Braiding Hair

Imani's piano recital was lovely yesterday, and thankfully it was only about 35 minutes. Imani is a great pianist and seems to really love it. Right before it started, Akila was beginning to lose it! The recital was at 3:00 and this is typically the time when Akila will start to fall apart if she is going to (miraculously, she doesn't every day- there are blessings everywhere). She made it through the recital while bouncing on Michael's lap, I thought the pew might break. During the refreshment time afterward, she was totally hyper and not listening. We were suppose to leave it to go out for Hezekiah's birthday dinner, at Olive Garden, his choice. The entire car ride, I was saying to Michael that I thought maybe Akila and I should go home as she was obviously losing it. He said, no we will do this as a family and I will just take her out to the van if need be. Well, I'm glad he decided that. It was a rough meal, she went to the van only once, but was close several more times.

After getting home, I was able to spend nearly 3 hours coming weave out of Imani's hair. My back was aching big time by the finish of that project. Now I just spent 2 hours braiding it tonight (my children are African American so it takes awhile to do their hair-especially since I am not and have had to learn how to do their hair, and am not very fast. The good thing is you don't have to do it for about 2 weeks). Of course as I was just about finished with Imani's hair, Akila came upstairs and started throwing a fit wanting me to do new braids for her (I did hers last weekend). I explained that wouldn't work but that we would next weekend That was not good enough. Crying fits followed which I tried to head off. I took a break from braiding and tried to distract her, but there was no going there. So I finished braiding Imani's hair with the volume turned up on the TV so we could hear it over the screams. One of the hardest things for me in dealing with Akila is in watching my non-affected kids have to put up with so much junk. It is amazing how patient they are and how they rarely hold grudges. I am sometimes still mad and turn and they are playing with her after she just smacked them really hard. They all 4 teach me so much.