Navigating friendships

Charlotte is struggling in her friendship with her new 2nd grade best friend. It’s been a challenge to decipher just what is bothering her, and the situation highlights how difficult it can be for Charlotte to express herself. Not just express herself but also identify what’s bothering her.

What I *think* is bothering her is her friend is getting on her nerves. She’s bossy (Charlotte says, “N is my boss.”). And I think N is impatient with Charlotte who tends to move at a slower pace than average. N tells her, “You’re too slow!” Charlotte, however, does not believe that’s true. She says: “I’m not slow! I’m SUPER FAST!!” (And it’s so stinking adorable when she says it.)

Charlotte’s plans for today are to hide from N. She says she going to find two other friends, K and E, and eat lunch with them. “Why hide?” I ask. “Because N will get me!” she replies. When she talks with me about N (which she does every day now) she gets very upset. This clearly is a big deal to Charlotte.

It’s tricky this business of friends. I understand if she’s wanting to move on from being friends with N. Perhaps they aren’t a good fit. She’s under no obligation to be friends with her. But it’s important, and I have been trying to emphasize this, that she try not to hurt N’s feelings. Continue to look for other friends to eat lunch with and play with at recess, is my advice. And don’t let N take you away from your other friends.

I have told Charlotte, and I’ll tell her again, that she’s her own person and she has to be strong about what she wants to do and who she wants to play with. I also told her to let N know when she’s being bossy. But that it must be done in kindness.

And now I must sit back and revel in what appears to be a completely normal turn of events in 2nd grade. I have long worried that Charlotte might end up the quiet friend who is pushed around a bit. The one who is the follower. And yet here we are, at 7 1/2, and although she’s struggling to identify and articulate her feelings – she is trying. She knows she’s not happy with the way the friendship has progressed. Now we have to work through it.

Honestly, considering everything, not a bad place to be.

 

Facial recognition

Here and there I have read adults on the autism spectrum talk about the difficulty they have recognizing faces. Even if it’s a good friend or a frequently-seen person, there are times they simply can’t recognize a person’s face. Maybe it happens all the time, I’m not sure. I think I read from one person they rely on other features such as hair or height or, perhaps, glasses to trigger that recognition.

I have also read of parents speculating that their child has a type of face blindness. This isn’t anything I’ve ever seen in Charlotte. That doesn’t mean it isn’t at times a challenge for her, but it is not something that I ever witnessed myself.

Until…

This morning Charlotte was very upset about going to school. She claimed she didn’t feel well but when pressed for specific symptoms, she came up short. She started telling me she didn’t think that N wanted to be her best friend anymore. When I probed about that she said N didn’t say anything about not being friends anymore to Charlotte, but that she didn’t sit by her on the carpet during one particular time in class. I continued to probe.

Eventually she shared that when N came to school her hair was cut very different. “And I didn’t even recognize her! She came and sat by me and I didn’t know who it was. Then she talked and I knew it was N. But her hair was really different, and I think it should go back to the old way!”

Wow. It really stunned me that she didn’t recognize her friend because she had a different hair cut. Via email her teacher confirmed that N’s hair was cut in a very different style.

I don’t see this as a hugely debilitating issue for Charlotte. If it were, I think I might have picked up on it sometime in the last 3-4 years. What I do see it as is further evidence that her mind does work in a way that is much different than mine. Sometimes I forget that. She has her challenges, but for the most part Charlotte does so very well, it’s easy to forget that she has an IEP for a reason.

***

Speaking of challenges, things are about to get challenging here at home in the kitchen. Over the last couple of years it has become very clear that Charlotte’s behavior problems are caused by food. The problem behavior is always the same (aggression, which can include hitting and other things, and screaming) and it’s always brought on by a food that Charlotte has eaten a lot of over several days in a row. Recently both mandarin oranges and lemonade were the culprit. I started seeing it go that direction with popcorn recently but I nipped that by stopping the popcorn before things got out of hand. It’s fine to eat popcorn and those other foods … just not every day.

