Another lovely, crisp morning greeted us, followed by another round of clothing-choice battles. "Mommy, can I wear what I wore yesterday?" "No." "BUTWHYNOT?!?! I WANT TO WEAR WHAT I WORE YESTERDAY!" "It's just not what people do, Georgia." Which isn't entirely true, I know, but c'mon. Besides, Georgia is not known for her dainty eating habits, nor for necessarily using a napkin. I didn't want to risk walking in the door of the learning center only to discover a hunk of meatloaf defiantly clinging to the back of her shirt. What would these people *think* of ME?! This attitude goes way back. I've never forgotten when I was on bed rest while pregnant with Maggie (who is now 16) and Brad had to take care of getting Emily dressed and off to her Mother's Day Out program. He let her wear the same pink Swiss Dot dress and black patent leather shoes 3 days in a row. OY! What was a mother to do? Not much from where I was lounging, except shake my head as a tiny tear of mortification hit my pillow. Georgia relented, as I had done yesterday over the Crocs, and wore a different outfit. She even put on clean socks of her own accord!
We made it to the center right on time, sans meatloaf chunks, and got started with the PATH reading therapy program. It's pretty freaky stuff- designed by Dr. Teri Lawton, a fascinating neurobiologist who is reportedly beyond brilliant, to the point that everyday folks like me would have a really difficult time having an everyday conversation with her. PATH is a computer-based program that uses shades of grey lines moving in various directions, in which the student must hit arrow keys indicating which direction the lines are moving. I'm sure I'm not giving it the description that Dr. Lawton would prefer, but like I said - "everyday folks" and all. Here is a link to the hand-out Jill gave me: http://www.pathtoreading.com/images/PATHProdSum.pdf Please read it! It's thoroughly fascinating! Part of our fee to the center paid for the licensing rights, so it's now on my computer, and we will continue to work with it once we're back home.
I told you about the Samonas listening therapy yesterday, designed by Ingo Steinbach. Again- someone so brilliant, regular people just can't relate. He's also German, so I suppose if you don't speak German, it's a double-whammy. Here's the link to a description: http://www.listening-ears.com/samonas.html We also paid for licensing rights for this program, so we will be getting all of the CDs as we need them. And they threw in a really groovy pair of specially designed headphones too! The portable Sony CD player was not included, so we borrowed one from the center yesterday. I wandered off to Wal Mart while Geo was working at the center this morning and bought our own Sony Walkman. (which is a completely different creature from the Sony Walkman I received on my 17th birthday.) I EVEN remembered to buy batteries. What I didn't consider was how the hell I'd open the hermetically sealed plastic package once I got it back to the hotel. You will be happy- and relieved- to know that while I did momentarily entertain the thought of using our one "sharp" knife (it's serrated with a rounded tip) to saw my way into the Walkman, my better judgment took over, (which was really just visions of my hacked-off hand creating a blood stain on the carpet, much like the one in the hallway by the elevator), and I trotted downstairs to the front desk to borrow a pair of scissors. Problem solved, and 911 call averted!
It is now time to unwind for the day. Georgia is looking forward to noshing on some microwave popcorn while watching a Barbie movie. I'd better supervise said microwave, since it only wants to work on "Dinner Plate" mode, which is 3 minutes longer than popcorn cares to be popped.
No comments:
Post a Comment