Monday

Egads! (in a very fake British accent) I am so far behind and in no way working up to capacity. Still feel like I am trudging along with energy or purpose. And so, I had a talk with myself this weekend -- I can be hard to talk to. LOL.

We rode past a soccer field yesterday where kids and parents were getting ready for practice and/or games. I can't help but be reminded at how far Julia is from doing something like that. Should I be looking into sports for kids with challenges? Do they have such things? I felt the tug from the part of me that is still caught wanting normalcy -- wanting soccer games or dancing school instead of therapy and controlled visits. Wanting some freedom, not from my girl, but with my girl. There are days I feel we live in a bubble of our own construction, living somewhat parellel to those who we observe.

But in this bubble there is some joy. Certainly. Yesterday, this idea of reading family words (as in, hat, fat, cat, rat, etc.) clicked inside of her. We went through as many -at words as I could imagine and Julia got it! She can sound out the first letter and then put it together with the -at end. Slowly, but doing it. We are moving towards reading.

The other thing we worked on yesterday was to write four sentences about ants (her current passion), tape the writing sheet on a bigger piece of drawing paper and then draw on the rest of the bigger sheet. The drawing, however, must be about ants. This was not easy for Julia -- she crumbled up the paper once and had lots of harsh words for me, but what I want to try doing is to focus her on one topic at a time. She will have/does have plenty of opportunities to draw and work with clay but I want to channel some of this creative energy to a specific topic.

One idea I have is to work on weekly or biweekly themse during the summer. Things like dinosaurs, bugs, dogs. Scient content if I can manage it but with a creative edge for her to hook into. Always writing first and then drawing and learning the discipline to draw on topic, even if it is tangential. I don't think this is too challenging for her but I will find out.