Monday, August 29, 2016

monrovia's tips for teaching a student with hearing loss

last summer, monrovia had the idea to make a video for her new teacher explaining in her own words what would most help her succeed in the classroom when it came to hearing loss. she planned out everything she wanted to say, and we sent it to her new teacher before school started. (you can watch that video here)

this summer we agreed it would be good to do it again, so she came up with all of her ideas about what she wanted to say in the video and we made a second one for her new third grade teacher. of course she is 8 years old, so the way she explains things isn't necessarily the way i would, but it's her project, her words, and her hearing loss, so i tried to get out of the way and not micromanage! (she also has a deaf teacher who goes in to train her teachers and troubleshoot weekly, and i make a binder for her teacher with hearing loss strategies and resources, so these three minutes in the words of an 8 year old are only an intro to her hearing loss!)

it's pretty interesting to hear what she wants her teachers to understand. (of course it makes sense, but i never knew it was easier for her if she stood in the front of the line!) we sent this to the principal the week before school started, and he sent it to any staff working with monrovia. grateful to be at a full inclusion school, and for our daughter to be in an environment where she feels confident enough to share this video with her teachers!

and just like that, back to school

how is it the end of summer???? we had such a good summer. a really, really good summer. i am always incredibly thankful that one of the perks of matt's job is that he gets four weeks of vacation, and that he can take them in the summer. since i am self-employed i can shape my schedule as needed. while neither of our jobs rake in the big bucks, we are gifted with flexibility and time, which means in the summer months we get quality time together as a family. (the only challenge is finding ways to take inexpensive vacations!) this year it felt like the summer raced by, and suddenly last monday it was time to go back to school!

back to school = bittersweet
i love having time with my girls, and the older they get the faster the time seems to whoosh! i also love working in my studio and working on freelance projects, and even with camps and activities for the kids in the summer it is nearly impossible for me to get much done with them home on vacation. 

back to school = the morning hustle to get the girls out of bed, dressed, fed, lunches made and in backpacks, shoes on, jackets on, in the car, through the traffic, parked, and up the hill by the time the bell rings. not my favorite time of day, and i need to lean into being a more patient, loving parent in the process of getting my kids out of the house. somehow i expect my small humans to be perfect little morning robots and.....they are not. somehow they hope that i will not yell at them to get out of the house (because for the love we do this 5 days a week all year long!) but.....i do.

anyway, lucky for all of us there was no yelling the first day of school, and i even got my crap together enough to take pictures of my little babies before they headed off to new classes!

ruby, my big first grader
monrovia, somehow now a third grader


 how can they drive me crazy and simultaneously reduce me to tears thanks to their first day of school cuteness? i don't even know. this year both girls are with seasoned, structured, warm teachers, and have at least one friend in class. i always get so ridiculously stressed out about what classroom they are going to be in, and each year they do just fine. people, what is wrong with me!? 
up the hill!
(every. single. morning. drama walking up this hill. you guys - it's not that steep! it's not that long! and yet every day the whining and the complaining! you'd think it was everest.)

back to school = back to seeing favorite friends every day! i can't believe ruby is in first grade. my baby is not-so-much-a-baby anymore. 


back to school = worktime for mama! hooray! so back to my studio, friends!
update: we are knee deep into new school year transition over here. god bless every single teacher because i only have two kids at my house and by the end of the week they were a hot mess! i can't imagine a classroom full of these tired kiddos. 

we've had tears, friend drama, recess drama, half-eaten lunches, mama talking in a loud-frustrated voice (ok, yelling) to get out the door, kids crawling into our bed in the middle of the night because who knows why but something about school, happy friend reunions, so many big feelings, new schedules and lots of morning coffee. 

and inevitably if i just ask what they did today at school, "eh, i don't know. nothing."

here's to the bittersweet! to the exhaustion of parenting! to the roller coaster of raising children, and sending them out into the heartbreaking and beautiful world of friendship and learning! here's to going back to school all over again through your children's eyes! here's to getting to school on time!

Thursday, August 11, 2016

love & other stuff

earlier this summer i got tagged by two of my friends in the post-yourself-with-your-spouse-for-seven-days challenge that was going around on facebook.

(look at those babies!)

i didn't do it until now because
a. i'm not really good at keeping up with 7 days of posting anything (ahem, see this blog)
b. i have many friends who aren't married or together with someone, and for some this is a choice; but for others? not so much. they are amazing human beings who haven't found their person yet but want to. so i felt conflicted about posting pda photos for a week straight.

that said, i do think it's good to celebrate healthy relationships, and i don't say enough how thankful i am for matt. so i'm going to write on here, just once, instead. with lots of pictures.

first, real talk: this year is our 14th wedding anniversary and wow! has life thrown us curveballs we never could have expected, as life tends to do. then there is the usual marriage stuff: we are really different humans. if you give us the same task it is likely that we will approach it in opposite ways. we fight, we correct each other, we apologize, we laugh, we learn new things about each other, we cry, we yell too loudly (ok that's just me), we fail each other, we retell the same stories & listen to the same stories, we forget why we were so mad at each other, we remember why we fell in love in the first place, we say things regret, we stay silent, we need time alone, we need time together, we dance, we have drinks in the backyard and talk late into the night, we cook, we micromanage, we mess up, we celebrate, we do errands and go on trips and go to work and parent and clean the house and get gas and fold laundry and feed the chickens and get the girls to school and get them back home again and....live a whole life together. there are things that drive me crazy about my husband, and i'm guessing the list of things i do that annoy him is at least twice that long.

