A little more control, please . . .

We learned today that Mia Ruth's episodes of "shutting down" emotionally are probably brought on by a feeling of being out of control. Though the situations that have triggered this seemed to us to be so varied, after we talked about it we realized that they did indeed have one thing - loss of control - in common --- from being told she can't wear those clips because they don't match her outfit, to being told she has to eat her veggies, to Claire buckling her seatbelt for her. So we're going to try to give her more choices. It seemed to work today. We had a couple of close calls, where she started to go down, but she pulled back out when she was given a choice - even a small one. This is going to be hard for me, because I'm quite the controlling person. Please pray for us.

Here are some pics of Mia Ruth helping water some flowers I just planted this evening. She is really a good helper. She gathered up all of the little plastic pots as I tossed them into the yard --- and we practiced a lot of "Gracias --- De Nada"s and "Thank you --- You're welcome"s while we were at it. She was so excited to get to water.