WTF?

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

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

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

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...

.... 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

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.