It’s fairly common knowledge that Sara learns differently than your average bear.  You can label it if you’d like (and we’ve done so with many professionals on more than one occasion), but that label will do nothing to encompass the aura known simply as…SARA.  And to be fair, there isn’t really a good way to describe a 5 year old who can fully discuss the funding of Public Works Projects, but barely acknowledges the alphabet.  She can make an exhaustive list of creatures possessing DNA, the 4 main elements found in most living things, and give you a checklist of what makes a vertebrate.  BUT, Sara struggles to write numbers, and cannot yet recognize numbers past 10 (she is not dyslexic…stubborn, yes, but that’s about it).  I write these words tonight, because I need to say them.  I need them to be real, because they are, and I need to get back into the Sara-School-Groove, where we learn the world inside-out, which is how she assembles puzzles, and how she spells, doing it entirely left-handed, as if we didn’t have enough twists and turns…

To start her Rainbow Lorikeet project for school, she insisted on painting it first….I love so much about this child.

I also need to write these words, because someday, Sara might give birth to a Sara, Part II.  I might be too senile to remember these stories.  I might be gone…to TAHITI…keep it light! I want to record a map for her here, in case she should ever need it while parenting LUCY, or ANASTASIA, or PARKER (PLEASE use my names Sweetheart…you’re Daddy put his foot down on my wack-a-loon plans and named you and Kelly).

Sara remains fascinated by conifers, and swears if she had a million dollars, she’d do nothing but buy fir trees.

I will say that no kid on earth has a stronger work ethic than Sara.  No matter how much a problem smacks her down, she will come back at it again and again, until she claims victory.  It’s a sight to see.  Not always pretty, but usually triumphant in the end, and very challenging if you are the coach in the seat next to her.

Tonight, we’ve seen some small victories, which has given me the umspah to write about a topic around which I do a lot of skipping, but never directly discussing.  Sara can now recognize 5 words after weeks of practice, and knows most of her letter sounds.  She was able to do a small math worksheet independently, and is finally starting to conceive of patterns (which are the bane of existence to a Sara-style brain…repeatability ain’t her bag baby).  While volunteering in her math class yesterday, after a very trying hour with her, the teacher started patting her legs and clapping her hands to an A-A-B pattern (tap-tap-clap, tap-tap-clap). The class quickly chimed in, happily tapping their thighs and clapping their hands.  Sara crossed her arms and scowled.  If I had a nickel folks…

I put my arm around her until they finished, secretly thankful the hour of pencil gripping and hair chewing was over, and Sara looked up at and whispered quite tensely,

Sara: Mommy, that wasn’t tap-tap-clap AT ALL.

Mommy: Well honey, what do you think it was?

Sara: BOOM BOOM POW Mommy.  They were doing a BOOM BOOM POW pattern.  That was the Black Eyed Peas.

[insert laughter and a relaxing facial expression from Mommy]

She wasn’t wrong.  Tap-tap-clap is the exact beat of “Boom Boom Pow”.  She’s rarely wrong; she is simply correct in a very Sara-esque sort of way.  She just needs me (and thank God her teachers, who completely understand her) to draw the lines for her between how she sees the world, and how the rest of us view it.  There are parts of her life in which this attribute will be celebrated (hopefully with a Nobel, and not a late night call from the FBI).  There are parts of her life where this will be something to overcome.  Like, say, in Kindergarten Math Class, where one must learn to count in evens, EVEN if that predictability drives her nuts.

So Sara, know this…I love you AS YOU ARE.  I would never change you.  I will sit with you at the dining room table with funky games and worksheets every single night, until eternity rises and sets, if it will help.  I loved school, and I love sitting with you in the late afternoons, thinking of creative ways to think about addition and the phonetic insanity of “sh” and “th”. You are perfectly amazing in your uniqueness, and while the package deal is sometimes exhausting, it is equally thrilling and unexpectedly fun.  Your work ethic is awesome beyond words.  You are kind and generous and social and sincerely sweet to your core.  Loving and knowing you has made me who I am.

Now…back to it…ELEVEN.  11.  There’s a 1, and there’s a 1.  No, those aren’t hash marks counting out 2.  Nope, not xylophone hammers either.  And while you’re asking, they are not sticks, lines for a road, or edges to a square.  ELEVEN.  Count it out with me honey….