Halfway There Day

Accept where you're at

My 10-year-old daughter Sophie is a big fan of the Disney show, Kiff. The eighth episode features a story about a July 2 holiday called Halfway There Day. The show describes it as a celebration of making it halfway through the year—day to put in 50 percent of the effort, while having 100 percent of the fun.

The main character, an elementary school-aged squirrel named Kiff, struggles to “half-heinie” anything, and risks pulling “a real Beverly” when it comes to her part of the dinner. A magical being called Centaur Claus eventually shows up to set the people straight about the whole point of the holiday. They choose to accept each other wherever they are at—whether they make a little effort or a big one —as long as nobody feels pressured either way.

It's supposed to be a pressure-free day.

If you know much about Sophie, this will not be a surprise, but she really wanted to celebrate our own Halfway There Day. She LOVES holidays, and honestly, I think they're how she copes with our life being different or more challenging (small?) from a lot of her classmates. Celebrating different holidays gives her something to look forward to.

Sophie's been talking about Halfway There Day all year, and especially once summer break began. I've been promising her that we can celebrate it.

Lately, Sophie's also on a Bluey kick, and one of her Christmas gifts was a Bluey cookbook. She's got four special kids cookbooks she loves to browse through and decided she wanted to make a LOT of recipes from her Bluey cookbook and a certain plant-based kids’ cookbook.

It was way too many recipes, like 30. I eventually got her to narrow it down to three. Last night we made a makeshift version of “Pavlova” inspired by the recipe in Sophie's cookbook, but using yogurt and frozen fruit. We had some for breakfast, and Sophie was very pleased.

When we got home from my physical therapy appointment today, she set to work making her Bluey “BBQ” Salad. (All of the cookbook’s recipes correspond to various Bluey episodes.

Tonight, she's going to freeze grape juice in popsicle molds for “Ice blocks.” It's another Bluey thing.

While our first Halfway There Day is nowhere near as big as she originally intended (thirty recipes!!!), Sophie has enjoyed the holiday so far. And it's certainly fit in with the whole theme of accepting a low-pressure effort.

Actually, this is a holiday I could get behind, too. I needed a break.

I'm feeling pretty sore and tired from my physical therapy sessions and companion home exercise program to strengthen my knees. I don't usually have back-to-back PT sessions in the clinic, but I went in today and will go back tomorrow because they're closed Thursday through the weekend for the fourth of July.

It took all day Monday for me to recover from Sunday's PT session, so I'm a little nervous about how well I'm going to manage in PT tomorrow. Today, certain exercises were more difficult than usual, just because of some muscle fatigue, but that's all to be expected.

Building up strength with my injuries and illness is definitely not a low-effort endeavor, but I'm looking forward to seeing the results.