The ocean waves crash, I don’t feel well this morning. The food situation has been difficult. I love vacations but with little kids vacations don’t feel like vacations. There are moments, like yesterday morning during our walk on the beach. It starts out all four of us, but Fiona immediately sits down on the sand. She wants to make a nest. We find rocks for birds. I draw little birds on each rock with a piece of burnt wood I use as charcoal. Fiona tells me to gather sticks for the nest as she makes a mound of sand. I gather the sticks. I set the nest up, but Fiona says, no that’s not how. She rearranges the nest in her own vision. Jack and Alan are no where to be seen. They don’t have very much patience for constant stops along the shore.

I don’t know how to move on from here, but I know I just will.

Yesterday afternoon Jack, Fiona, and I went in the pool that belongs to the condos we are staying in.

Goosebumps covered Fionas legs. Her lips purple. But she stayed in and swam. At first without the floaty. Later I made her put it on because she’s still very scared in the water.

I told Jack he could probably pass the swim test at the big pool. He does cannon balls over and over again. He’s a strong swimmer. He practices going under water and holding his breath as long as possible. He understands how to float.

When we first arrived at the pool I told both kids we needed to practice our sign language. Once I take off Fionas HA’s she has trouble understanding anything and yells super loud. At first she tries to be quiet, I use sign, she still talks, and gets louder and louder. Fiona wants me close to her the whole time we are in the pool. I try to explain I need to keep swimming, back and fourth to stay warm. I try to sign it many ways but she doesn’t quite understand.

Jack keeps doing cannon balls. As he climbs out of the pool his legs look more like a boys legs, not a toddler, not even a five year old, like he is. He rushes to the deep end ready to do a cannonball. Not a bit of hesitation in his face. I stop him and tell him to go to the middle part, the 4 and 1/2 feet part. Even though he probably would have been able to do it. I still get nervous with two kids at the pool while I’m alone.

I think the pool situation wore me out. The impatience of people in general, even people close to me, in contrast to the patience I’ve cultivated in myself.

To know that there are many situations where my daughter will need patience from others to communicate with her, to stop and make nests in the sand, to wait for her and make sure she knows whats going on when plans shift.

I think the difficult part for me to understand is that it took me so many years to cultivate this patience in myself. It took me years to learn to slow down and to take the time that needed to be taken with Fiona.

How can I expect teachers, students, and adults to have the same patience? People who have no training. When even the people closest to me do not have this.

I don’t know where to go from here.