Stuff and Nonsense

Chickenpox

2009-06-04T12:37:00.004Z

I think we got off lightly with Jacob - he had a couple of days of feeling under the weather and one afternoon of being sick with a very high temperature - but by and large, he came through it ok. Sam, on the other hand, is really suffering with it. I took this photo on the second day when the spots were largely confined to his head and neck and it wasn't too bad:-

but by Wednesday morning he'd got more on his face/neck and they'd spread to his torso and legs - he was absolutely covered. The blisters have pretty much all scabbed over, apart from a few on his legs, but they're proving quite sore; he can't sit down comfortably because of ones round his groin and bumhole, and because he's a mass of sores round his armpits and shoulders, its difficult to pick him up without hurting him. This photo gives you an approximation of how he's feeling right at this moment:-

Hopefully the sores will heal up quickly so he's able to move around as per usual, and get back to Playgroup next week.

Someone remind me again why we don't immunise against this?

Thomas Part Two

2009-05-26T08:17:00.002Z

About 2 or 3 years ago, Jacob was mad keen on Thomas the Tank Engine but, as with most things in Jacob's life, he went off it completely after a while. So by the time Sam was able to take notice of such things, Jacob had moved on to Spiderman, Batman, Transformers, Ben 10 et al, and for a while Sam was happy to watch these programmes, play with the toys and wear the clothes/dressing up outfits. Which was ok (ie it led to less arguments about what was on the tv etc), but I couldn't help feeling that Sam was missing out a bit on the stuff that was more suitable for his age.

Anyway, on Sam's third birthday, he was bought a couple of Take-along-Thomas toys and some train track; my initial reaction was that Sam wasn't going to be interested in them - after all, we've got a box full of Thomas stuff from the first time around, and on the rare occasions I'd managed to wrest the remote control away from Jacob, he'd shown no interest in watching the tv programme. However, something must have sparked within him, because now Sam is a fully paid up member of the Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Club. And as such, a visit to the Thomas Day Out at the Bolton Abbey/Embsay Steam Railway was a must for a Bank Holiday Saturday.

Here he is driving the train:-

With Bertie the Bus:-

And showing a great desire to have his photo taken with Daddy and another of the tank engines (note that lip making a guest appearance):-

He's also (courtesy of the books) a great fan of the Mr Men and his favourite item of clothing is a Mr Tickle top. He also has Mr Happy Adidas trainers (don't blame me, I didn't buy them for him), Mr Bump and Mr Happy t-shirts, a Mr Happy umbrella and Mr Men underpants. He has also developed his own sign language for the various Mr Men, and is making a very good stab at actually saying their names too.

And I'm just happy that he's coming out from under Jacob's shadow and developing his own tastes and interests. Even if it does make for more arguments over the tv remote ;)

Monkeys!!

2009-05-26T08:04:00.005Z

These two pictures just about sum up Jacob and Sam at the moment:-

and:-

He can get that lip out by well over an inch, its quite an achievement.

But most of the time, they are just both cheeky monkeys par excellence:-

5 Today

2009-05-21T09:02:00.003Z

Where did the time go? It doesn't seem five minutes since Jacob looked like this:-

And now he looks like this:-

(that's not actually taken today, he's got chickenpox and is covered in spots, so no photos atm, I think)

Mummy in Stereo

2009-05-01T14:56:00.002Z

Sam has now mastered "mummy", so when I'm in the kitchen and he comes up behind me saying "mummy, mummy", I honestly don't know which child it is until I turn round. Which is nice. However, now I have two of them going "mummy, mummy" every moment of the day - arghhh!!

Jacob has also taught Sam to say "bum".

*sigh*

Next!!

2009-04-24T08:38:00.002Z

Just a little moan about my increasing irritation with Next kids clothes. IMO, Next seem to do the best character clothes for boys, so you can buy clothes with Star Wars, Mario, Ben 10 etc etc on them, which all parents of boys will know is absolutely de rigeur for your young man-about-town.

