When Mom and Dad Were Away

My daughter has been working on a book at school.   She worked with her VI teacher to create a story, type it up on the braille writer—pressing hard so she gets a good impression for each character—and then illustrate the story.  I think my daughter could write stories all day at school.   She enjoys writing about real life experiences as well as making up stories.

In the case of her VI class, she also gets to illustrate the story.   This story was about what happened during the time my husband and I went to Las Vegas to run in a half marathon race.  This is the first page of the book:



The, “illustrations” are pretty impressive if you ask me.  I’ve been to Michaels and the scrapbooking section gets more and more extravagant.    My daughter knows exactly what each of those stickers represents.   She thought dad wore a sweatband maybe and it turned out he did, on one wrist, because I found a pink TMobile one and told him he should wear it just in case.   He wears sunglasses any time during daylight hours outside and I have been known to wear a hat.   Those shoes are the best though, with real lacing on the side.  

The thing is, she knows what each feels like, not what it looks like.   She knows that feeling shape represents sunglasses.   But look at the shape of the tennis visor: it as a blob, with no color or shading, doesn’t look anything at all like a hat.   My daughter has to take it on faith that that particular shape in that specific instance represents a hat someone might wear when running.

She remembered all the additions she put in her book.   She talked about the cake she made with Nana and had a page with marshmallow and sprinkle stickers as she talked about decorating the cake.   She had some ice cream representation stickers for the page where she talked about her friends coming over to eat the cake.   She even made herself some playing cards to represent the Old Maid playing cards Aunt Rebecca, Uncle Dale and Olivia had sent to her.   She talked about playing Old Maid with Nana.    She told me they didn’t have good stickers for that so she had to make her own.

And of course there were several pages dedicated to the dog including dog bones and dog toys.   She ended the book with, “We had fun with my dog and me.  Have a grate day.”

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been a lot calmer and honestly more mature lately.   Or so it seems to me.   I feel like I’m talking to a child that’s suddenly several years older.   He still has his moments, but there is some maturity coming out in him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has said to me twice recently, “…and is that why God made me blind?”  She’s said it in the context of discussion that this isn’t a positive thing, it’s a negative thing that God “did to her”.  This has distressed me because we have never presented her blindness to her in that light.   I don’t know if it’s children from school or where it’s coming from but I did what I could to explain things in a more positive light.   Her blindness is hard for her, I hate for her to think it was a punishment from God.