i've got something in my pocket...it belongs across my face...

those lines seem sinister when taken out of context.

anyway today wasn't very excited or insightful.  we woke up late for school and both kids were cranky and uncooperative and just generally crappy all morning.  bea's been taking stanford testing all week so i want to make sure she has a good night's sleep and a good breakfast...i'm lucky she got to school with shoes on.  she keeps getting lost in books.  specially, three books that she reads over and over and over and over again.  it feels weird to fuss at her for reading but she gets so focused on it that she has trouble doing anything else.  she will just stand there and read.  there can be activity all around but she's just...standing there and reading.  i don't know how to balance read=good with read=good sometimes and bad others.

at home i tried to get her to do homework which she did and did quite well.  she wanted to write a book which usually entails folding a hundred pieces of paper into book form, writing one page and abandoning forever.  after page one she got up to go play and i told her that she needed to finish.  i removed most of the pages and left her with a total of 7 back to back and told her to just manage those.  she wrote a great book with a few pages of a story and then illustrations.  it took a few reminders to stay on task but what she finished was finished.  she was proud of it and brought it to girl scouts to show her friends and i think she is starting to maybe find of sort possibly grasp the benefits of completing a task  maybe. 

otherwise we went to girl scouts where bea is decidedly NOT the shy thing who started the year but is the sort of obnoxious, loud, farts-are-funny girl.  she has a hard time staying on task but right now i'm choosing to celebrate the victory of her overcoming shyness to worry about fixing the behavior.  she wouldn't talk the first few meetings.  she would just sit in a corner and cry and i spend every meeting wondering what about this experience was drawing her back for more.  i'm glad we stuck with it and it is nice for bea to have a group of girls who are more or less forced to be friends with her. she has 12 girls that are bound by a code of scouty ethics to be nice to one another.  also i get to talk to other moms and bitch about our children and compare tattoos.  it isn't a bad life.

i haven't heard back from the special ed coordinator but i've asked bea about her tests and she reports that she finishes them, that she doesn't leave her seat without permission, and that she doesn't feel distracted.  so.  that. 

i leave you with excerts from today's novel: Angel the Squirrel.  I can't turn the images because i am lazy.  enjoy.

gimme an A...gimme an D...gimme and H...gimme another D

and what does that spell?  failure. failure to provide my daughter with the set of genes NOT predisposed to mental illness. 

a few months ago, at the urging of her pediatrican and teacher, i scheduled neuropsych testing for beatrice.  her doctor expected to see adhd at a minimum, i expected to see nothing except gifted and talented indicators, and her teacher probably expected to see unicorns because the man is insane and quite possibly legitimately mentally disabled. anyway i didn't really think anything would show up.  maybe some notes about beatrice being headstrong or cleverly manipulative but i wasn't prepared to hear was low processing speed. low learning ability. low visual -motor coordination. low cognitive flexibility. average general intellectual ability.  IQ - average. 

average.  low.  i know that i should be thankful that she has even that and a million other 'could be worse' scenarios but this isn't another scenario.  this is mine.  this is mine and mine to burden and mine to mourn. 

her full diagnosis is: adhd, mixed inattentive and hyperactive types; depression; anxiety with related somatic symptomatology.

i feel like things were just getting better.  bea had a ballet recital on saturday.  she danced on stage without a flutter of stage fright that anyone could see but me, but only because i know the way her eyes start to dart around the room and widen.  the way she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and furrows her brow.  but it was all in an instant and quickly forgotten by the immediate tasks of tap tap twirl jump twirl point point turn.  she left the stage proud of herself.  she left the stage having had fun.  and she left the stage not once considering that there should ever be any other to be than confident in front of others.

today she had swim lessons.  this is our third month and bea has gotten nowhere.  she can't focus long enough to accomplish anything and we switched instructors and...she swims.  she's learning the strokes and can do them in a close enough approximation of correctness that i knew she was doing the breaststroke from 25 yards away.  she listened and she focused and she saw what she could accomplish. 

we work every day on finishing what we start.  its an uphill and losing battle because we're all bad at it but i'm trying.  i'm trying to fix this thing that my body broke.  this thing that i don't want to be a thing.  this thing that i want to be a footnote in bea's life.  like 'oh, yeah - i have adhd and that's why my room is so clean and organized' not 'and that's why i take medication and can't cry an

ymore/sleep all day/hate you'.  i'm going to try and i'm going to try to fill in the gaps of her learning.  i can schedule her summer to include play play pool play play nap learn play learn pool.  if she is average, she can be average but i know she isn't.  any kid who writes letter in japanese - completely wrong, not even close to an actual japanese word - deserves some recognition.  she is creative.  she is boundless.  she has no idea yet that she is anything less than perfect and unfettered.  the whole is hers and i want to keep that moment there as long as i can.  and if i can't...i guess medication. 

but here i'll track my efforts and my successes and my failures and my fun.  today was a success.  we had a swim lesson, i taught bea how to cook eggs, pancakes, and sausages.  the full deal (though on the griddle).  she stirred and whipped and poured and burned and i have never seen a more unappealing meal in my life but it tasted great and she did it all by herself.  she likes the respsonsibility and i like giving it to her.

adding photos does not seem to be working now so, um, here are some words that are not as cute as photos but are lovely anyway.