call snow. But this was white, fluffy, powdery, genuine snow!
Letter B week was so much fun! We learned about the Tower of Babel for our Bible story. We sang songs about a black sheep and a dog named Bingo, and played with our sand blocks while listening to music. We snacked on bread & butter, blueberries, and peanut butter balls.
Here are some of the pictures from the week!
We made a bird feeder! We spread peanut butter all over a pinecone, and then covered it with birdseed and hung it in the tree. The birds (and some squirrels!) loved it!
We made a school bus craft with Mommy’s Cricut paper cutter!
Practicing my handwriting! Big line, little curve, little curve!
Then we baked bread in the form of pretzels! Yummy!
Emily spent time building blocks, and balancing them!
Decorated the letter B with buttons!
Then we ended the week with a special trip to the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, courtesy of Bug’s grandparents, to see some Bull Riding and Barrel Racing!
We’ve changed curriculum a bit in homeschooling. The one we were using was only frustrating both Emily and myself, so I made some changes for this second semester. We are now working through the alphabet with a Letter of the Week program I’ve put together. It’s a compilation of ideas and tools from different sources. We absolutely LOVE it! Emily loves coming up with new ways to incorporate our weekly letter, and I love having a “theme” to work around.
I didn’t get many pictures during “A” week, but I hope to for future weeks. We learned about Abraham, being attentive, airplanes, angels and alligators. We ate apples, applesauce, & “ants on a log”.
The other day my daughter was practicing riding her bike. She was working on her turns and making figure eights without turning too much and falling over. I told her “Practice makes perfect!”, and she told me “No it doesn’t, Mommy! No one is perfect except God.” How right she is!
If only practice made perfect, then maybe I could have hopes of being a perfect mother one day, but alas, it doesn’t….and I can’t. Lately, I find myself making mistake after mistake after mistake. I lose my temper, or get upset about something I shouldn’t, and I end up having to go once again and apologize to my 5 year old for getting too mad, or yelling, or not listening well enough. It’s humbling. Even more humbling when she practically interrupts me to quickly say, “it’s ok Mommy, I forgive you!”.
I am finding that the more that I acknowledge that God is growing me in an area, the more I struggle with it. Also, I and realizing that I tend to be harder on Emily in the areas that I myself need the most work in.
For just one example - she gets upset because she’s not getting her way about something and gets grumpy with me. DUH, right? She’s a kid! But when she does this, I get upset with her because she’s upset, instead of just letting her be upset. I accuse her of being selfish and getting upset just because she doesn’t get her way. Wait – aren’t *I* upset because I’m not getting MY way? I’m not getting a nice, perfectly obedient child every minute of the day, so I get upset because it’s inconvenient for me to stop and discipline her, or teach her at this very moment. Now who is being selfish? I’m expecting her to have adult level behavior for issues that took me years as an adult to learn….and that I’m still learning. Why are my expectations so high (too high) of her sometimes?
I’ve heard a saying about how when you point a finger at someone, there are 3 more fingers pointing right back at yourself (try it, you’ll see).
I find that SO often when I am saying something to Emily out of frustration or anger, it’s like God was saying them to ME instead. “You need to get in control.”, “You need to listen to me”, “You aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying.”, “Are you thinking of yourself or others?”, “Are you being a blessing to others right now?”. OUCH.
So, I’ll keep practicing. Every day for the rest of my life. I’ll never be perfect, but I do hope to become more and more Christ-like. In the meantime, I surrender all to Him!
“He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor.” ~ Proverbs 21:21
We’ve had so much fun this past month with school! I am truly blessed to be able to homeschool Bug. I adore seeing her excited about learning new things, and I have a blast learning along with her.
Here are some of the highlights!
Science projects
Making crafts and trying them on the cat
Making a city out of recyclables
We started a new program using a “Letter of the Week”, and I am LOVING it!! I’m pulling from a few different sources, but basically I am putting together a curriculum centered around one letter each week. Bible stories, Handwriting, Read Alouds, Science, History/Geography, Math, Snacks/Cooking, Crafts, & Physical Activities – are all so fun to plan around a letter!
I’ll post about the letter weeks in separate posts.