I began to wonder if gluten was the underlying problem with these other foods. The number of foods she has to limit keeps increasing, and the fact that foods affect her behavior is, to me, very unusual. So I ordered a stool test and gene test. The stool test, which looked for IGA antibodies to gluten, came back positive. The gene test identified two nearly identical genes for gluten sensitivity, indicating she got one from each parent.

This weekend is our last big hurrah with gluten before we all go gluten free come Monday. For Charlotte, it will mean gluten free for life. At some point, I’ll have the other two kids tested as well. The whole family is going to go gluten free because it will just be easier if we all eat the same things.

Truth be told, I’m dreading gluten free living. It’s a hassle. I know once we get in the groove, it will become second nature. Hopefully it will be worth it in the long run.

If you’re reading, leave me a comment. I miss interacting with my blogging friends!

 

Lessons learned: the homework edition

More often than I care to admit, I find that I do not always have enough faith in Charlotte. I either assume the worst is going to happen (e.g. she’s going to do or say something inappropriate) so I hover a smidgen too close, or I assume she’s not capable and I immediately try to micromanage her.

And so it went last week as homework assignments began coming home. I found myself wanting to micromanage her doing it, but I held back, and Charlotte showed me that she can do it herself.

Last year homework was a bit of a challenge. A weekly packet came home on Fridays and was due the next Friday. We never really found our homework groove and it ended up taking a lot longer than necessary and I did far more cajoling and prompting than was comfortable.

Because I have read countless blog posts and heard so many stories from friends about the daily homework battles that go on out there, I wanted to set in motion right away that Charlotte had full responsibility for completing her homework. I didn’t want to wind up spending 1-2 hours, or even the whole evening, cajoling, prompting, motivating or even talking about a 5-minute worksheet.

The first night the book she brought home to read took her all of 3 minutes. She skimmed through another of her books, but finally gave out after about 15 minutes of reading. The worksheet, which was to write out her spelling words 3 times each, took much longer. Not because it was  hard, but because it was “stupid” and “boring.”

I did a fantastic job, if I do say so myself, of not pressuring her to do the worksheet, or to read for 5 more minutes to make it the full 20. I let her know that she could finish spelling words later, and that even if she chose not to finish it, she wouldn’t get in any trouble at home. She just couldn’t watch TV that night.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday she didn’t want to do it. Again, I held firm with myself (no easy task mind you) and did not do any pressuring. Around Nolan’s bedtime, I suggested she do her homework while I was putting Nolan to bed. She did half. She said she’d do the other half in the morning. And she did. Independently. With no pressure from me, only a reminder.

Thursday night she had trampoline class and told me she’d do the homework after that. When she came in afterwards, she said, “I’m just going to play play play,” and she looked at me with that look. That testing boundaries look that says, “I want to see how you handle this, Mom.”

Remembering my personal vow, I said, “OK.” An hour later, at bedtime, I reminded her and she said she wanted to do it Friday morning. I set her alarm for a half-hour early and dragged her booty up when I heard it go off.

She didn’t follow a single one of my suggestions of when to do her homework. About 20 minutes before it was time for her to leave, I told her she only had 20 minutes left and so it was now or never.

She completed it. Independently.

At school if you don’t do your homework your clip gets moved off green. And then you also have to complete it during recess. While I absolutely do not believe homework is even remotely vital to learning at this age and that children should not ever lose recess for not doing it, I wanted to see if Charlotte could summon her own motivation to complete her homework. And she did. She told me several times she needed to do her homework because, “I NEVER get my clip moved.” She never got her card flipped from green during first grade and she was extremely proud of that.

All that being said, I am not going to pressure her to read the full 20 minutes. As long as she reads the book in her book tote, that is enough. And once she has books at her reading level, it will take longer. Additionally, I am going to ask for more challenging spelling words homework (like writing sentences instead). Maybe I’ll just modify it myself even. What are they going to say?

