Thursday, February 07, 2008

Holding Patterns


Waiting is hard work. It is taxing and tiring and just plain beats the sh*t out of me. I am bundles of nervous energy, bouncing around our life with no direction, no purpose, no focus - just boing, boing, boing all day and unfortunately, all night. My daughter finally starts sleeping through the night more than once a week and I am now up for hours at a time. Oh the injustice.

This process of waiting for the work situation to be resolved is arduous to be sure, but feels necessary too, which makes it a bit more possible. I have good friends who are taking my "side" and who can laugh with me through this anguish and I have good resources who are being generous with their guidance and support. I'm not sure if I needed more proof that God provides, but just in case, here it is.

In the meantime, Talia is just being more and more of herself. This week was a busy one - the nursery and the SuperBowl on Sunday, Belated Robbie Burns dinner on Monday, Roots of Empathy on Tuesday and a doctor's appointment today to figure out her funny rash, which it seems is actually ecsema (sp??).



My favourite was the Roots of Empathy. We visit with a Grade 3 class at Gleneagles School and the students are encouraged to learn emotional literacy and empathy by watching Talia and engaging with her through play and songs. She totally loves it - I put her on the green blanket and she takes off to go investigate all the new faces and shoelaces. She is delighted by all the new toys but has a special love for Dolly, a life-like babydoll that she will actually lie down and cuddle with. It's a fun first, to watch our daughter in 'public' being herself and just plain loving the self that she is. There is a boy in the class who probably has some behavioural issues and had much of the instructor's attention. He was leaning towards full disruption, but Talia kept crawling towards him, and would sit and stare at him and just seemed to like him. By the end, he was playing peek-a-boo with her and was clearly pleased as punch to have been singled out for her attention. A good reminder that we aren't born with our social filters developed enough to squint at the odd ones in the world.

In this last photo taken yesterday, I got a glimpse of Auntie Katie. I leave you with it - she should be so lucky to have hint o'Katie about her all her life.