31 for 21 day 13

{{This post is dedicated to Mary E. and Wendy B.}}

There is one name in our home that is like magic.

Would you like to know what it is?

Can you even guess?

It's pretty serious.

Justin Bieber.

 Yes, we even have the movie, Never Say Never.

It is not watched on a daily basis. It is only watched every once in a while. I can't do more obsessions in this house. But I will say, it's a pretty good movie the first couple of times. After that, well....

Now let me jump to another discussion and I will yet again tie it all together.

Drying hair.

Several months ago, my friend called and I had to call her back, which I did, but it was about 45 minutes later. "What were you doing?" she asked. So, I told her-it was a "help Brenna get cleaned up night." Which entails making sure her hair is SCRUBBED, the shaving of legs, nail cutting and drying her hair. (Now, Brenna does a good deal of this-supervised. She washes her hair by herself, but I do need to check once in a while, due to her wonderful skin...) 

There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. "Hello?" I said. My friend's reply was this: "You still dry her hair?" "You have to do all that? How is it I never knew that? Sometimes you tell me things that I have no idea you have to do so much and it just surprises me." 

All I heard was, "You still dry her hair?" 

This conversation led me to call my friend ,who also has a daughter with Down Syndrome, and ask if I'm doing too much. To ask if she thought Brenna should be more self sufficient by now. Like drying her own hair. Thankfully, my friend talked me off my cliff by telling me that her daughter-who is 21 still needs help every once in a while getting all of her hair dry, and not to worry about it. She also told me if it was something we wanted to work on, to get a small, travel sized dryer and work on it over the summer. Small steps.

Back to Justin Bieber.

This is where this all makes sense.

So, Brenna and I were making cookies for the bake sale at school and we were watching Justin Bieber music videos at the same time. (We had a lot of cookies to make.)

Afterward, it was time to shower, etc. and when Brenna was finished she called to me, asking if I would dry her hair. I went upstairs, and as we got the dryer out, she asked if SHE could dry her hair.

"uhhh. Yeah. Sure. If you like." was my intelligent reply.

And so she did.

And I stood back and watched and marveled at my child, wondering where this had come from. Because did I get the small travel dryer and work on this over the summer? Nah. Brenna has pool hair almost every day and doesn't really like her hair dried after swimming and a shower as it's just too hot.

While Brenna was drying her hair she said to me, "Mom. I am drying my hair just like Justin Bieber."

HUH?

"Yep. Mom. Remember in the movie when he dries his hair?"

Uhhh...

"He does Mom. Do you think Justin Bieber would be proud of me for drying my hair by myself?"

At this point, I snapped to and was able to give a decent reply.

"Yes. Absolutely. Justin Bieber would be very proud of you."

And so she finished drying her hair, and, like a goof, I took pictures.

She dried it until she deemed it done, let me brush it, dried it a bit more and put the hair dryer away.

And it was a good day.

xo

lynn