However, when it comes to pyjamas and swimwear, they seem to have a very odd sizing policy; they sell stuff in the 3-4 year size and then 5-6 year, but nothing in the 4-5 year size. This, to me, is really odd as there's a 14 cm size gap between clothes for a 4 year old (up to 104cm) and a 6 year old (118cm). If, like Jacob, you're on the small side and only just growing out of your age 4 clothes, it means that you're going to be wearing clothes that are massively too big for you. Next's kids' clothes tend to be generous in their sizing too, which will make it worse.

I don't know if its because they think swimming trunks and pyjamas don't matter - the first ones just get wet and the second you wear in bed - but I still don't think that's a good enough reason for wearing too big/small clothes.

I've just bought a couple of pairs of swimming shorts for Jacob and I've opted for the smaller size - I'm hoping that Next's generous sizing will mean he can still fit into them, but I'm not convinced at all. I can't decide whether to send them back and take a punt on the bigger size or just spend some time on the interweb looking for something similar.

Bah.

School Photo

2009-04-22T09:00:00.002Z

He looks so grown up in this picture; where did the time go? :)

Progress

2009-04-05T20:59:00.003Z

Sam has words!! Three of them!!

No (he's good at this, says it a lot)
Nana (when he wants a banana)
Loon (balloon, like the one Jacob brought back from the birthday party this arvo)

Progress!

Silent Sam

2009-03-25T12:54:00.002Z

Sam had his appointment up at York Hospital this morning; the consultant concluded that he does have verbal dyspraxia, but is showing no other signs of dyspraxia; in fact, his fine motor control is excellent. He did well on all the tests that she put him through, performing to age 3 standard in some of them, and to age 4 in the rest; this confirmed what Doug and I already knew - that Sam might not talk, but he's all there with his lemondrops and then some :)

So he doesn't need to see the consultant in clinic again; it can be managed through Speech Therapy and liaising with the Child Development Unit - basically, what we've doing since last July. His speech is at age 15 months standard, so he's got quite a lot of catching up to do, but just having made our concerns known at an early stage means that we're ahead of the game when it comes to getting it treated.

Onward and upward.

As he's just won an Oscar, I'll tell you my Danny Boyle story

2009-02-23T09:40:00.002Z

Many moons ago (probably 1993, iirc), I was working in Woodstock Grove, one of the BBC's many little buildings in the heart of Shepherd's Bush. Our building was just across from another BBC building, separated only by a 10ft wide delivery road and the windows of our office looked directly into the windows of the editing suites across the way.

Being editing suites, they were occupied on a fairly random basis and so we barely paid any attention to any of the people in there - until one fine day, Danny Boyle moved in to edit a TV programme he'd directed for the beeb. Of course, this was before he was even a twinkle in Film 4's eye, so we had no idea who he was; however, one of my colleagues took quite a shine to him.

Cue some of the silliest behaviour ever witnessed outside the school playground in her attempts to get his attention and find out who he was; unfortunately for me, my desk wasn't by a window and I wasn't visible from the editing suite, so I was the one coerced into ringing the suite in order to elicit information from whoever answered the phone. All the time I was making these increasingly silly phone calls and Danny Boyle and his production team would look across to our office trying to work out if it was us or not calling them, Jayne would sit there, looking nonchalant and seemingly unaware, while hissing at other colleagues "is he looking at me?". I don't think I ever used the phrase "my mate fancies you" when I spoke to him, but it wasn't far off.

Luckily for us, he and his team obviously thought this was great fun, and as Jayne looked like a cross between Louise Brooks and Cleopatra, Danny's interest was obviously piqued. After a few weeks of silly behaviour, he bumped into Jayne in the teabar and asked her out to lunch; she kept this a secret from her colleagues until after the fact - v wisely, as after all our shenanigans on her behalf, we'd probably have gone along to Pizza Express and heckled her across the room.

And the outcome of all this? Probably luckily for Jayne, absolutely nothing - years later when he did become famous with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, I read an article about him which said he'd been in a relationship for some time and had kids. After that one lunch, Jayne heard nothing from him at all; they finished editing pretty much the day after their date and that was the last we saw of him.

