March 3

This week we got 34 hours. It has been wonderful having Sonia back! It gives me time to do some things besides cooking, cleaning, groceries, Sarah-Rise, and kids. What I did with some of that time was start this Sarah-Rise blog.

I feel like this has been and continues to be such an amazing journey that I want to share our experience. I know there are lots of people with kids with special needs who could probably benefit from doing a Son-Rise program but it’s not something most people have heard of. It’s also not necessarily immediately apparent that it can be used to help kids/people with all sorts of developmental delays and challenges. True, it is geared towards people on the autism spectrum, but I signed up before I even had that diagnosis for Sarah. I think the main Son-Rise gift is that it teaches parents how to help their children without getting discouraged and frustrated. Part of why Son-Rise programs are successful is that requests are playfully made sometimes 1,000 or 10,000 or 100, 000 times. When you can be in the energy of wanting something but not needing it to be happy it is a totally different ball game. I’m not always there but I am a lot of the time and I think the concept is fantastic.

Sarah is no longer eating absolutely all of the time, but she still eats well. I’d say she’s back to more normal levels of consumption.

I feel like Sarah is getting more creative in her play and in her language. Lately she finds a page in I Broke My Trunk (by Mo Willems) hilarious. The page shows Piggie waving her arms and yelling “How did you break your trunk?!” Sarah laughs when she looks at the page and also when I do my rendition of it. Last night she was still laughing even when we weren’t looking at the book and she was getting ready for bed. To help nudge her to wash her hands I said “How did you wash your hands?!” She then responded with her attempts to reference a broken glass (“boke gas”) and a broken bunny mug (“boke bunny mug”), which are both items that broke a long time ago. I love that she quickly picked up on how we could expand the theme of things breaking.

She loves reading Not a Box and when we had an empty cardboard box in the kitchen she quickly climbed into it. Lately she likes playing with her toy doctor bag and she pretends to take her own blood pressure, temperature, and blood. When we were playing with playdough recently she started taking out tiny pieces and spreading them on her bare belly and saying “co-nut oil” (coconut oil).

On Wednesday she came with me to drop Amy off at daycare. Completely spontaneously she went up to each B. and C. and looked at them very directly and said their name to them. Wow! Holy moly!!! They were both blown away.

She continues to increase how often she runs to greet people. It is wonderful to come in the house and have two exuberant children run to greet me. When Sonia arrived yesterday Sarah gave her zerberts on her cheeks! Completely spontaneous.

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