Busyknitter

Older son has been invited to a sleepover next weekend. First one since he moved to secondary school. This is all good stuff as it’s concrete evidence that he’s settling and making friends (not always obvious with S as he’s usually quite a homebody at weekends)

His friend’s house is right over the other side of town so I’ll have to drive him there. Thinking ahead, I asked whether he would mind T being with us when I drop him off. “Of course I wouldn’t mind Mum, why should I mind?” “Well, I thought you might be embarrased for your friends who don’t already know T to see him”. [S puts on shocked tone of voice] “I’d never be embarrassed about T, Mum. In fact, I’d be really cross if anyone suggested I should be!! He can’t help being autistic.”

Sniff.

S (the dyspraxic one) came home from school today with his brand-new Alphasmart , which school has acquired for him. This is a laptop-style word processing machine, that he will be able to carry around with him, take notes in class and do his homework on. It can link into a printer or a PC via a USB and will revolutionise his ability to keep up with his classmates and produce legible work.

It’s very cool.

“I’m bored” I said. “Well, so am I, but January is boring”. Weather’s crap, nothing to do, nowhere to go, especially not with T in tow.

But today was actually a nice day, dry, sunny and not too cold. So after church we drove out to the Forest of Bowland (Lancashire’s secret -you can keep your Lake District and your Yorkshire Dales) T loves going out for country drives and S is happy if he has a book to read in the car and the prospect of a treat along the way. We parked up at the Trough of Bowland wandered about a bit. And came home.

Quite nice really. For January.

I have after 40-odd years got to grips with the fact that that some people really don’t like Marmite (their loss I say).

But over the past few weeks I’ve encountered quite a few folks (marmite lovers and marmite haters in equal measure) who have actually never even heard of the world-beating combination that is the cheese and marmite sandwich. How could they have lived in ignorance for so long? It’s as classic as Cheese and pickle, peanut butter and jam, egg and cress.

Haven’t had much time to blog lately. New job kind of taking up quite a lot of time and energy. Kids have been ill and that has been a drag. But the main thing has been………………………………Mr BK bought the complete DVD boxed set of Buffy and we are finally getting to watch Season 7. Last night we were very good and only watched 2 episodes, but some nights we have sat down and gone through 5 in a row.

Final 2 episodes this evening

Well, my little boy is 4 today and he really hasn’t had a very good time. The autism ain’t the problem. He would have had lots of treats at nursery this morning and a fun outing to the swimming pool this evening. A couple of days ago, he would have gone to his first session of a new trampolining club for autistic children that has started locally. But today is his fifth day of a flu virus. Since Friday, he has slept about 20 hours in every 24 and he’s hardly eaten.

He was a little better this evening and perked up enough to enjoy a chorus of “Happy Birthday”. We gave him a battenburg cake with four candles, but of course we had to blow them out for him. That wasn’t the flu, that was the autism.

So Happy Birthday, my beautiful cuddly little man. And I hope you feel much better very soon

In the swimming pool changing room with T this afternoon. Bohemian Rhapsody comes on the piped radio. Me, I’m happily singing along as I get dry (Galileo GALILEO Galileo……….) All of a sudden, T starts up a meltdown and is completely inconsolable. And once the track had finished, he calmed down again!