And the reason? Well, of course there could be any number of reasons why he didn't follow it up, but I think that what he discovered during that lunch was that although she looked like Louise Brooks, Jayne sounded like Barbara Winsor and had the intellect of Jade Goody. When I asked her what they talked about, she answered "ooh, I said "that bloke you work with, he ain't half fucking fat, innhe?" and stuff like that". I'm not surprised she didn't get a dessert :)

Who is that Masked Man?

2009-02-02T19:57:00.002Z

Funky Moose

2009-01-07T10:10:00.003Z

I was looking for some new metal cutlery for the kids when I found this lovely website. I am particularly impressed by the Barbapapa plates and cups as I absolutely loved Barbapapa when I was a kid.

Luckily, for my bank balance, I'm not planning on buying them - the boys have never read the Barbapapa books so the plates would be totally lost on them. Maybe next stop should be Amazon to see if I can still get the books!

Family Learning

2009-01-05T13:26:00.002Z

I rang up the Family Learning Co-ordinator this morning to explain why I wouldn't be attending the course she'd talked me into signing up for.

Me: "I'm only interested in looking at phonics and how children learn to read, but from the literature you've sent me, the majority of this course is aimed at improving literacy skills. And I'm not interested in that."
FLC: "Well, yes, part of the course is about phonics, and the rest of the course is to ensure that you won't lag behind your kids with your reading skills which is very important."
Me: "I don't think there's any danger of that".
FLC: "And you get a recognised qualification after doing the course".
Me: "I have a recognised qualification in English already".
FLC: "But this one is recognised by employers when you go back to work."
Me: "So is mine. And I'm not going back to work".
FLC: "So why exactly do you want to do the course?"
Me: "I don't, you rang me up and wouldn't get off the phone until I said I'd think about it. And then you sent me some paperwork in the post to say you'd booked me on it."
FLC: "So why don't you want to do the course?"
Me (banging head on counter-top at this point): "Because its called "Keeping up with your kids in English". I've got a degree in English, I really really don't need to go on a course to improve my literacy skills. I'd quite like to go on one that looks at how kids learn to read and how phonics are used".
FLC: "Well we're just about to start a course that looks at that. It's called "Keeping up with your kids in English".
Me: "Goodbye"

Sheesh.

That Was The Year That Was

2008-12-31T07:25:00.007Z

Well, bye bye to 2008.

I have to say that it was a rather nothingy year, on a personal front. In 2006 I could say "I had my second child, I moved to York", in 2007 I could say "I passed my driving test on the first go", but this year I'm hard pressed to say anything about myself. I hit the big 4-0, of course, but all I had to do for that was stay alive until July 9th - hardly an accomplishment. This year, it seems, I have been channelling all my energy into the kids; no bad thing, but I think I should probably do something on a personal level before my brain atrophies even further.

I've reluctantly agreed to attend a "how your children learn to read" course at the Family Centre that's supposed to last two terms, but I have a sneaking suspicion from reading the blurb that its less about phonics for children and more about giving the course attendees a qualification in English where they don't have a GCSE.

Anyway, something to ponder over the next few weeks; in the meanwhile, I'm concentrating on the big event of 2009 - Jacob's first day at school. How time flies; one minute you're changing their nappies and giving them bottles, the next you're buying them a PE kit and sewing name-tags into their uniform :)

More Sam

2008-12-18T11:09:00.002Z

We've been seeing the Speech Therapist since the summer, and we're currently seeing her on a weekly basis. Sam is making some progress, but he seems to have particular problems making vowel sounds, as opposed to consonant sounds which he can make (with a little effort and concentration). However, she has recommended that Sam be referred to either a Paediatrician or ENT specialist to look into his grunting (his defacto form of communication).

Having discounted autism and speech apraxia (for now) as the reason he isn't speaking, I feel that she's working her way through all the things that could be stopping him speaking. Which is reassuring in one way, but worrying in another i.e. that his lack of speech is puzzling to her as a medical professional.

What I'm coming to realise is that this is a very long process and that we're not going to see Sam talking any time soon.

Special Moment

2008-12-11T08:28:00.003Z

I picked Jacob up from Nursery yesterday; he handed me a motley collection of yoghurt pots glued together with some tissue paper on the end and went "Look Mummy, I made this for you".

Just as I was about to coo with maternal pride, he went "Its a ray blaster!!".