I realize that was only the first week, and things could dramatically change, but if you are the parent of a kid like Charlotte, you know how it important it is to get things started on the right foot. How it goes at the beginning is usually how it will go all the time.

And if it goes like this all year, I think I can live with that.

 

Back to school

Second grade is off and running.

I’m almost afraid to type this and hit publish. The last thing I want to do is jinx the terrific start we’ve had to the year. But, ooh la la (in the vernacular of Fancy Nancy) what a terrific start it is.

I credit the ease and peace of our days to switching up the routines at home at the start of the school year and creating a new normal for Charlotte. The girl loves her some routine!

Charlotte’s morning routine expanded to include a daily shower (thus eliminating arguments about whether it’s a bath day or not). This has worked beautifully. She especially loves Tuesdays and Thursdays – shower cap days. Once she’s in the shower (unceremoniously dropped in there by me as she refuses to get out of bed), she perks up and goes speedily through her written-out routine.

The evening routine has smoothed thanks to several changes. Only one show per night and it has to be started by 7:00. We added an immediate reward for cooperation at bedtime (a very motivating one that gets her booty moving). And, the biggest change of all, I put a clock in her room.

Apparently Charlotte can’t stop talking when I say talkers off, but when the clock displays the magic “lights out talkers off” number – she complies. What used to take upwards of an hour, sometimes close to two, has been reduced to 20 minutes. 10 minutes of me telling a story and 10 minutes for her to fall asleep.

Long live the clock!

Homework just started this week so I can’t speak to how well that’s going to go -but today wasn’t too bad. Better than expected.

Charlotte appears to be doing pretty darn good at school too. She is so much more communicative than last year. She tells me what they’re working on. Every day she tells me who she ate lunch with and played with at recess. Each day she says school was awesome. I don’t think I can ask for any better than that.

I won’t pretend it’s completely and totally smooth sailing. Friday she decided she wasn’t going to school. Flat out refused to walk with the kids. I ended up driving her and leaving her in the guidance counselors office in tears. That’s wasn’t fun. And I have a hunch she’s going to pull the same thing this Friday.

This first two weeks are going far better than I could have imagined. I am beyond proud of Charlotte. I know it’s hard on her. She’s coming home and doing some major sensory-seeking. Smooshing herself into cushions, rolling around on the floor a lot. She just looks like she isn’t feeling comfortable in her skin. But she’s not lashing out at any of us. She’s handling herself.

Her sensory breaks haven’t started at school yet. Hopefully they will soon. Perhaps that will help her not feel so whatever it is she feels that makes her need to crash her body.

This awesome start is, I believe, due to the power of structure and a routine. The girl needs it. And school and our improved routine at home are providing it – enabling her to thrive. Makes me realize how the looser schedule over the summer was probably quite hard on her. And perhaps contributed to some of the frustrating times we experienced.

Now we know though. We learn. We grow. We change. I’m already thinking about next summer and how to keep us on tighter schedule.

And I’m stocking up on clocks. Just in case.

 

Free rangin’ it

I have never considered myself a Free Range kind of mom. Having a kid on the spectrum lends itself to over-caution and even sometimes a bit of helicoptering. I don’t think I’m guilty of helicoptering too much, but the Free Range idea doesn’t really gel with my kid. I’m sure I’m guilty of not trusting Charlotte enough at times. It’s hard to let go of those not-that-distant memories of parking lot darts and pond near-falls far beyond what is expected age-wise.

Not to mention that I recently found out she has some vision issues that make it difficult for her to organize all the visual input she’s taking in. In other words, if there’s a lot going on around her, she’s distracted and can’t process it all. (I didn’t need the developmental optometrist to tell me this, but it was nice having it officially confirmed.)

This year, Charlotte moved to the elementary school (from the early childhood school) which is behind our house, across a large soccer field. When the leaves fall off the trees, I could stand in her room with binoculars and see if I can find her of the playground. We’re that close.

Thanks to budget problems and a failed levy, our district cut bus service down to the bare minimum. With our close proximity, it’s either walk or be a car rider.

