O Mother, Where Art Thou?

Whoop-de do, I’ve got my laptop back. Mamma got a brand new mother-board!

Anyway, Lady and Thomas have spent the last hour playing on the new BBC Jam site and really enjoying it!

So what’s been happening; well, we’ve all got colds. Duncan isn’t so badly affected, though I have had to wash his school jumper every day; snail trails on the sleeves! I’ve had a bit of a headache which has left me whining and grumping even more than usual about the VOLUME of children’s noises in our house. Though to be honest I am far too loud myself, having a propensity to shout. It comes from growing up in a loud house with lots of noisy siblings, well that’s my excuse!

Duncan left his new train on the bus yesterday after school and was ‘SAD and GRUMPY!!’ So I joined him in a good old stomping and crying session and then showed off my superior parenting skills by distracting him from his agony (and to him, it was) by offering him some sweets. I had a big bag of Haribo jellies so I put a few into bowls for each child and hid the rest in a plastic bag so I could show Duncan the empty sweet wrapper as ‘proof’ that they were finished. If I just tell him the sweets are finished, because I don’t want him to have any more, he looks in the bin and if he doesn’t see the wrapper, he knows I’m lying and demands more.

I got the DLA forms a few days ago; it’s time to make a new claim for Duncan. Filling them in 1st time round was a depressing experience ‘cause you have to focus on all the negatives in your child’s life. But I don’t think it’ll be so bad this time. I’m less stressed out in general now and will be able to state the difficulties and differences between Duncan and a typical 5 yo without feeling bad about it. Some of things we do are different, but that’s it. It’s how you choose to present it. So, on the DLA form I will bemoan the fact that my son has to wear nappies at night, while to myself I will celebrate the fact that he is completely continent during the day. I will complain that he takes ages to fall asleep and needs a lot of time every night, to myself I will celebrate our shared enjoyment of stories, especially since he has only started to enjoy being read to very recently. I will tell how I have to carry him on my back every morning when we go out to meet his school bus, but to be honest, it’s nice to have that little bit of closeness before those hours of separation. There are some things I just can’t put a positive spin on, and there’s no doubting he is entitled to this money. I just refuse to let it make me feel bad when I examine our lives for all the little things that take longer to do or the big things that we just can’t do…

YET!