Summertime......and the living is......sometimes quite hard 😁

So...in the past I have spoken of the darkness which can overwhelm me during the Summer..the time when all is warmth(SOMETIMES) and light. It is also the time of long days which the Boy insists we spend inside and hot nights which the Boy insists on sharing closely with us. 

Sometimes the Black Dog just arrives...and refuses to tell me why he has arrived  and refuses leave me alone. It's a puzzle.

However, this year, the Boy went away to the MostMarvellousRespiteCentre for a day or two so, for the first time in a while, we packed our bags and M and I went off on a bit of a jolly. 

Very jolly it was too.

During the Boy's absence, my back recovered and my chest muscles revived ...YAY...he's been back about 24 hours and so have my normal chestal and spinal conditions. BOO.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted!!

😂

He was very glad to be home. He has been firmly attached to one parent or the other since his return. It is currently my turn. M has escaped into the garden to do vital gardening jobs.

We are watching IceAge2...again.😱

Plus ça change....

The good news is that the MMRC got his food right...no choking, no wrong food(it might have helped that I sent a week's worth of provisions in....),all in all .....positive.

HOOBLOOMINGRAH!!!!

The End

Ps the flowers in the photo at the top snook into bloom while we were away. Ain't nature grand?

Life and stuff...

So...the all night sleeping was a singelton....sadly. As we suspected.

 On the other hand, it happened, giving M a brief respite from the nightly wranglings.

 So...hurrah!!

On my way into town today, I passed the cottage hospital where the Boy was born all those years ago.  I pass it almost daily but the reason I noted it in particular today was that it is being demolished, even as we speak  ,and I was suddenly overcome with some of the feelings I had when the Boy arrived.

The plan had been....have the baby, M would bring the Others in and it would all be lovely.

It didn't go to plan.

The Boy decided to be born in the middle of the night..as babies often seem to. We called on our lovely chum to sit with the Others and M drove me,with me sitting on dustbin sacks..just in case. We arrived and moments later, so did the Boy.

Literally, moments.

And so began the ...I feel I should say 'nightmare'but that would in no way be fair to the Boy who is challenging, indeed, delightful and demanding. HE is not a nightmare but the times were certainly nightmarish as problem after problem became manifest.

He was rushed from the cosy ,friendly cottage hospital to the nearest huge,impersonal but well-equipped Special Care Baby Unit where his 9lbs 8oz rosy form was inserted into a crib intended mostly for tiny premature chaps.

And so it unfurled....life with The Boy began.

Those feelings,  anxiety, fear, despair grief (that the baby I thought I was having was a different baby altogether)and innumerable other HUGE feelings washed over me and took me somewhat by surprise as I passed the shell that is now that hospital. 

So I am having a sit and a think before I continue with the excitement that surely awaits me in Sainsbury's!!!

Anyway..life and stuff  happens.

Happy Thursday.

The End

He slept...

So...when M and I both woke up in the same place this morning we were surprised, shocked and then, of course, anxious.

Was the Boy ok???

Had he woken in the night, wrecked the place and then fallen asleep in the rubble?

The only way to find out was to go and see. M threw on his clothes and ventured forth to investigate.....dramatic pause....all was well.

This is the second time in the last two months that he has slept all night.

Our excitement is mounting.....Could we be turning a corner? Could sleep be just peeping at us from that corner?

Can we contain our excitement??

I think we can.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The End

Gardencentretastic

So....another weekend. Another set of visits to 2 of the glorious garden centres within an hour of our home.

We have isolated a selection of garden centres which we visit on a loosely rotational basis every weekend. It is what the Boy will do without much of a fight or protest. He is particularly fond of the garden centres with fish and or small creatures which we try to stop him from terrorising.....after all, who wants to buy a traumatised guinea pig??

Yesterday was our all time fave...it is practically perfect in every way. If I had one negative, it would be the quality of the coffee which is tolerable only because the quality of the rest of the place outweighs it.

