OK, I am going to TOTALLY embarrass myself with the second picture here...
We went to Trunk-or-Treat on Monday night at Laurel's school and she
had such a good time, when I asked her if she'd like to go again on
Wednesday she gave me a huge look "yes". Then I made the
mistake of revealing that Mommy had a witch costume too (from days gone
by), would she like me to dress up as a witch also? Another big look
"yes". So I made a total fool of myself, and my dear darling
husband felt a need to point that out, too. (I told him that if Laurel
and I were both witches, he must be Darrin, and he said, "Sometimes
Darrin is a good thing to be.") But Laurel had a great time again
(judged by her extreme looks away when we asked her if she wanted to
stop), even though it wore her out so badly that she fell asleep 2 1/2
hours earlier than usual! We went to the mall because a) our
neighborhood stinks trick-or-treatwise b) most people's houses have
stairs going up to them anyway. We of course wound up with a bunch of
stuff Laurel can't eat, but she scored big on lollipops at the mall and
got a few soft chocolates at Trunk-or-Treat...3 Musketeers was a big hit
at speech therapy on Tuesday.
Laurel was invited to join a Brownie troop this evening. We ran into
the mother of one of Laurel's classmates at a restaurant tonight, and
much to my surprise, it was one of the first things out of her mouth
(she's the troop leader). It's clear she's big on inclusion - one of the
members of the troop is a deaf girl that Laurel went to preschool with,
and she was telling us about how the Girl Scouts were paying for her to
have an interpreter and all the girls are learning some signs.
I'm worried about how much Laurel would really be able to participate,
but on the other hand, she seemed into the idea - she was very attentive
to the gal as she was telling Laurel about it. I asked her afterwards if
she wanted to join a group of girls who did things together twice a
month and got a huge look. So I guess I'm leaning toward doing it. Only
catch is, the troop meets 3:30 - 5:00 on Friday twice a month and the
leader really wanted me to apply as a co-leader and come along (which I
can understand). So a) I would need to try to rearrange my work schedule
to do that b) what the heck else would I be getting myself into? But my
guess is that I'll suck it up and do it. I want Laurel to have as much
of a life as she can. The funny thing is I was just talking a few weeks
ago to a mom of another girl with CP at the center where we take Laurel
for speech therapy and we were bemoaning the things our kids would never
do, and one of the things I listed off was "be a Girl Scout"
(which I was myself). I just really didn't think it was practical. I'm
still not totally convinced, but I figure with a leader with as positive
an attitude as this one seemed to have, it's probably worth a shot...
Happy 7th birthday to Laurel - we are so proud of our amazing kid!
Laurel felt terrible yesterday and we didn't do anything! She did have a little party at school on Friday, which went well and I'm really kicking myself for forgetting the camera. But yesterday morning she started off the day with massive diarrhea and just felt crummy all day. Saturday she'd indicated that she'd like to go swimming (we belong to a gym with an indoor pool) and go to Build-A-Bear Workshop for her birthday, but she wasn't up for doing any of that. She didn't even want to open presents! She was feeling somewhat better tonight (still not great), so we got presents opened, but she passed on the offer of chocolate frosting. Hopefully it's just some little bug and she'll be fine by the weekend and ready to do those birthday activities. I felt so bad for her yesterday, poor kid!
Laurel's been having a pretty awful "birthday week," but we
finally made it to the Build-A-Bear Workshop today. She went from what
seemed like a mild (as these things go) case of stomach flu into a nasty
cold - I swear, she had something like this last year too. Yesterday the
only way I could calm her down was to give her Benadryl, and then she
was out for the rest of the day. But today, although still not feeling
great, she indicated that she wanted to go to the Workshop and make a
dog. And so she did. I was so impressed with how she plowed through it
despite feeling crummy. And when it turned out, after multiple rounds of
listening to the sounds/voices that you can put into the animals and
finally picking one, that her first choice wasn't available, she chose
to go forward and pick another one (so now her dog, which was originally
going to have what they called a "buddy" voice, sounds like a
Valley Girl 
). She
chose which extremity to put the voice in, a heart, and a collar (she
had indicated before we went that she wanted clothes for it, but she
changed her mind). She said via eye gaze that it was a girl and it had a
name, but we opted not to drive ourselves crazy with trying to guess the
name to put on a birth certificate. And she chose to carry it out of the
store on her lap rather than having it put in a box.
We are so proud of her, because it wasn't that long ago that having to
make that many choices (I mean, to begin with she had to decide that she
wanted a dog...and then there were about eight kinds of dogs...and 16
kinds of voices...) would have made her melt down, especially on a day
that she felt bad. Plus she handled the disappointment of not having her
first choice for voice available in a very mature way. And here is the
belated birthday girl with her new friend:
I just wanted to share this from our Thanksgiving...
Laurel had kind of a rough day today - she was having a lot of goo from
her cold breaking up and a lot of gas (which come to think of it, I
think she often does too at the end of a cold). I had bought her a book,
"Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks" at the Scholastic Book
Fair a week ago and had meant to read it to her today earlier rather
than later, but she didn't seem in much of a mood to be read to most of
the day, and I wasn't in much of a mood to pitch giving thanks to such a
miserable kid. But she seemed to be feeling better after the spaghetti
("Laurel, do you want something to eat?" Big look at me.
"Laurel, would you like some turkey?" Look away. "How
about some cranberry sauce? It's a kind of fruit, I bet you could eat it
without my even doing anything to it." Look away. "Well, then,
do you want some of last week's spaghetti?" BIG look) so I decided
to read it to her. As I read it to her, I threw in a couple of examples
of things relevant to her, and then at the end I asked her if there was
anything she was thankful for. Big look. I told her that I was thankful
for her and gave her a hug. She gave me a huge look then, and we just
held each other's gaze for a long time. 
I know it's almost over, but Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good
night!