All summer long the plan has been for Charlotte to walk to school with the kids from the neighborhood. Given there are two sixth grade girls next door, I was feeling reasonably comfortable about this over the summer. The days leading up to school starting last week had me panicking and visiting all possible worse case scenarios.

I’m not talking about scenarios of abduction. The walk is short and there is safety in numbers. I have been concerned about things like my low-endurance girl keeping up with the bigger kids, the fact that all the other kids are boys (except for the aforementioned two 6th grade girls), a stray dog wandering onto the soccer field and scaring her, bullying or teasing.

Stroller-unfriendly bridge

The first day I walked with her along with the other kids and she really didn’t keep up. I began envisioning her being left behind day after day and how horrible that would feel. By the time the school day was over, I had talked myself into driving her everyday. At dismissal time I walked up to the school to walk her home (she didn’t know the plan for meeting the neighbors to walk home anyway).

Right away she was looking for B (neighbor girl) and when I told her that from now on she’d be a car rider she was distraught. “Noooooo, I want to walk with the kids!!” I told her that I was worried she wouldn’t keep up with the other kids and she’d be left behind.

“No, Mommy, I’ll walk faster! I’ll keep up!”

And sure enough, she did. She hustled and totally kept up with the two girls. Once home, I talked to B and her Mom about my worry about Charlotte not keeping up, disclosed Charlotte’s autism to B so that she’d know why new situations were scary for her and why she was sometimes anxious, and was reassured by B and her Mom that B would always walk with Charlotte and not let her lag behind.

Armed with those reassurances, an eager attitude, and a 6th grader with a cell phone, I sent her off the next day to walk to and from school with a group of neighborhood kids.

Without so much of a backward glance, she was off.

One of the gang.

I have since come up with a myriad of positive benefits for Charlotte to be gathered from walking to school. Including being part of the community, building independence, daily (albeit brief) exercise.

There are risks, too, but they are the same risks for all the children, and not anything due to ASD. The kids could tease her for some reason. Or, perhaps, the group could form a protective ring around her should someone else tease her some day. I like to believe that being a part of a community has those kind of benefits.

There goes my girl. She’s free-rangin’ it to school.

 

Art matters

About this time last year, as I was wandering in the Kindergarten hallway at school, I noticed paintings of flowers lining the hallway.

These lovely paintings were done by first graders as part of art class. Some of them were so beautifully done. Actually, most of them looked wonderful. I remember feeling so impressed and almost astounded at just how good these were.

And a little worried.

I simply couldn’t imagine Charlotte producing a painting of flowers that would even come close to what I was seeing.

Art has never been Charlotte’s thing.

When she was a toddler, she showed zero interest in picking up a crayon and scribbling. My sister used to tape a piece of paper to her daughter’s high chair tray and give her a few crayons. My niece would scribble away.

When I did that for Charlotte, she tried to eat the crayons. And the paper. Not interested in drawing, I figured.

Eventually I discovered that she was significantly (and I mean significantly) delayed in fine motor skills. It wasn’t that she lacked interest, she lacked skill. I think she also lacked interest, though, which was part of the delay. For whatever reason, somehow related to autism, I’m sure, she just didn’t know what the heck to do with a crayon.

Once she entered preschool, she had many, many opportunities to work on those fine motor skills. Much of that work came in the form of art projects.

Her progress was slow. At the end of her first year of preschool, there was a Mother’s Day tea at which the children shared a special creation for their Moms.

2008

Throughout the summer and the following year, Charlotte grew more and more interested in coloring. She regularly picked up crayons and colored coloring pages. She wasn’t much for freehand drawing, but she did like to color. It seemed her enjoyment of it increased right along with her skill development.

The next Mother’s Day tea came along and a new gift.

2009

There’s some progress. Not a lot, but it’s there.

We walked away from preschool after those 2 years with me thinking that art was just not Charlotte’s thing. And that’s okay. I’m a terrible drawer. I have no abilities with a paintbrush whatsoever. Eventually I learned to color in the lines, and she would too.

