Why I Wouldn't Have the Nerve to Divorce My Husband, Even if I Wasn't Crazy in Love With Him

This is why:






Or, more specifically, this:







Josh and I speak two different versions of the same language. Something about this allows him to communicate with Princess fairly fluently, while I feel like I am speaking to a potato. Or like I'm listening as well as a potato. Half the time, she may have as well resurrected Latin, for all I can get out of it, but Josh, he'll say, "oh, she means blah blah blah blah blah, and he'll be right.

Josh is also very, very gifted at communicating with people for whom English is a second language. I think it's connected. I brought this phenomenon up with Dr. S, and she suggested that Josh is likely hyper-aware of non-verbals, while I focus heavily on what is actually said. This has it's advantages, but not with Princess and her language processing issues. Dr. S, in fact, even suggested I try to do most of my communication with Princess using a modified sign language. This is really, really challenging for me in a way I can't even explain, but I have managed to use more hand gestures, especially when I'm starting to feel frustrated. The one Dr. S gave me for "b***s***" has proved exceedingly useful.

So, back to the photos. Princess received a weaving loom for her birthday. I had put it on her wish list because she had gotten very good at the pot holder loom, and I thought she could handle a step up. But this one involves knot-tying. She can tie her shoes, so it didn't occur to me this would be difficult, but she had a very hard time tying a knot using ONE piece of yarn. I sat down with her for a half hour trying until my blood vessels almost burst to teach her to tie a knot. I'd walk her through each step, she'd follow my directions to the letter, and then stare at the next one blankly with no idea what to do. Thirty times. I kid you not. I finally (gently) told her that I didn't think I could teach her how to tie a knot, and suggested that maybe she'd learn by trying different things.

And she DID try. She tried hard. But she kept doing it the SAME wrong way. Each and every time. So I had an inspiration. I called in the backup.

I explained what was going on and specified that I wanted her to learn to do it (rather than simply follow the directions, without retaining the knowledge). And darn it all, he did it. In like, five minutes. He got her to understand how to tie a knot.

I don't know how to feel about this. I am so breathtakingly THANKFUL that not only is the man I promised to spend the rest of my life with hot, but he can do the things I can't. But I also want to kick things. Hard. Because it's not fair, of course.

So, you see, I could never leave him.

Not that I'd want to. He's hot.

Homework, Except Different

I've noticed a few good changes lately; I think Princess is stepping out of her "thing." Maybe it was the shirt. The change was definately after the shirt. I can see that as a possibility; I imagine it's hard to yell insults at someone if you look at them and they are actually wearing everything you were going to say. I may need more shirts.

One day she seemed to notice, almost out of nowhere (well, not exactly nowhere), that the other children hug and snuggle and, well, talk to me. And, really, treat me much nicer in general that she does. There was a point where I actually saw her turn her head and NOTICE. So almost every day since, she's asked once or twice a day if she can hug me. Sure, it's a lot like hugging a pillow. Yes, it's not exactly what you'd call spontaneous, but it's a HUG. A hug! She's obviously trying to make me feel good around her, and I'll take it!

She is also making a h-uge effort to not turn her homework into WWIII. Usually she has a set time of the 45 minutes before dinner to complete what is for most first-graders ten minutes of work. Usually she doesn't finish because she heads off into InsulttheMommyLand, but this week, she really has been working hard. Last night four math problems took her one hour of really, REALLY hard work and compliance with my help. It gave me the chance to notice some things.

For one problem, she was to draw 67 cents in coins. She used only dimes and pennies, and she did not draw them in any organized way. For comparison (because I was curious), I asked Buddy to do the same problem, and he did it the way I would expect: QQDNPP. The next problem was a line of coins in no particular order, and she was to figure out what amount of money they equaled. She could not seem to see which coins she had already used, so I walked her through organizing them and labeling their value on the back of the paper. Then I had her add them one by one, and write the values one at a time next to the coin so she would not get confused. Her adding was correct. She gave me the correct verbal answer. But I was cooking dinner and was not LOOKING at her paper. I came over to check it, and couldn't even understand at first what she had done. Then I realized: she TOLD me 85, 95, 105- the right answers. But she had WRITTEN 80, 90, 100. And she had written them next to the coin underneath the ones they belonged to.

I don't even really know what to make of it. We happened to have a vision therapy appointment today, so I told Dr. F, but she wasn't so sure it had to do with her visual processing. One of the things that frustrates me the most with this whole "child-rearing" thing is that I can never seem to figure out what is causing anything. So how the heck am I supposed to fix it? Huh?

This is Your Brain

A variety of comments from Buddy and Peanut over the past week prompted me to consider giving them a class on Princess and Her Brain. I've been avoiding this topic, as Brain Functions was a class I narrowly escaped a D in while in college. Luckily, I just finished The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Super good read, buy the way. Highly recommended. In it, the author talks about speaking to an elementary class about this very topic. Also, he includes a handy brain hierarchy chart in the back, plus this nifty way you can hold your hand to show what the brain (sort of) looks like. Last night I started paging through the book getting prepared. Josh looked at me quizzically, then said, "oh I get it. You're going to go way overboard with this, aren't you?"

Why, of course I am. Haven't you known me for 18 years?

This morning, while Princess was paying back three hours of screaming from last night with some peace and quiet upstairs, I sat down with Buddy and Peanut. I made a loose fist and stuck my thumb out and down. I explained that my thumb was the brain stem, and my stacked-up fingers were the midbrain, limbic system, cortex, and neo cortex. I told how we move through the brain as we grow, and told them a little about what each area controls. I showed them where they are (limbic system) and where I am (neocortex, of course!), and then I showed them where Princess is (midbrain), and that's why she has trouble with this and this and this and this. It went pretty well. Buddy even corrected me once when I couldn't remember what part I was talking about.

In fact, it may have gone too well. Because later Peanut and Princess had a (typical, ongoing, and redundant) falling-out over the game Sorry. Exasperated, Peanut waved her fist in the air, stuck out her thumb and yelled, "you know where YOU are, Princess? You are RIGHT HERE!!!"

She was pointing to her midbrain finger.