Kiss My Knits!

This morning I was writing some thank you notes to Em’s teachers. While I did, Em stayed in her room with the door closed for a long time. I didn’t know what she was up to. Finally, someone came out, dressed as you see here. It wasn’t Emily, it was a Mrs. Andy Erickson come to visit.

After Mrs. Andy Erickson left, I added cold cream to the grocery list. Soap and water didn’t quite remove the greasepaint, although they did smear it around a lot. I’m going to have her scrub a bit more before we go out, as I can’t have my daughter running around in what now looks like blackface.

We’re lining up a few summer camps, a trip to the beach, and some math tutoring. This is also the year that I plan to teach Em to knit. She wants to know how, but not necessarily to sit down and learn how. She likes to fiddle with her hands so I think it could be a good thing to learn. Em will also be trying out piano lessons. She’s naturally musical – not surprising, since it runs in both sides of her family – so I think she has the potential to do well.

Mrs. Andy Erickson, Emily, and I are planning on having a great summer. I hope you do too.

I just got back from Em’s school talent show. Her number of background singers/dancers had swelled from the original two to six or maybe eight. I wasn’t really focused on them at the time so I’ll have to go to the video to check for sure.

So how’d she do? She knocked it out of the park. We’ll work on getting the video internetified later so you can see for yourself.

This kid couldn’t say the word “no” at age three. Today she’s eleven, and on the last day of primary school, she coordinated an act, recruited accomplices, got on stage with a microphone and danced and sang with total confidence.

Parents of the newly diagnosed: I mean it when I say that you never know where life will take you. I have no idea what the future holds, but today is proof that anything is possible. And that my daughter is awesome – but we always knew that.

Em continues her quest to figure out what my password for the Windows machine is. Today she told me she knew it. It was Tvini. How the heck did she know about “Tvini?” It’s not the password, but I’m still impressed. Clever girl. Project for this summer: lock down the blog.

Em is one of those examples of why you shouldn’t make assumptions about people based on their diagnoses. She is hyperactive and has autism and a central auditory processing disorder (the CAPD is a new finding). She therefore sometimes has trouble understanding spoken and written language and why people do the things they do. But she’s a ham. Get her up on stage and she’s in heaven. I’ve written before about her triumphal karaoke surprise, her desire to be cast in a play, and her stint at drama camp. And for the past three years she’s participated in the school talent show.

In third grade, she got up on stage and told jokes. Apparently she got some good laughs. Last year she sang a song, using props she made out of construction paper that day in school. This year, she’s managed to recruit some other kids for her act.

That’s right, Em has minions.

She decided on her song (Cereal Girl, a Material Girl parody linked below) and got two girls to be her background singers. The next day two more girls asked if they could join in. I printed up the lyrics to her chosen song and she passed them out, and the girls have been practicing at recess. The talent show will be on the last day of school during the day. It’s traditionally for the kids, not the parents.

I wonder if I could sneak in…

Last week I started the scarf for which I’d dyed the alpaca/silk. It was going to be a gift for one of Em’s special area teachers at her school. I realized a few rows in that the lace pattern was going to be too time-consuming to do before school ended, so I unraveled it. Instead, I’m doing bookmarks for her teachers, and will figure out something else to add to the gift. Perhaps Borders gift cards, to continue the book theme. Em picked out the colors of wool/silk embroidery thread for each teacher, so they’re personalized by Em.

Even though I only need to make four of them, it’s still going to be close. It’s Can’t Stop The Serenity season and I want to be sure everyone gets a Jayne hat in time. Astonishingly, only ONE screening asked for a charity hat this year, and that was our local one here in Charlotte. Usually between five and ten venues ask.

I think because the events are volunteer run, organizers are sometimes shy about asking. I say you never know until you ask. I know it gets old having doors slammed in your face, but some of us will say yes.

Anyway. Bookmark #1 is blocking, as you can see. Bookmarks 2-4 will have different patterns. And I’ll be sending out a couple more Jayne hats once the post office opens again tomorrow.

I tend to write funny little things that Em does, but there is sometimes more serious stuff going on, and this seemed a good time to bring it up.
Very long and dry post about potential new Em diagnosis. I will not be offended if you skip this.

We went to a preliminary parents meeting at Em’s new middle school last night. It’s definitely a world away from her current school. At Em’s current school, the school population is more than half native Spanish speakers, so all the assemblies for parents are translated. A school official will speak, and then pass the mike to a translator who will repeat what they said then pass the mike back, etc. At her new school, I only saw one face that I would automatically identify as Latina, and there was no translator. I would never begrudge the translators – I definitely want ALL the parents to be as involved as possible in their kids education – but I do have to admit it probably sped the meeting up a bit.

At Em’s current school, there are box tops and soup labels saved for school equipment. There is a candy sale, a magazine sale, a book fair… any little way they can get money for the school. Because they really, really need it. At Em’s new school, they apparently dispense with the sales and tell the parents once a year, “Okay, time to donate to support the school.” They said last night that they raised $72,000 that way. I’d be surprised if Em’s current school made $5,000 last year. It’s only a few miles away, but it’s a totally different economic world.

I am absolutely not slamming Em’s current school. The teachers there are top-notch and bring their A-game every day. The students are kind, compassionate, smart and hard-working. I have no idea how that compares to the new school yet, but I am grateful every day that we have had such amazing people in Em’s life.

However, there is one definite change on the horizon.

At last night’s meeting, my husband spotted a rising sixth-grade boy glancing repeatedly at Em as we entered the building. Not glancing like, “whoa, weird kid.” Glancing like, “whoa, she’s really pretty.” Mr. Tvini, having been a middle school boy at one point, said he could definitely tell the difference. He took note of the kid’s appearance, filing it away in a “I’ve got my eye on you, mister” way.

I am her mother, so I am biased, but I do believe that Em is beautiful. Boy/girl issues cannot be too far behind. It may be time for my husband to take up skeet shooting.

Em has always been a bit boisterous, in spite of any other issues she may have. It’s gotten a little more pronounced lately, which is good. As a toddler, her “Mother’s Morning Out” program teachers called her “Miss Priss” because she hated to get her hands dirty. (Thank you for making fun of my daughter’s sensory issues, by the way.) She still doesn’t like it, but now she’s more willing to suffer it a bit in order to have some fun before going in to wash up. Here, for example, she takes apart a woodpile as delicately as she can in order to see what kind of vermin are living among the rotting logs. Those were all stacked up neatly when she started.

She also likes ridiculous, over the top physical humor. Here, for example, is a project she’s working on for school. The assignment is to explain force and motion as if you were writing a children’s book geared toward a 2nd grader. As you can see, there’s definitely some force and motion going on in that picture. And I only just noticed the lines around the eyes of the victim expressing just how astonished she is.

Yesterday, through the magic of Netflix instant queue through the wii, she caught part of the first episode of Xena, Warrior Princess. She liked it and thought Xena was beautiful and cool. It was a slapsticky battle scene that really pulled her in. My girl’s first taste of geek pop culture. I’m so proud.

Based on all the facts, I see two new options for her future: nerd or superhero. Both work for me. Either way, she’ll want to work on her war cry. Battle on, Em.