A hard word

At work today I was called down to help with a child that was having problems in class. When I got to the room she was sprawled out in the middle of the room with desks knocked over and the other students staying well out of the way. The teacher looked like she had just run a marathon.

These situations are a bit tricky because I had no idea what happened or what the teacher wants me to do. I did not have to wonder long because the teacher handed me a discipline slip and a whole pile of work and indicated that this child needed another room to work in. It looked like both the child and the teacher needed a little separation.

I had the student stand up and she followed me out of the room. She sobbed quietly and sniffed all the way to the other end of the building. I set her up at the big meeting table just outside my office and I looked through the packet of work the teacher had handed me. It was spelling word activities and I asked the girl what she wanted to work on first. She worked quietly with me checking on her every few minutes. I brought her tissues and glue and scissors and she finished her work at a fairly quick pace. Once she was done I asked why she was so upset. She explained that she wanted to see what her friend looked like with a mustache so she attempted to write on his face. The friend was opposed to the idea of facial hair on his 6 year old self. This caused the teacher to lower my students "color card" from green to yellow, which made her mad enough to push the teacher, who then lowered the card to red and then all hell broke loose.

I talked to the little girl about choices and feelings and hands to self. All the things I know 6 year olds are starting to understand and need to learn. One of her spelling words had been "happy" and she wrote: "I like when my teacher is happy." So I used that to launch into what makes a teacher happy. She decided to write the teacher a note. The note read, in large letters: "I am sorry. I will be good" She wanted to spell everything correctly and used her finger between the words for spacing. It was painstaking slow for only seven words. As she tried to sound out the word sorry she looked at me and said, "Sorry is a hard word" I sat there thinking about it and had to agree. I have written "I'm sorry" many times.... it is always a hard word, even for those of us older than six. :)

Aligned Planets

Sometimes the planets are aligned just right. Everything is right with the universe. Sometimes that happens with my kids. It isn’t often, there are 4 of them and they are kids. But this week, right now…. Everything is right with my world. Ok, I am taking a huge risk in even discussing this. I was raised believing that you don’t mention things going right….. it was not done. I remember once I said to my Dad, “You know I don’t think you’ve had a flat tire in a long time.” He had one the next day.

But right now, amazing things are going on. Our youngest, Dill has always had us with him while he waits for the bus in the morning. We are going to start dropping him off early at a neighbor’s house and he was a bit nervous about it. He does not usually handle changes well so we were very happy that he is just taking the changes in stride.

Pete is an amazing guy. Our family met some friends while we were out and about the other day and Pete noticed that one of the kids was left out of the conversation. He walked around all the other kids and knelt down by her wheelchair and started talking to her like she was the only person in the world. He does that kind of stuff all the time. I love how he just knows how to be sweet without even trying.

Macy was selected as one of two kids in her school to go speak at the state capitol. She is also doing great at her job and really seems to be thriving in high school. Things weren’t always this way, so we are so happy that she is really turning things around and we can’t help but be so proud of her.

At home, Dori sometimes complains about how busy people keep her at church. She helps out with the nursery and with acolyting and she helps with verging. Sometimes she helps with two services in one day and I think she’d just like to sleep in. Today I was talking with someone that was at a service I missed this week. They said that Dori jumped in and ‘covered’ for the priest while they were doing something else. They said that Dori looks so comfortable and is so good at acolyting that she should consider the priesthood. I do not know that that is her calling but what a nice compliment.

Now I know that soon one son will rip the arm off the other’s R2D2 and the girls will argue over who should take the first shower and who will use all the hot water…. But right now I am basking in the glory of my aligned planets. Such a sweet moment in the life for me as a parent. And, yes Dad I know I am taking a huge risk in even mentioning it but some phenomena are so rare we can't help but stop and acknowledge it. :)

The Nose knows

At Nana’s house we were celebrating Dill’s birthday recently. He came and sat next to me on the couch and I noticed that he was wearing underwear that he had worn to bed at least 2 nights before. I said to him, “Did you put the same underwear on last night after you took your shower?” He said, “Nope.”

I let it go, but a few minutes later he was sprawled on the couch with his feet in my lap. The first thing I noticed was he has huge feet! They looked like big-dog-puppy feet. You know, the cute adorable puppy that has feet WAY too big for its body. So you know that sometime soon, the cute little puppy was going to be a huge, gigantic hulk of a dog. That’s what I was thinking about while I looked at his feet. Then my nose was assaulted by an odor that could rival onion, garlic sardine soup! We were sitting across the room from Nana….. so I normally would not have said anything, but dang! How could his cute little body reeck like this??!

“Dill, how long have you been wearing these socks??”

“Three days,” he proudly announces.

“But you just took a shower last night! Did you put on your old socks again?!” I ask.

“Nope, I faked it.” He states while sitting up and smiling. “See, I went into the bathroom and just turned on the water. Then after a couple minutes the bathroom got really foggy and then I got my hair wet in the sink and I got the towel a little bit wet and took off my shirt and put the towel around me and turned off all the water. You just THOUGHT I washed myself.”

I notice that Nana has as big a grin as Dill at this information.

Nana shakes her head and I could tell she was glad this fell into "parent issue” and did not fall into the “Grandparent” realm as an area of concern.

