October Musings

I am back from my week at Emerson Exchange. It was incredibly busy and stressful - but ended up going really well. I was concerned during the week that I was secretly a transformer and was morphing into a shirt dispenser. At one point, I told my team that if one more person asked me to find them a branded shirt, I would hurt them.

I got home late Thursday night. Friday morning, Quinn wanders out of her room, gives me a hug to welcome me home, and informs me that she "needs more shirts." She's not wrong. She grew over the summer and her shirts are too small. But Q's timing, both intentional and unintentional, is always dead on.

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While I was gone, Fiona had her first sharing day at school. She brought Clifford, which surprised exactly no one. She decided to share that October is Spina Bifida Awareness month and that she knew that because she has spina bifida. And that she has had five surgeries and that Clifford comes with her when she has surgeries.

And you guys, that surprised exactly EVERYONE. Up until this point, she has not wanted to tell even her closest friends about spina bifida. And then, on her own, she told her whole freaking class. I wanted to cry, I was so proud of her! Can you imagine the bravery that it takes to get up in front of all your friends and tell them you are different!?!?! She's probably the toughest person I've ever met.

We asked her if her class asked any questions. Her answer: "Yeah. A lot." But she seems to find it okay that people want to know more. 

Her class ran the mile in gym class on Friday. She was all sorts of dreading it (conversely, I had to send Q away from her because Quinn was out of her mind excited about running it the same day ... sigh ...). She asked me what she should do if her friends asked her why she couldn't do the whole mile. I told her to tell them that spina bifida makes things like the mile really hard. And that it's not that she can't do it - but it takes her longer. She got all excited that she could say that - because now her class knows. Hooray for payoff to brave choices!

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When I got home, Mike told me that my son missed me. And that he talks a lot. Poor Dec! His daddy just doesn't have the conversational chops that mom possesses. Since I've been home, D and I have discussed all the things and his backlog of words has been released. I get it. It's almost painful to have all those thoughts that need someone to listen to them. 

And now I know about his new friends at school and honey badgers on Wild Kratts and that his favorite letter is D and that he learned how to draw a strawberry and that Crutchie on Newsies has a crutch and that's why he's named Crutchie (did I know that?!?!) and that he likes cheese but not goat cheese. Seems about normal for a chat with D. I don't know what Mike was talking about.