We’re back. And we’re blogging.
I dropped out of the bloggy world for a while to deal with the very real stuff of life, and I missed you all. So much has happened – both big and small. I want to fill you in on some of the things we’ve been doing.
Little Miss Adorable and Mr. Sensitive just finished their season of dance through Dance Ability. Thank you Miss Mallory and the Dance Ability crew for an amazing time. At the final recital Little Miss Adorable danced on center stage, beaming at the audience. Mr. Sensitive joined in the most enthusiastic bird dance I’ve ever seen, and wore his dance costume for three days afterward. Seriously.
And we’ve been busy with the usual round of therapies, case conferences, and (ulp!) missed appointments. And rescheduling.
But therapeutic riding is quite possibly the most amazing thing to happen to our family. All week long Little Miss Adorable talks about her horse ‘Mimmie’ (aka Timmy) and sets small amounts of food aside to feed Timmy. Bits of bread, vitamin gummies, strawberries – if it’s good she wants to share it with her horse. We tell her that we’ll bring apples to riding instead.
Little Miss Adorable knows that when she goes to bed Friday nights that she will see Timmy the next day (I have no idea how she knows this, since she doesn’t know the days of the week). Saturday morning she wakes up and her first words are ‘Go see Mimmie.’
Little Miss Adorable’s muscle tone has improved so dramatically during her months of riding that her physiotherapists couldn’t believe it. Little Miss Adorable is now trying all kinds of things, like pulling up into a stand, standing by herself while propped against a wall, and climbing off our sofa.
Mr. Sensitive has made amazing improvements through riding too. Originally quite fearful of the enormous horses, Mr. Sensitive now holds a treat bucket up at each stall door so all the horses in the barn can have a treat. It’s amazing so see him hold the bucket firmly enough so a gigantic draft horse can have apple slices. Mr. Sensitive is proud of how the horses watch for him, waiting with outstretched necks. He knows his job is to give the horses treats.
As an ‘out of synch’ kid, Mr. Sensitive is calmer and, dare I say, more reasonable, after riding. Less prone to whiny, anxiety-filled, outbursts, he is a different kid after riding lessons. Suddenly thoughtful, introspective, and less likely to throw stuff around our home, it re-sets him. Trust me, on weeks we miss a lesson, we notice behavior changes. On those weeks the wiggling jelly fish child comes back.
So what else have we been doing in our halfpastnormal life? Walking in rainstorms to rescue snails. Looking at bugs in the dirt. Wading in creeks in conservation areas. Reading stories, and writing them.
In short, we’ve been living life.