*sigh*

I'm having a right morning of it...

2008-12-03T09:19:00.003Z

First up, I discovered that not only have the kids broken something we borrowed from the Toy Bus, they've also managed to lose part of something else we borrowed from the Toy Bus; this is despite my attempts to only borrow toys with large, difficult to lose pieces. I turned the house over last night, and again this morning, and while I haven't found the toy, I have come to realise just what a bloody tip the house is. I hate having an untidy house, but on the other hand, I find it very hard to find the enthusiasm to give it a really good clean and tidy.

Secondly, Jacob's coat has still not turned up at nursery. One of his classmates went home in it by mistake on Monday and is now off sick; so Jacob is without a winter coat while the temperature outside plummets and the forecast for tomorrow is for heavy snow. The school have rung the boy's mum to ask if she could bring the coat in today, but she's apparently got a very poor grasp of english and didn't understand what they were saying. If it hasn't turned up by the time i go and fetch him at lunchtime, I think I'm going to have to go and buy him another one, to tide him over until his turns up.

And thirdly, while I was having the above conversation with one of the nursery staff, Jacob realised that the reason he was queuing up with his classmates outside the gate through to primary school was that they were going into his new Reception Class for the morning, and promptly burst into tears. For some reason, a fortnight ago, he stopped being all excited about going up to "Big School" and started announcing that he doesn't want to go. On the one occasion I've mentioned it since, he's maintained the line that he wants to stay in nursery, so I haven't brought the subject up again; but he's obviously very worried about it for some reason. As I left him to the cuddles of the nursery staff, he was wailing like a soul in torment; I'm sure he'll be fine this morning, but there are v few things guaranteed to make you feel like a shite mother than having to leave your crying child in the care of someone else :(

So, if there was ever a morning to break out the port before 10am, this is probably it :(

WTF?

2008-11-15T08:22:00.003Z

Sam is terrified. Not of scary monsters, ghosts, big dogs or spiders. But of this:-

the rather cuddly Razzledazzle from the Cbeebies programme of the same name. A little, inoffensive character that tries to get you to listen to sounds; hardly in the same league as Frankenstein's monster.

If we watch CBeebies, I have to make sure I switch the tv off or over before Razzledazzle starts or Sam immediately runs off and hides on the kitchen doorstep. I also have to check that when Jacob is playing on the computer, he isn't finding pictures of it and going "look what I've found, Sam".

*sigh*

The Perfect Daily Heil Front Page

2008-11-11T17:43:00.002Z

I'm particularly amused by the Flesh Eating Immigrants at the BBC by-line; I'm assuming they didn't have enough room to make it Flesh Eating Lesbian Immigrants :)

Jacob

2008-11-06T13:39:00.002Z

While everyone in the family is quite happy to sleep on, Jacob wakes up every morning at 6am and then comes and wakes me and Doug up on the grounds that "Sam parped", "I had a dream about snails", "Sam is snoring" and other spurious reasons. If he gets sent back to his bed, he then proceeds to wake up Sam.

He is driving me mad; if I tell him he can't come into our bedroom until its morning, he then starts coming up with scenarios where he might be allowed to come in before morning; he's wet the bed or had a nightmare, for instance. So if I say that for those reasons he can come and wake me up, he then comes in and uses those excuses even though its patently obvious that he's not wet the bed or had a nightmare.

He's been properly shouted at today for doing this; it remains to be seen whether this will work and whether Doug, Sam and I actually manage to sleep on past 6am tomorrow.

Still No Speaky

2008-11-06T12:50:00.002Z

Sam still isn't speaking.

We've had three sessions with a Speech Therapist during which she's ascertained that his play skills (which are linked to speech development) are on par with his age and that he is actually ahead of his age on comprehension. But he has absolutely zero expressive language and on our last visit, someone from the Child Development Unit at the hospital came along to observe; in her opinion, Sam is having difficulty both in making sounds and in linking sounds together to form words.

So, no more one-to-one speech therapy sessions for now - they're going to work with him at his Playgroup and have already sent through some song cards for his use, so he can indicate which nursery rhyme he would like singing during song time. The speech therapist is also visiting the playgroup in 10 days time to observe him playing and interacting with the other children.