M and I have determined that  during this year we are only going to buy one plant per month and then only plants which are in flower or have interesting leaf colours. We have been quite good thus far. Quite good.

Today's delight is a garden centre which we have found sells excellent plants and has an adequate cafe and which opens early on a Sunday...and this is ,for us, a massive point in its favour.  We managed to emerge, plantless. A feat of almost superhuman effort on our part!

Then we took a very scenic route home which entertained the Boy no end and which passed time for us so that the rest of the day did not seem so long. )M and the Boy are still suffering somewhat from their incredibly early start yesterday.)

However, another jolly weekend was had by all.

Hurrah.

The End

Saturday again

so...M was PoD last night as he has been for many a month due to the fact that my back is still not robust enough to take the wrangling required to care adequately for the Boy during the long reaches and watches of the night.

I awoke to a message from him on our FApp..the family App...which indicated, with M’s usual wit and flare, that he and the Boy has been awake, basically since 1.30am. Despite repeated encouragement from M that they should try to go to sleep,the Boy remained resolutely awake.

So, as I creaked  out of bed at 5.30, back twinging/twinging , I fought with the guilt of someone who had been asleep, gloriously and luxuriously until 5.30, without wrangle or scratch.

 Thoughts swirled........Should I endeavour to take my turn once again as PoD??? What if it sets my back off onto a worse trajectory.....?????? Oh dilemma.



Downstairs, all was relative calm.

No sign of destruction other than the fact that The Boy had emptied my bag...clearly he felt that the old receipts in the bottom were surplus to requirements and had rummaged until he found them all. What a helpful fellow.

I tried , then, to take over from M but the Boy would have little of it... he changed now in full marauding mode....nowhere and nothing was safe. Breakfast on the run takes on a different meaning these days...yoghurt sloshing, tea spilling, I moved at speed behind the Boy as he whirlwinded his way though the downstairs aspect of our house. He can move quite fast for someone who can’t move very well at all!!!

It is now 815ish and we are about to set out for a garden centre, in the hope that a second breakfast and a little walk might calm him......

M is a marvel.

Please tell him when you see him.

Thank you.

The End

Vintage...

So..apparently vintage is a good thing. Vintage clothes, vintage cars,  vintage wine etc....all good. Deemed valuable or quirky or desirable.

What about people though? I was looking at my skin today (one has to do something on one's day off) and was once again surprised at its ...shall we say, lack of youthful springy smoothness!

When did i become so reptilian??? 😱

Talking with a lovely chum today, we were chatting about something which happened a long time ago.....but which feels like the other day!! Where did that time go??

I now understand my parents' preoccupation with The War because for them, it wasn't the ancient history that it was for me. It was just the other day to them. I wish I could tell them that I now understand...sorry ,mum and dad!

However, I haven't spent the day chatting and staring at myself....No! I have also been making things out of paper plates...dinosaur masks (not masks FOR dinosaurs,you understand,but rather for children to disguise themselves cunningly,  with the aid of a paper plate,AS dinosaurs), similarly bear masks, alien heads and jelly fish...all in the name of work!

I have spent a goodly part of the afternoon, surrounded by a morass of card, paper, straws(paper, of course), paper plates, pens and sellotape.

In my element!

You see, at the Bookface, we shall be hosting jolly (well, that is our hope) sessions,  centering on a different theme each week with stories and activities for children....such as making masks etc. See???? It all falls into place.

So....I may have vintage and reptilian skin, but I have the soul of an 8 year old!

Hurrah!

The End

Someone's knocking on my door.....

So...people and front doors, eh? 😱

That seems to be what The Boy thinks.

Now then...I like a nice postal delivery as much as anyone else in these modern times. For me , it is often a nice surprise because I have forgotten that I had ordered X, Y or Z...

...when it was the run up to Melody Maid's wedding, the post person seemed to be delivering ribbons or bibbons for weeks in advance. Things to decorate the tables, reception, the cake, me.... it was all very exciting.

