friendship | Lessons from my daughter

I am trying to write once again! I miss it terribly but can’t force my brain to heal faster than is required.

I am also hoping to be able to do a full week of work soon, I miss being on top of my game.

I miss my healthy brain!

Enough about me!

Emily has had a desire to be a cheerleader for years. We have gym mats on the floor in her playroom. In her world, she is a cheerleader!

She has the high school musical cheerleader outfit. She has many pom poms.

Even her American Girl Dolls are cheerleaders.

We tried to put her in a team last summer. They wanted to accommodate her but had no idea how to do it. It didn’t work out. Emily was overwhelmed and the solution proposed was to put a 14 year old 5’5″ tall with the younger kids… Like that wouldn’t make her the center of attention.

We refused that option, Emily was disappointed but got over it. We all did.

This past summer, another cheerleading club took a couple of kids with special needs and practiced the basics of cheer. It went well!

My bestie’s daughter and Emily’s best friend was one of the coach. I got updates here and there about how it was going.

When they decided to open it up to more kids this fall, we decided to give it a try.

Currently, there is only 3 kids registered and 4 or 5 coaches…. That’s great. More kids would be more fun but right now, Emily is getting the attention she needs to learn basics and build self-confdence.

I have promised Emily a trip to Lululemon in Halifax if she keeps going! I know I am bribing her but this is some serious exercise for her! After 40 minutes, she wants to call it quit and after the hour, she is sweaty…. 🙂

As Emily is struggling with some basic things like jumping while holding her arms up in the air or basic summersaults… I am thinking about adding yoga to our life… yoga for kids, Emily and I could do it and daddy would help with Emily’s balance… slowly, it should help stretch Emily’s legs and build more balance!

If you can suggest any program, please let me know. Wii or Kinect games are not necessarily good because they ask the person playing to perform up to a certain standard otherwise you are “not good enough” which is really upsetting for Emily. Programs on DVD would be better!

More to come on this project and how Emily is doing!

But before I go, please enjoy this 5 seconds accomplishment from my amazing daughter!

I love this time of year.

Fall is beautiful, the leaves are turning all kinds of pretty red and yellow shades.

The weather is cool, sometime border line cold.

It’s perfect weather to be cooking up a feast.

It’s the perfect time to go apple picking.

My friend Lise is a photographer. She takes amazing pictures of things and places…. I am sure there is a word for that type of picture, I just don’t know. what it is. (Remember, my mother tongue is French, there are English words I still don’t know) Currently, she’s working on adding people to her repertoire so I offered up Emily as a subject :).

We were meeting at the Belliveau Orchard right after lunch today. It was my first visit there and Emily had been once before with school.

http://www.vergerbelliveauorchard.ca

We got there at 12:30

The apple picking season is short so this was a busy place today with a 22 Celsius weather.

It took us a good half hour to make it through the gate. We stood in line and watch the kids play on the hay bales.

Emily didn’t ask to go play with them. Too many kids and a whole lot of opportunities to get hurt. It’s amazing how I now see this… I guess that’s a perk of being a parent of a child with mobility challenges.

They have a corn maze there too but that didn’t attract us so off we went to pick some apple.

Emily was listening to Lise quite well.

This was our way in the orchard.

My beautiful daughter played the role of model really well for Lise.

I got to take some pictures too.

We even managed to convince Emily to lay down in the orchard. Now considering her lack of desire to even walk bare feet on grass… to have her accept to do this was quite an accomplishment.