We have been rolling along, still dealing with Covid times - masks and mostly avoiding indoor activities - with all the usual ups and downs and in-betweens. Some behaviors have been difficult - especially her yelling - it is quite grating. Still these times have definitely offered us the ability to work on her ability to be flexible when circumstances change.
Personally, I find it is a bit odd, how "normal" this all feels now and I'm sad that we have all had to make adjustments and figure our way through these complicated times. However, the positive side to this for our family is that it has offered quite a few opportunities to practice flexibility and resilience. Clearly the vaccination and booster shot were a huge opportunity to develop both of those characteristics and it was a huge success (and very complicated as well - please see previous blog posts for more into). There have been other opportunities as well that probably would have gone unnoticed during different times.
One of the biggest wins in flexibility has been wearing a mask. It was a huge struggle at first. She would barely tolerate one for a few minutes. Now she is flexible about what mask she wears, the type of mask she wears (she recently was willing to wear a surgical mask instead of cloth one) and has even worn them for a longer period of time. It appears it has simply become her new normal. That is a huge step in flexibility!
For the most part we have a general routine and she is busy. RJC is still going to the farm a few days a week. She has music therapy on Zoom and goes to therapeutic horseback riding. We were recently at her first in-person indoor (masked) Friendship Circle event in a very long time. We are still seeing friends outdoors even in the colder weather. Sometimes we meet in our cars and other times we manage to bundle up and sit outdoors. We have taken a few walks up and down our street and we've enjoyed some nice rides looking at horses and cows, people and shops. She likes to comment on everything she sees which is a great opportunity for vocabulary building and working out grammatical issues. She and our cat have bonded. It has been fun to watch because this cat has been with us for something like 12 years and for most of those years, they had ignored one another. Now they are best buddies. They play string games and I've found them hanging out on our steps together, RJC petting the cat and the cat purring so loudly it's amusing.
Some days she cannot go to the farm on her regularly scheduled day, (weather can definitely be a factor in the winter) so we choose a different day. There was a time that a change like that would send her into a frenzy. Now she easily adjusts.
And just today we had a major win in flexibility.
Today is Valentine's Day. She loves to celebrate holidays and she plans ahead for them. Her plan for today was to make two heart-shaped cakes - one red and one purple and layer them. She wanted to white frosting between them, frosting on the top and decorate with icing. She bought everything ahead of time. Here is the snag. The heart pans we have are quite large and one cake mix would fill only one of the heart pans. I did not want her to make two cake mixes as it is difficult for her to control her portions. I also did not want to tell her ahead of time that it would not work as I know she would not understand the language, especially when she was so excited to do this. This would need to be a visual lesson.
I decided to start out doing what she wanted - we cut the one cake batter in half and she used food coloring to make one bowl of red batter and the other bowl of purple batter. I let her put the red one in one pan and the purple in the other and she could clearly see that there was not enough batter for both pans. I was a bit worried about how this next conversation would go as I was telling her we could only make one cake. She looked at the two for a bit and tried to scrape more batter in to each one. She looked some more and then...there was an understanding. Best of all she was completely fine with it. She put the purple batter on top of the red batter and spread it all out into one heart pan. The flexibility she was showing had me astounded. It was definitely a checkmark in the win column! She happily decorated the cake then added the icing. I must tell you she did a lovely job!
Some days can feel incredibly frustrating. To counteract that, I do try to recognize the small moments that actually make a big difference.
Flexibility for the win today! I will take it!