Art in Kindergarten is not a top priority (especially with the half-day program in our district) so not a whole lot of progress was made, that I could tell, in her art skills. At home, she still colored wildly outside the lines. Her freestyle drawings were improving, though. (Helped, I believe, by a couple of I Can Draw books that she got for Christmas.)

I don’t walk down the Kindergarten hallway anymore, which is where the art room is, so I didn’t see the flower paintings lining the walls this year. I had forgotten all about them.

Until last week. Charlotte brought this home.

2011

Wow!

Now that’s what I call progress. Beautiful, lovely progress.

 

Observations

If I had more time, and a better handle on them, I’d craft a tidy little blog post about the following:

In a blinding-flash-of-the-obvious moment recently, I detected a pattern in some of Charlotte’s more odd-looking behaviors. E.g., sitting on her bum and sliding down the hall rather than walking; walking up the steps on her knees and letting her whole body bang on each step; laying on the couch with her whole body smooshed into the cushions.

Could she be seeking proprioceptive input to her whole body? I’m so out of touch with sensory-related OT stuff now that I’m not sure I’m even wording that right. But I think trying to give her some heavy work and other proprioceptive shtuff might be good for her. Yesterday I made a “Charlotte sandwich” before school.

And I can let go of my irritation when she’s sliding down the hall on her whole belly – maybe it makes her feel good. Maybe it does something for her.

I’d also write about:

Watching Sarah as she has assimilated breezily into preschool has given me so much more empathy for Charlotte. I was finding myself getting frustrated at things like Charlotte not being willing to walk into the school by herself. Blaming myself because I didn’t “nip that in the bud” when it started (as has been suggested more than a few times by others).

Witnessing Sarah walk easily and without hesitation into the school with another Mom so I don’t have to carry Nolan in too helps me remember that some things are just harder for Charlotte. And that’s okay. Nothing is gained by forcing her to “conquer” her “fear” of [what I'm not sure].

I could easily write a cute blog post about:

Charlotte is an awesome big sister to Nolan. She just “gets it” when it comes to interacting with him. Not too much, not too in-your-face. She likes to assist with everything and is actually truly helpful. She put the diaper cream on his bum this morning, for goodness sake. Can’t beat that!

Nolan’s cooing sounds like he’s saying, “ehhh” (soft /e/ sound). When Charlotte hears that she’ll say, “Nolan, what sound does an E make?” and then “Good job, little man!”

I could also write a not-as-cute post about:

Sarah is a little too “loving” when it comes to Nolan. She is in his face constantly. Constantly. She wants to touch, kiss, cuddle, tickle all the time. All. The. Time. It takes every ounce of patience I  have to refrain from telling her to leave him alone all the time. She pokes, pulls, twists and then says, “I’m just looking at him.”

But here’s the kicker: Nolan loves it. His face lights up with a big smile when she wraps her arms around his head and hovers 2 centimeters from his nose.

So maybe I’m the one with issue, eh? I couldn’t stand to have someone in my face like that all the time.

But, alas, I don’t have time to craft the tidy little story that each one of these deserves. So I just leave you with the above nuggets – a little glimpse of how life is these days.

 

 

 

Complicated

Last week I had lunch with Charlotte at school. I thought it would be a special thing I could do with her – especially given that I’m not volunteering in her class this year. What with having a newborn, it’s just tough to carve out the time and babysitting (I’m not taking him with me into the cess pool of germs that is an elementary school).

Charlotte and I sat with 4 other girls: another IEP girl who was in her K class and 3 new friends. These are the girls she eats with most often.

Charlotte didn’t really engage much with the girls. I wouldn’t say she was in her own world, she was just focused on eating her lunch. When she did talk to them she was about 3 paces behind in the conversation, she talked so softly she couldn’t be heard, and she didn’t look at them so the girls had NO idea she was talking to them. And when they attempted to include her in the conversation, she didn’t answer (we were talking about Halloween costumes).