BUT. it's good. it's so so good.
together figuring it all out is GOOD.

some things i love about being married to matt:

his faith practice informs everything in his life & our relationship - from the people he spends time with, to how quickly he admits that he is wrong, to the way he appreciates beauty, to the time he takes to be still, pray & listen. it also makes him incredibly others-focused....which honestly can be frustrating when i'm wanting to hunker down and not care about anyone else but myself! i'm inspired to work towards the common good and not just what benefits me. he is humble and willing to learn from others. i learn from his rhythm of self-care that fuels him to then care for others. i also learn from the way he listens before acting or speaking. he creates sacred space - at funerals, baptisms and weddings, at the bedside of someone dying, sitting with someone in grief - and he holds and honors those moments that are often rushed through, even in our christian faith tradition.

he's authentic & has integrity, and he's the same person behind closed doors that he is in the public sphere.

he's a crazy good dad. thoughtful, gentle, patient, and creative. he's made vocational & financial sacrifices to prioritize time with our children, which can be challenging when we live in such a city where the cost of living is astronomical. he has real conversations with our kids about what they are thinking about, and who they are becoming. he loves our girls in their uniqueness, and he celebrates who they are. he sits and listens to them. he plays with them. we co-parent not in theory but in reality; he juggles a ton of work and life to be present for our family. he makes me such a better mom & balances me out (and hopefully i do the same for him.)
 
matt's a really hard worker. he's seriously so efficient. i mean we both suffer from the inability to create realistic to-do lists, but somehow he knocks out SO MUCH work in a day.

paint two rooms, clean the entire backyard, wash all the floors, do 5 loads of laundry and then run over to help a friend on a house project on a saturday afternoon? no problem.

unlike me, he doesn't make a big deal about how much work he's doing. he doesn't need credit (um- i totally need credit and lots of compliments along the way), and he freely offers to help others.
 
it takes me an hour to wash the amount of dishes he can do in 15 minutes (which is one reason in our old-no-dishwasher-house, he is our dishwasher & does 90% of the dishes!) 

he celebrates and learns about things i care about. so for example, not only has he learned all about bono, but he knows a ton about art. he reads about it, looks at it, thinks about it, talks to our kids about it, talks to other artists, writes about it, asks me questions about it.
 




he makes life so fun. 
 
 
ruby has inherited this gift, and this facial expression is exactly matt in 6 year old girl form:

he works out with me! he's always up to support me whether it's running, walking, yoga, hiit, tabata, weights...he'll do whatever i'm doing (yep, i'm talking about you jillian michaels dvds) or he'll make sure i have time to go solo. i remember years ago when we were dating, how he would run the lake with me, and slow down to my pace (about 3 minutes a mile slower than his) without saying a word.
(i'm not kidding this day we almost died thanks to the humidity)
he poses for pictures with me. even though it is so far from his favorite thing! i keep telling him he'll be glad when we are 80.
he takes alone time to recharge, which really makes our relationship so much better. (it took me awhile to figure that one out but it's true.)
he loves and invests in other people's kids, not just our own. 
also: that he can eat at chez panisse and a taco truck in the same day, his gardening skills which somehow make me look like a gardener too even though all i can handle are succulents, his love of punk rock and hip hop, that he turns our backyard into an obstacle course whenever kids come over, his kitchen skills, his archaic flip phone, that he watches tv with me every tuesday night so i can get my fix, that he buys me 73 little presents for every holiday because i love gifts, that he makes me better cocktails than i can buy anywhere in oakland, that he almost always drives because i'd rather not

and that he's always and forever coming up with ideas on how to make the world a wholer, more beautiful and grace-filled place to live for everyone no matter who they are.

so there you go. 
we're married and 
i like my husband most of the time and love him all of the time.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

nothing like a coat of paint

we did a few projects this summer to freshen things up around our house, and i am realizing that we are turning our house into a box of crayons.
first up? the girls' room. it's been pale purple since we moved in and painted it monrovia's favorite color 6 years ago, so it was time to repaint in ruby's favorite color!
yellow!
 
 bright & clean!



meanwhile, we needed to paint and finish our back doors- the stucco has been driving me crazy.

since we painted a few years ago the area we painted is now lighter and flatter, so we will probably have to paint our entire back wall, but for now it's sooooooo much better!
i wanted an acid chartreuse color on our doors, which is kind of crazy and totally not historically appropriate for our home, but i super loved how it turned out!