It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

    At times this week has seemed to slog and stick like so much caramel in my teeth. I hate caramel. One day would see Georgia happily cooperating (ironically, one of her vocabulary words  this week), and the next her feet firmly planted in cement. Oh, she does the work. But on the cement-planted-feet-days she would whine and fuss and growl through each session so that it seemed she wasn't getting any benefit from the work at all. After too many days of this uphill slogging, Mommy had a breakdown! We were pounding away at the AST Reading lesson where she has to repeat syllable pairs after me: "splash-clash", "batch-hatch", "snitch-snatch". She was so bent out of shape, and irritated about having to work, that she absolutely could not distinguish the different sounds. She devolved into further ickyness. Finally I threw my hands up, cut off the CD, unplugged the sound board and said "That's it. I'm done. I can't stand the whining and complaining one minute more! I cannot help you if you refuse to help too." Then I brought the hammer down. "No more screen-time for the rest of the day!!" I slammed out of the room, into my room, dove onto my bed like a pouty teenager, and thought "I. CAN. NOT. DO. THIS." Now, after the "no more screen-time" edict I fully expected to garner a complete ranting, raving lunatic-type rage. And I waited for it to begin. But it didn't. Something completely astounding happened instead. I heard Georgia talking (not raging) in her room for a few minutes, then she opened her door and called "Mommy?" I replied "In here." She came in calmly, and with a completely modulated voice said "I'd like to try again please." She climbed up on the bed and began to voice her frustrations in an almost hushed tone. She apologized. Finally after talking things out, I said "OK, I'll give it another try." Remarkably, she was able to not only breeze through each syllable pair, she could tell me what made one word vary from the other. "So, what letter changed to make "'clutch' say 'crutch'", her eyes flitted away for a minute and she said "Change the 'l' to a 'r'!" Wow. I even pushed it so far as to ask her what the vowels sounds were, and she could tell me! After we finished, we talked together about the difference it made from when she was irritated, to when she was calm. We determined that it was, in fact, better to remain calm.

     And so we had a really great afternoon session on another day, and were both remarking on it. I said "Yes! Isn't it so nice when things run smoothly and we don't have any drama? NO DRAMA! WATCH OUT FOR THE DRAMA LLAMA, IT'S SPITS!" Georgia was walking out of the room when I boomed this, but as she got into the kitchen I heard her start to giggle, and giggle, and then say to herself "Drama llama. It spits!" Then she started doing that hilarious hiccoughing, snorting giggle she does when she finds something particularly amusing. To see her gaining in maturity, self control, and growing in her sense of humor is quite something. My friend Judy recounted to me how she always made note when her kids were little of when they were particularly irritable, unmanageable or just plain pains-in-the-ass, because it usually meant that they were about to conquer another developmental milestone. I'm keeping that in mind with Georgia during all of these ups and downs, hoping the sticky caramel days mean she's morphing through into a higher developmental stage. Morphing into smooth rainbow sherbet days! I LIKE rainbow sherbet.