Apparently, it’s way more fun to sing the clean up song than to actually clean up.
Oh, Lydia.
Why I’ve got a busy afternoon ahead of me
When the cat’s away
For 27 months, I’ve been trying to grow Lydia’s hair out. I’ve trimmed the back several times now, but I’ve never cut the front.
I’ve never cut the front.
While we were in Dallas over the last 5 days for our ETC Train-the-Trainer course and the kids were at Grammy camp, Lydia decided the scissors needed to be tried out on her bangs.
The little bit of bangs that have taken over 2 years to grow.
Yeah, I know it’s a rite of passage. Yeah, I know I did it too, Mom, at about the same age. Blah blah blah.
But, I’m a little upset today about it, and I’m feeling totally entitled to that. Her cuteness isn’t making it any better.
Can’t really even these out so much or cut her hair to help it look like it was meant to be that way. Too short for clippies that she fights anyhow and looks silly with a headband.
Maybe it will be all grown out by the time she leaves Elementary School. (sigh)
Snapshots of Sensory Stuff
We’re no strangers to sensory processing issues in this house. But, we’re used to parenting a child with sensory sensitivity–one who is bothered by clothing tags and collars on shirts and loud noise and crowds.
Parenting our youngest has been a whole other deal.
This girl is sensory seeking. If there’s a chair or a bench or a step stool, she climbs on it (and then jumps on it and off it and on it and off it). If there’s a puddle, she jumps in it. She moves…constantly. Yup, all the time. If there’s a cup, she pours it out and plays in it. If there’s a basket of anything, she dumps it. If there’s a mess, she’s in it.
We used to think she was trouble seeking rather than sensory seeking.
But, the more I study her and the more I read and learn, the more I understand her and all her “trouble-seeking” ways.
She needs more vestibular and tactile stimulation that most kids her age–those fancy words just mean she needs more balance and big movement type of stimulation and lots and lots of touch. And, that really shouldn’t surprise us. Those senses are the ones most fed during those very early baby months. When babies are supposed to be picked up, rocked, held, bounced, touched, and tickled, she spent most her time in a crib.
So, I’m trying to give her an extra dose of vestibular and tactile stuff these days. My concerted effort this week – a rice box.
And, she loved it.
Burying toys, digging them up, filling cups, dumping cups, stepping in the bin, wiggling those toes, letting the rice run between her fingers….and onto my floor.
My attempt to clean this up seemed rather futile. I was getting so frustrated feeling a single rice grain under my bare feet after multiple floor clean ups that I was starting to think I had sensory problems.
Rice box got kicked to the curb. Literally. Where Lydia proceeded to bury and dig and play and so forth and so forth until my driveway looked like we hosted a wedding here.
I’ve been getting ideas from The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun: Activities for Kids with Sensory Processing Disorder
Got any ideas your kiddos love?
20 Defining Moments in My Motherhood
1. My reaction when a doctor told me on the phone it would be “nearly impossible” for us to conceive.
2. Each of the 4 times we heard for the first time that our babies were no longer growing and we were going to miscarry.
3. Driving to the hospital in labor with our first.
4. When my mom left our house the week after we had Evan and left me on my own to be a mommy.
5. Taking a pregnancy test and laughing aloud as I held 1-year-old Evan on my hip and learned we were having another.
6. Strategizing with Mark in the hospital after delivering Ashlyn about how we were going to manage 2 little children—that ended with me in tears.
7. Hearing Evan say his name for the first time after months of therapy and wondering if he’d ever speak.
8. A conversation with Mark during lunch out about me wanting another child (as the two we had were squirming and crying and Mark looked at me wide-eyed as if I had lost my mind).
9. Our first conversation about adoption and the dream I had that night about a little Asian girl calling me Mama at my bedside.
10. When the doctor who had just told us we were miscarrying again called us later that day to tell us he might be wrong = Drew, 7 months later.
11. Drew’s tumultuous delivery, seeing his limp body, hearing my husband crying, not knowing if our son was alive or dead and then hearing his cry.
12. Crying with Evan’s kindergarten teacher as we read his evaluation report together when she told me, “There is nothing wrong with him. He doesn’t need to be fixed.”
13. Dancing around the dining room with joy when we knew that Lydia was going to be ours and saying her full name for the first time.
14. My first glimpse of Lydia in real life as she came into that sterile office in the arms of an orphanage nanny and lit up the room.
15. Overhearing Ashlyn speak softly and lovingly to Lydia in the middle of the night to calm her and help her fall back to sleep.
16. Watching Drew day in and day out pursue his little sister and dote on her even when faced with rejection.
17. Shopping alone with Lydia when I realized I was attached.
18. Ashlyn praying at night, thanking God that she could learn more about Him.
19. Peeking in Evan’s room to find him devouring Harry Potter books, one at a time, the boy who said he never wanted to learn to read and yelled, “I hate learning!” a few years earlier.
20. Celebrating Mother’s Day with an uneventful breakfast out as a family followed by pictures with all 4 children smiling at the same time.
Happy Mother’s Day to me.
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