Playful Rooted

Hi friends! I have literally one free hour in front of me, and rather than do chores that no one will even notice, I’m coming in hot with some more random updates and photos. 🙂 Here we go!

First, if you have kids of any age and are on the internet, you’ve probably heard about the free #lifeskillsnow virtual summer camp this week, but I wanted to plug it anyway while it’s still going on! What an amazing resource — for free! This event is all about those soft skills that our kids aren’t learning in schools but are so important for raising competent, confident adults. In reading through the session titles, there are SO many skills that I wish I had learned as a teenager! There are also several parent classes that sound so helpful (the one about conquering the 24/7 toy mess is particularly compelling to me). They had some trouble with the site yesterday, but it looks like everything is back up today.

I’ve watched a few sessions with Luca, including “How to Speak Up in Public Places,” which was excellent and so crucial these days, and we’ll also be watching “How to Make a Phone Call,” “Packing a Healthy Lunchbox,” and several others in the upcoming days. I’m hoping that they’ll continue this event in the future because there are so many sessions that I think would be solid gold for tweens and teens.

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In bummer news, Sawyer has been having SUCH a hard time moving past the car accident. It’s totally awful; every time we are in the car now, he constantly (I’m talking every 20-30 seconds) asks if we’re going to get in a car accident, or he tells me I’m driving too fast or says his tummy hurts or that he’s scared. He has always hated the car anyway (as all three of my kids do!) and driving anything over 20 minutes has always been hard, but this takes it to a whole new level. I feel so, so bad for him and it hurts my heart every time he asks in his sweet little voice if we’re going to crash. My baby.

I brought him to a children’s therapist last week, and I think it was a good first visit. She confirmed that we’re doing the right things to help him work through it — helping him re-tell the story over and over, not changing the subject when he brings it up, etc. I think we could do more with her help to get him comfortable in the car again, but the ironic thing is that it’s a really long drive (35 minutes), and that in itself is a HUGE trigger for his anxiety. So it feels counterproductive to arrive there with him already feeling worried and then leave and have another 35-minute drive facing us. I don’t have a good solution to this; I’m still trying to work it out.

The benefit of her office location, though, is that it’s right by Donutology, so I got to have a great little date with him after our visit. We so rarely get one-on-one time together that this was a really nice treat. Although neither of us is really a sweets person, so we both found the doughnuts only okay. 😉

In better therapy-related news, we had a physical therapy session with Pria last week and it was so great!

I reached out to Lauren from Function Forward PT recently to see if P would be a good fit for her services. Pria, as is her wont, has been taking her sweet, unhurried time pushing up on all fours and pushing herself into a sitting position, and at 10 months, she hadn’t shown any signs of crawling readiness. (Side note: I know that many kids don’t crawl at all and that the CDC recently removed crawling from their developmental milestone checklists, but every physical or occupational therapist I’ve discussed this with is completely furious. Crawling offers a ton of developmental benefits, so I am determined that my daughter will learn to crawl! Side note over.)

Anyway, several things appealed to me about Function Forward, but one in particular is that it’s mobile physical therapy – meaning that Lauren came right to our house for our session! What?! Of course, when someone’s coming to your home, there is the added aspect of “what level of panic cleaning is the right level?” I, of course, wanted the house to look at least 400% better than it otherwise would on a Friday afternoon. But like, to dust, or not to dust? (I didn’t dust.)

Anyway, it was such an awesome session! We got so many good tips for strengthening Pria’s upper body, and Lauren confirmed that P was on the cusp of a bunch of skills. And what do you know? The very next day, Pria pushed up onto all fours with full arm extension for the very first time! I can’t recommend Lauren enough; she’s a wealth of information and is so positive, practical, and encouraging.

It’s been blazingly hot here this week, but last week was absolutely gorgeous weather, so we spent most of it outside. My favorite!

I have to say, I would not have chosen this cherry tree if I had been the one deciding on the landscaping here, but I have come to really love it as it’s such a perfect height with low branches for little kiddos to climb.

We spent a lot of our outdoor time last week deadheading our front flower bed…

…and drawing with sidewalk chalk. 🙂

Sawyer had his very first soccer game last weekend, and it was SO cute to see him play! He was hesitant at first (that’s him, way far away from the other kids), but he ended up having a great time and participating. His favorite part was when he could see that Luca was watching him play. 😉

We had Ben’s brother and his family come into town very briefly this weekend, and it was such a joy to see them all! They have two kids approximately the same ages as our boys, so the kids have a BLAST playing together, and it was so fun for me to see my sis-in-law Alyssa! We always have such good conversations and bounce ideas off each other related to parenting, homeschooling, decorating, etc.

It was way too short a visit, and we can’t wait to see them again in a few weeks!

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The boys are back from the pool, and Pria’s awake from her nap, so that’s my hour up. Back to the circus I go…

Have a great day, gang.

xo!