After lunch I stopped by to talk to the special ed teacher about the possibility of a social skills group. I described how she was so passive, and made no eye contact, and I wondered how will she ever make friends if she doesn’t communicate effectively.

She readily agreed to the idea and by day’s end I had an email from Charlotte’s speech therapist about creating a group to work on social skills which would include typically developing girls to serve as role models.

***

Links to an interview with Ari Ne’eman have been tweeted and Facebooked lately and, finally, this evening I got around to reading it.

If you aren’t aware, Ari Ne’eman is a young adult man with Asperger’s who founded the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and was recently appointed by President Obama to the National Council on Disability. He is the first Autistic Presidential appointee.

I’ve read other interviews with Ari Ne’man and always find myself nodding along in agreement with his point of view. Makes sense to me.

His interview in Wired is excellent, and once again, I nod along.

And then I get to this section near the very end of the piece.

As a society, our approach to autism is still primarily “How do we make autistic people behave more normally? How do we get them to increase eye contact and make small talk while suppressing hand-flapping and other stims?” The inventor of a well-known form of behavioral intervention for autism, Dr. Ivar Lovaas, who passed away recently, said that his goal was to make autistic kids indistinguishable from their peers. That goal has more to do with increasing the comfort of non-autistic people than with what autistic people really need.

And I wonder: am I trying to make my non-autistic self more comfortable with my autistic daughter? Am I hoping to train her into acting more normal in hopes that she’ll pass for normal at some point?

Charlotte seems oblivious to the fact that she wasn’t on the same page as the girls. Right now the kids are all still getting to know one another, but at some point, I predict, they’ll realize that she’s different and they’ll quit trying to be her friend.

Will she realize that? If she does, will she care?

Should I be trying to teach her better communication skills so she can have friends? Or is that sending a message that she should try to be something that she’s inherently not in order to fit in?

Charlotte wants play-dates with friends. I could teach her about eye contact and listening and frame it up as ‘being a good friend.’

It’s complicated.

Frankly, I don’t have the answer.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/exclusive-ari-neeman-qa/all/1

 

Routine stuff

The combination of summer and the third trimester of pregnancy created a bit of havoc in our daily lives. I was a mess, especially the last month of the pregnancy, what with insomnia and a couple of anxiety attacks. Once swim team practices and meets ended, so did what little structure we had going for us.

Daily life began to suffer. With no discernible routine in place, chaos reigned supreme. Dinner (for which I had limited mental capacity to plan and execute) was haphazard at best. Calls to the table were ignored. Most nights after several bites, Charlotte simply went back to playing. Many nights Sarah didn’t come at all.

Bedtime was equally catastrophic. They argued with us about going to bed. They stalled. Fought. There were tears. Sometimes it was close to 10:00 before the girls were asleep.

Everybody was cranky.

Everybody was tired.

In short, evenings were miserable.

I couldn’t really fault Charlotte and Sarah. Everybody knows that kids thrive on routine and structure. And we, the parents, we fell down on the job. More honestly, I fell down. I am past beating myself up for it though. I had a lousy, stinkin’ 3rd trimester of pregnancy for a baby that I wasn’t preparing for. Denial at its finest, friends.

Have him we did, though, and Nolan is here. Once he came home, the week after school started, we knew it was time to see if we could take back a little bit of control of life on the home front.

Over the next several weeks we did things like institute a set bedtime (first 8:00, now it’s 7:30 – wahoo!!). We worked backwards from there to make time for cleaning up the playroom (a space on the brink of being declared a national disaster), homework (oh, yes, first grade homework), bath, snack, playtime, etc.

I have even managed to plan and execute dinner nearly every single night. What a difference it makes to have a meal ready and on the table at the same time every night.

It’s paying off too. Dinner time, while not exactly complaint-free, is a helluva lot better. They come to the table. They eat. This is good. We’re not setting the world on fire with variety, but it’s the proverbial marathon here.

Bedtime? No arguments. (Unless you count the arguments between the girls about whose room to fall asleep in and which books to read. But I’m not counting those.)

