I Don't Understand Her

Haley has been doing some odd things lately.  Well, I think they're odd.

She has been opening windows.  She can open the windows in our bedroom that look out onto the culdesac, the front room windows, the window in Shadow's room (the laundry room) and the window in the bathroom that she shares with her sister.

I keep explaining to her that it is cold outside and that we don't want the windows open.  I have told her that it makes our heater come on too much and that Shadow will get cold.  It is not sinking in.

My other daughter walked in to the laundry room the other day and said that she had left the window open in there.  I have no idea when she opened it.  It was really cold in there.

It's driving me crazy.

When she is taking a bath and the water is filling the tub if I look away she turns the water all the way to cold.  I didn't realize she was doing this for awhile.  I always ask her to turn the water off when the tub is full enough so I haven't actually turned it off for awhile.  I thought the water seemed cool and I also thought that maybe our water heater wasn't keeping up.  I usually give her a bath in the evening about the same time that we are running the dishwasher.

I saw her turn it down the other day.  Well actually she was sitting there shivering and I looked over at the tap and it was turned all the way to the right.  I cannot figure out why she would do that.  I turned the water on warm to rinse her hair while I was washing it and she said "Better."  I told her not to turn the water down anymore. 

I don't know if that is sinking in either.

It seems like these are things that she has learned to do so she does them.  I don't know.  As I type this I realize they are similar in that it would seem she is too warm, but I really don't think that is it.

The other thing that is not sinking in is that we are not going to Grandma and Grandpa's.  She mentions it everyday.  Some days are worse than others.  Yesterday the girls didn't have school because of Veterans Day.  That completely messed her up.  When she got home on Wednesday she said "School Friday."  I said "Yes, you will have school on Friday, but not tomorrow."

Something about being home made her think we were going to start packing.  She has had her toys packed up for awhile now, but she started stacking her videos and wanted me to get the "case" out - the bag that we pack videos in.  She just keeps pointing at the stack and saying "Case." 

She got to talk to Grandma and Grandpa on the phone last night.  I don't know what was said, but she did come downstairs and say "Gobble. Gobble. Gobble. Grandma.  Pie."  So I assume they talked about Thanksgiving.  This morning after I got her ready for school she went running in to our bedroom.  I followed her to see what was going on and she pointed at her new suitcases and said "Case."  I tried once again to explain that we are not going anywhere.  That conversation went on all morning.

A little while later she was sitting on the couch watching a show with the cat on her lap and talking about going to Grandma and Grandpa's.  She tries to get me to agree with her.  It is a trap.  She will say something with an inflection in her voice and if you say something like "Uh, huh."  Bam, she's got you. 

I didn't do that.  I told her that she was going to school today and she said "Friday."  I said "Yes, today is Friday and you are going to school today.  Tomorrow is Saturday and you will stay home."   She started crying. 

Huge tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks.  I got her a tissue and dried her eyes and blew her nose and left her sitting there.  By the time the bus arrived she had composed herself.  I don't know how we are going to make it to Thanksgiving.

What I Am Learning to Teach

Everyday occurrences become lessons.  I feel like I spend a lot of time teaching Haley.  Mothers of toddlers are used to this.  I am the mother of a teenager and a pre-teen.  I am still teaching them both, but differently.  I teach one of them that if she doesn't call when she says she will or doesn't answer her cell phone when I call, there will be consequences.  I teach the other one to climb in and out of the bathtub.

Last night was bath night.  Haley has a bath on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday nights regularly unless I have something unexpected come up.  Her Dad doesn't give her a bath anymore, it is my job.  This has been our routine for several years and it has become routine.  Something happened recently though that made me rethink our habits.

Haley's Big Sis and I had a Johnny Depp movie marathon.  We watched several of his movies that I had seen and a few that I hadn't.  One of the movies I hadn't seen was What's Eating Gilbert Grape.  The movie was disturbing in many ways, but there was one scene that has haunted me ever since.  I couldn't sleep at all the night that we watched it.

SPOILER ALERT - I have to talk about a key part of the movie to explain what was so disturbing to me, but I won't give away the ending.