As you can imagine, this is all quite frustrating; at the moment, we don't have problems communicating with him and he seems to understand everything that we say to him, but I can tell he's starting to get quite frustrated at times with his lack of speech. Its been suggested that we start signing with him and so we're watching Something Special every day and he is picking it up relatively quickly. Its also been suggested that some Pathfinder funding be made available to us so he can go to Playgroup more often (at the moment, its costing us £22 a week to send him - so until he's old enough to be fully funded, its a v expensive business).

Anyway, I don't really know where we're at or what the future holds for him; it obviously makes decisions and every day things more difficult. For instance, I'm potty training him at the moment, but until he masters the sign for "potty" and remembers to come and sign to me when he needs it, he's just going to carry on wetting himself; similarly, learning to do that at Playgroup and ensuring that all the nursery assistants know what he's doing when he makes a certain sign adds a whole new level of difficulty to it.

We'll get there in the end, I'm sure of it, but it is very slow-going and quite dispiriting at times.

For the sake of my bank balance...

2008-11-06T12:38:00.003Z

.... I hope the weather picks up a little; its been constant drizzle since Sunday.

While the weather has been fine and cold we've managed to get to the park at least once a week after playgroup/nursery - there's a little cafe by the bowling green that is partially staffed by people with learning disabilities and I think its a subsidised training facility; we usually manage to have lunch there for around £4 all in.

Yesterday, on account of the bad weather, we went to Crazy Tykes near Wetherby; the best soft play area for Jacob/Sam's age, imo. The entrance fee and our lunch set me back £22, plus petrol (it takes about 25 mins to drive each way).

It's typical in a county not known for its sparkling weather that all the indoor activities are expensive.

Halloween

2008-11-03T18:06:00.002Z

Although Jacob was less obsessed with it this year than last (having realised that Christmas and birthdays are far better things to be obsessed with), he was certainly hugely excited by the prospect of getting dressed up and going trick or treating. In fact, I heard him asking Doug at breakfast time when it would be dark enough to get his costume on.

I managed to distract him for most of the day with a trip into York with Granny & Granddad, but once home he pestered incessantly until I dressed him and Sam up in their Halloween finery:-

They had a great time trick or treating with Granny and Daddy and got a very good haul of sweets (and some money). My parents were amazed at the numbers of children that came to our door (they obviously don't do such things over the other side of the Pennines) and couldn't believe that our large dish of lollies and chocolate had all been distributed by around 6.30pm.

And a tip for next year; Tesco do a rather spiffy bag of spider web for 50p. I did have to spend quite a lot of time draping it round our dining room the night before Halloween, but once I'd finished, it looked very Miss Havisham and the boys were suitably impressed.

Oh For Heavens Sake!

2008-10-30T07:53:00.002Z

There are times when I want to take a big stick and club the British Press to death like a baby seal. And take a few of the Great British Public with them. This is one of them.

When on Saturday I saw the first stirrings of the Brand/Ross/Sachs story I had a sharp intake of breath but immediately discounted it as a storm in a teacup; now the whole thing is the top of the news, front page of the all papers and 27,000 people felt compelled to ring in to complain to the BBC.

Why? Because the press have decided that the financial woes of the world are no longer interesting enough, so they take a fairly minor story of someone upsetting another person on national radio and turning it into a major story.

I hate it when this happens - the story should have died a death at the weekend but instead we have this press witchhunt whipping up people into a "outraged of st albans" frenzy. So 27,000 have complained and Russell Brand resigns - surely that mean that 59,973,000 haven't complained so he should keep his job?

I'll be interested to see how long it will be before a few people start putting their heads above the parapet and saying "actually, it was quite funny"....

(for the record, I thought the phone calls were a bit juvenile and not particularly funny, but the apology song "we're sorry for the attacks, Andrew Sachs" is now making me snort with laughter every time I hear it on the news).

Another Rant

2008-10-22T11:26:00.003Z

Actually, I typed up a whole post ranting about Royal Mail, but by the end, I realised that I'd got it out of my system and deleted the original contents of the post.

Blogging as therapy? :)