Clean up is actually happening. A parent has to explicitly direct which child to put away which toys, but they are doing it. No longer do I hear Charlotte say, “But I don’t know how to clean up,” or Sarah, “You do it, Mommy.”

The chaos has ratcheted down and peace is slowly moving into its place.

It’s not perfect here by any means. There are days that it looks like a tornado blew through the rest of the house with all the stuff everywhere. But there is a one-month old living in the house, and his needs trump putting the laundry away and unloading the dishwasher.

For now, we can live with that. He’s pretty worth it.

The nightly routine has eliminated a handful of behavioral problems, however not all. I’ll try to write up next how I made Thursdays “Screaming Day” for Charlotte so that she wouldn’t scream all the other days about going to school. Amazingly, it actually worked.

Well, there, I just wrote up all there is to say on that. Okay, then next up I’ll write a little more about how First Grade is going.

Here’s a teaser: pretty darn good!

 

First grade so far and other stuff

We are in week three, maybe 4, of the school year. And, unfortunately, I feel so very disconnected from what is going on with Charlotte in the classroom. I don’t walk her to her classroom as I did last year, instead she is met at the door by a Mrs. H. I know there is an aide in the classroom, Mrs. S., but I haven’t met her. I have briefly talked with the special ed teacher, but only 5 minute conversation snippets here and there. Exchanged a few emails with her Mrs. T., her classroom teacher, but nothing substantial shared.

I assume they’ve read and are implementing the IEP strategies. That’s a big assumption, right? I need to set up a meeting with the classroom teacher and the special ed teacher, but figuring out the logistics of that so that I can attend by myself, has yet to reveal itself.

The only things that I know about how Charlotte is doing in First grade have come straight from her.

“It’s fun!”

“I don’t like boys in my school. Can you get rid of all the boys?”

Every day I ask her who she ate lunch with. She usually mentions the same two girls names and sometimes a boy’s name is mentioned. Last week, when asked the question, she said, “I ate lunch with Lori. She’s my best friend!”

Whoa. First time I’ve ever heard Charlotte use the term best friend.

Then Friday she came home with some numbers written on her arm. “What are these numbers?” I ask.

“That’s Lori’s phone number. I have to give her a call tonight.”

Again, whoa. We both forgot about calling Lori over the weekend. We’ll see if she brings it up again. She has stated she wants to invite her over for a sleepover. I suggested we dial that back to a playdate first and see how things go.

I’m kind of new to this whole my-kid-having-friends-and-wanting-a-playdate thing. I have no idea who Lori is, and what do I do? Just call the house and invite her over? Help.

Other news
I am feeling very disconnected from Charlotte. It’s my fault, I think. Two things are at play here. One, she’s at school all day so my hours with her are less. Our school day goes late, I pick her up at 4:00, so when we get home, it’s time to start dinner.

The second thing is, of course, the arrival of Nolan. I am concerned I’ve been too hard on her lately about her loud voice, her determination to wake him up when he’s sleeping, her insistence that he wants to play with her toys. My aggravation with those behaviors carries over into other things – like how she zones out and won’t respond to simple questions or even acknowledge that I am speaking to her.

I’m letting a lot of typical-for-Charlotte behaviors aggravate me beyond the norm. She absolutely needs to stop trying to wake him up, but I positively need to demonstrate more patience when she’s non-responsive and when she doesn’t heed my requests.

I am just concerned that she senses how annoyed I’ve been with her and she isn’t feeling the love. I know that I need to cut myself some slack – the arrival of a new baby is an adjustment for me too – not just the girls. But I also need to get my tone in check.

I have the same concerns about Sarah, but the difference is that I have all morning after Charlotte goes to school to have some good Sarah-time before she goes to afternoon preschool. Also, she is generally more responsive than Charlotte. She can be really obnoxious, but at least we can dialogue. Dialoguing with Charlotte, as many of you can imagine, is challenging at best.

Onward we press, figuring things out one day at a time.