Leonardo DiCaprio did an amazing job of portraying Arnie, a young man with mental disabilities.  It was never really explained what exactly his disabilities were but he was very convincing and very much like Haley.  It fell to his big brother Gilbert played by Johnny Depp to take care of him.  He did a pretty good job considering he was only a kid himself, but Arnie was occasionally left on his own to run the streets of Endora, Iowa.  His favorite pastime was climbing the little town's water tower.

The scene that haunts me had to do with Arnie's bath.  Gilbert had the responsibility of giving Arnie his bath, but he wanted to see his girlfriend so he told Arnie where his towel and his robe were and he left.  Now being a Mom to a child with disabilities it didn't take me too long to see how this was going to go.  It was still really upsetting to see that after being out all night, Gilbert returned home and fell asleep and then he awoke in the morning to find Arnie still sitting in the bathtub, shivering.

It really hit home for me.  I would never leave Haley in that situation.  I never even leave the room when she is in the tub, but I can imagine that if I wasn't there to tell her to get out or to help her get out that she would also sit in the water until it was cold.

So the next time Haley took a bath I began to teach her how to get in the tub by herself and how to get out by herself.  I have also started teaching her to pour the water on her hair.  I try to get her to feel the top of her head so that she knows if all of her hair is wet or not. 

These little things that come so easy to us, that we take for granted, these are the things that Haley needs to learn.  These are the things that I have to teach her.

Just Add Water

Haley has loved water since her very first bath.  She didn't like being naked that first time, but when she was put in the water she relaxed and I could just tell she really loved it.  I don't have to ask her twice when it is time for a bath.  I just say "Bathtime" and she is up and ready.

When Haley was in preschool they had a water table.  Haley loved that thing.  She would splash and soak herself and anyone within a three foot radius.  I had to pack extra clothes, besides the extra clothes they had already asked for.  They also had a bubble table which amounted to the same thing.

No standing water was safe.  Grandma's "pond" (which was a galvanized bucket with plants and fish), the sink full of soapy water, or just a pot filled with water to soak, the gold panning table at a silver mine in Idaho.  Haley splashes.

We have always had wading pools during the summer.  Haley just goes nuts in those things.  Big Sis tries to "swim" with her, but sometimes she can't even handle it.

Haley loves to swim, but to her it is just another opportunity to splash.  When she was little we would go swimming and I would hold her.  She held on for dear life with one hand and splashed with all her strength with the other.  It was exausting (for me.)  I got her a full flotation swimsuit in the hopes that I wouldn't have to hold on to her and that helped but it took her a while to feel comfortable in it.  When she got tall enough to stand at the deep end she could still hold on to the side of the pool with one hand and splash with the other.

Haley has had swimming lessons.  God bless the sweet girl that taught her, it was quite a challenge.  I don't expect her to ever actually swim, but we tried.  The lessons were in preparation for a trip to Arizona where we knew we would have many opportunities to swim.  She actually did finally let go of the edge during that vacation after the third day of swimming.  I still am near her in the water or on the edge ready to jump in at all times.  The real issue is actually getting too close.  The splashing is still incredible and the longer and stronger her arms get the bigger the diameter of the splash zone.

Haley gets to go swimming with her class once a month.  Yesterday was a swimming day.  They send home a note that announces that the following day is swimming and asks us to pack a swimsuit, towel and lunch.  Haley looks so forward to this that she will now get her suit, towel and a plastic sack ready the moment she gets off the bus and put them in her backpack.  She then tells me to make her a lunch.  It takes me quite a while to get through to her that I will make her lunch in the morning like I always do.

I don't really know what goes on at the pool when she goes with the school.  I know they go in the city bus (Haley says "C Bus") and her helper has to dress her into her suit and back in to her clothes.  I am assuming someone gets in the water with her and I am sure she is only allowed in the shallow end, but I wonder how her classmates and teachers like the splashing.

Oh, and in case you are wondering.  Yes, she splashes in the bathtub.  I have to clean the entire room when she is done and sometimes I have to ask her to tone it down because some days I deal better with getting splashed then other days, but there is such joy in it for her I let her go.  We don't get to swim very often and bathtime is the only good splashing time she gets.