This asthma kid of mine, what a schedule she’s been keeping lately.
Last week, 2-hour dress rehearsals for her school play, Willy Wonka, Jr., with a midweek volleyball practice thrown in the mix, too. Thursday, she sang in the chorus for the understudies’ night performance, and Friday night she was Veruca Salt:
And I mean, she was Veruca. She’s always been a natural performer and she looked fearless as she stomped around the stage throwing mini-Veruca tantrums in a British accent. And talk about loud? Kid can project. Here she is singing her solo:
Yes, we shot video, but technical difficulties set in. Trust me, the whole play was hilarious and wonderful. Look how she glowed afterwards:
How gorgeous is this kid?
We finally dragged the girls away from their friends and the cast party that night, and everybody went to bed late. Saturday brought two back-to-back volleyball games and a family dinner, followed by the usual 2-hour volleyball clinic on Sunday.
And on the seventh day, she rested.
Seriously.
A long time ago, I realized one of the best ways to help my kid stay as active as she wanted but still maintain her health was to make the conscious effort to schedule some downtime into her life. It’s counter-intuitive, to plan to rest, but you do what you gotta. When she was a toddler and a little kid, that meant naptime. Kids will just play and play and play until they collapse, and that didn’t always work out for my daughter. Fatigue is one of her triggers and it often hits her all at once, and she’ll get sick or start flaring because her defenses are down.
So this past Sunday afternoon was for books and video games and movies, and this morning she woke up bright and healthy for school. Making sure she has time to relax doesn’t always work, but this time it did.
GO AG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yay AG!
Way to go, AG! You go, girl!
Wow! That looks like a really good production!
Go AG!
I think the girls’ chorus teacher – who’s retiring this year – is a glutton for punishment. She teaches at this school and another one, yet she ran morning and afternoon practices since January, in addition to her regular music classes during the day.
I wish there was video….she looks great. Glad the planned rest time worked out.
Gorgeous pics!! Looks like so much fun, go AG!
I also need scheduled rest among the busy times, or I get run down and fatigued and inevitably start flaring and/or get sick. It’s like magic or something (sarcasm). But purposeful downtime helps tremendously.
Yay AG! Looks like fun.
I’ve started wondering if part of why I’ve been flaring so much at school might be because I tend to get less sleep there than I do at home, but I didn’t know (till now) if exhaustion could really trigger it. Hmm….
Danielle & MC – It’s interesting, how I figured this out. When she was very little and we’d planned to go somewhere, occasionally she’d say, “No, I don’t want to go” but for no reason. Which was unusual for her, my uber-social and agreeable kid. Without fail, if I took her anyway – to the park, the store, whatever – she’d end up flaring. When I finally figured it out, I realized she wasn’t old enough to articulate why she didn’t want to go, and I started paying more attention to the times she seemed to need more rest.