“Dill, that is so much work to NOT take a shower. Don’t you like to shower?” I ask confoundedly, because when he DOES shower he stays and plays in the water so long the whole hot water tank gets drained.

“I like showers a lot…. I just wanted to see if I could fake one. You did not even notice…. I really tricked you!” he said proudly, as if I was going to lose my parenting license over such a huge faux pas.

“True son," I told him, shaking my head, "You tricked my eyes, but definitely not my nose!!” ☺

Still missed....

It is hard to believe that it has been 12 years, Mom. You are still missed. Every day.

Said during speech therapy…

Sometimes the things my students say during “speech” just tickles me. Here are a couple of the latest.

While working on answering “Where” questions….

“You just checked out a book to take home. Where are you?”

child: the library

“You just bought stamps. Where are you?”

child: the post office

“You just got off an airplane. Where are you?”

child: DISNEY WORLD!!

(Its been a cold, snowy winter….. of course that is where we’d all be if we took a plane somewhere!!)



A 6 year old boy as he comes into the room realizing the school-wide reading night was the night before…..

“I missed family read night last night? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??”

My computer is better than a top 40 DJ ....

I realized this morning that I have a very smart computer…. I picked one song I wanted to listen to and my computer went through all my music and picked songs with the same “feel” and played them for a very long time! It kept me in a joyful, happy mood all morning.

In the “olden days” I had to read the backs of jacket covers (after finding the records and tapes that my sisters had “borrowed”) then I either had to get the needle to the right spot after counting the lines in the vinyl or fast forward and rewind the tape until I got it to the right place.

It is amazing, I remember when I had tons of records and couldn’t find anything that I really wanted to listen to. Just proves…. iTunes knows me better than I do!! :)

OK readers, now I’m gonna blog about how I used to walk to school~ uphill….. both ways!! ;)

Grandma

My sister called. She wanted to let me know that our cousin was in touch with her to update us on our Grandmother. The message was: "If you want to see Grandma again, do it now." My Grandmother is 93 years old. She will be 94 in April. She has had minor health issues all her life, but this time my cousin thinks she will not pull thru. My sister is planning on visiting her this week. From her house, the drive is about an hour or so to her nursing home. My sister feels the need to touch base with our Grandmother one more time. She wants to try again to get her to say she misses our Mom, that she loved all her kids, that she is proud of her grandkids and thinks great-grandkids are a blessing. I hope my Grandmother comes thru for her. I debated about going down to see her too. Pepper thinks I should. From my home to hers it is about a 3 hour drive…. Not really far at all. I go farther to take Pete hunting or the family on a weekend camping trip. I’ve driven farther to watch a football game. But it isn’t the miles that make me think I do not want to go. It is the time. The time in years. If I could drive down and reverse the years as I go-- I would not even hesitate. I want to drive down and see the Grandma that came to our house on Christmas morning early enough so she’d be there when we opened our gifts. I want the one that took me sled riding in the park on a black garbage bag because we forgot to bring our sleds when we stayed over night at her house. I want the Grandmother that let me ride her three-wheeled bike through her Florida neighborhood with my sister in the basket screaming as I took corners on just two wheels. I want the grandma who laughed when I ran into her garbage cans in her garage when I was first learning to drive…. And jokingly told my grandfather they almost had a drive-thru kitchen. I want the Grandmother that attended all my birthday parties, graduations and bought more Girl Scout cookies than she ever wanted. If I could drive down to meet THAT Grandmother I would not hesitate. I wish as I drove down toward her nursing home I could drive back thru time. Erasing years as I drove. I would drive down through the memories of the petty arguments she had with my mother. The frustration of feeling like I had to choose a side between them and her frustration when I ‘sided’ with my mom. I would drive away from the sadness and the hurt and misunderstandings that I had with her. I would completely forget the anger I felt at her for not coming to my mother’s funeral and at her refusing to talk about her only daughter when I desperately needed her to. I would not even try to explain my reasoning or the rationale for why I made the choices I did. I would not be mad or sad or hurt. I would just be that 10 year-old girl that only sees her as the best grandma in the world. She would look at me and see the little kid that she nicknamed “Pixie” when I was still in diapers. A name that I’ve almost shaken. It is soon to fade away completely. I have decided not to drive down. It would be too much like the drive I did years ago to say good-bye to my mother. I really did want to be there at the end of my mom’s life. It was pretty much the same 3-hour drive. I never got to say good-bye to my Mom, she had died by the time I got to her. I did visit my grandmother last year at Christmas and ‘fixed’ things… as much as they could be fixed. And when I saw her this Christmas I knew it was close to the end. We had a good visit. There was a picture of my mother on her wall from when she was a baby. I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I asked about it and my Grandmother even told me the story of who took it. As we left her room I said to Pepper I thought that would be the last time. Even the kids knew that “GG” (for Great-Grandmother) was not doing well. I am so thankful that I got to have a grandma like her as a kid. I’ve been grieving the loss of that relationship for years. I am grateful that I got the chance to fix things and talk to her as an adult. I am glad she got to meet my kids and see me grow up to be a halfway decent person. I hope when she gets to heaven she tells my mom how we are all doing- and I hope they work things out too. That’s how I want to think it will be.