For me.

For The Boy , it was terrifying.

You see, he  has a full-blown panic, whenever someone knocks at the door.

I guess it is the unknown. The unexpected. The unpredictable....and therefore, the scary. The terrifying.  The threatening.

I try to prepare him when I know that someone is expected...I tell him that someone is coming to see us, that they will have a cup of tea and a chat and that it isn't scary and everything will be ok.  Even then, when he hears the knock on the door  he often flings himself ,and anything moveable within reach, around the room. As a result of this behaviour, we try to ensure that the mantlepiece is clear, the surfaces are empty, there are no cups within reach etc.

So, when I don't know that someone is arriving, or if the postman brings something that won't fit in the letterbox and the knock on the door sounds, the Boy goes wild. He hammers himself on the head, goes into full blown panic and is ,quite frankly, terrified AND terrifying. If I am within reach, I am often the object of his fear...which means my hair is pulled, my glasses can be thrown......you know ,the usual.

On Saturday, we were expecting visitors. I had tried to prepare the Boy as much as humanly possible. When the knock came, he was quite flustered but when it turned out NOT to be our visitors rather a delivery man instead, he morphed into a caged animal. He was wild eyed, frantic, furious, scared...he ran into the kitchen where,in his anxiety,  he swept the contents of the spice shelf to the floor. Coriander, cumin and cinnamon went flying, mingling with nutmeg, cloves and everything else.

To be honest,  the smell was  lovely....but it was not so lovely to see.

It was a spicy massacre.

When our visitors arrived  the Boy and I were still flustered....which was unfortunate because the visitors were M's cousin and his wife whom I had never met. M and the said cousin had been close as children but then , due to geography and the fact that life happened ,they didn't see each again until M's dad's funeral last year which I couldn't attend as we had no one else to look after the Boy.  So this was to be our first meeting.

 As you can imagine, I wanted to be calm, cool and collected. Turns out, I was flustered and flushed.

They, the cousin and his delightful.wife, were lovely people.

Just as well.



Took me and the Boy a while to regain our equilibrium!

So....There is nothing I can do to help him when the unexpected happens because, well, the unexpected is by definition unexpected!

I wish I COULD help. I wish I could ease his anxiety. Explain.  All we can do is do what we can do. No one can do more than that.

Can they?

The End

Hoturday

So....the Saturday which has just passed was the hottest day this year so far (not a difficult record to beat this year) and the Boy was not impressed.

My Boy doesn't regulate  his temperature very well so when the weather is cold, he is very ,very cold..often blue. Similarly, when the weather is hot, he gets very,very hot. As with the weekend just passed, the weather was very, very hot...as a consequence the Boy found it unbearable. We spent quite a lot of the day trying to cool him down, administering cool beverages, removing as much clothing as decency and he allowed, keeping him in the shade...etc. Not an easy task as he has a mind of his own and once placed in an optimum cool place, more often than not  he decided to find something else to do, somewhere else.

I tried enticing him,siren-like,with water play but he preferred to direct the hose onto the windows, the wind chimes, his father...anything but himself.

He wouldn't eat, unless it was cake.

 He could not settle to any visual entertainment, demanding whatever wasn't on to be on until it was then demanding that it wasn't.

He insisted on close cuddling..which meant that whichever of us had been Chosen, soon became hotter and more bothered than usual...

Oh and

He slept even less than usual.

Oh the joy.

Consequently, on Sunday, he was a grumpy pudding. As indeed were we. If there was ever a day when we could have done with an emergency Jboy service, Sunday was it. We were all tired. M and I felt ill-prepared to parent and the Boy was determined to make the day as long and as difficult as possible.

He, like so many children, reacts differently to each of us...with M, he was merely mischievous and challenging. With me, he pulled my hair, pinched me(a trick learned elsewhere),  kicked me and threw my glasses,rendering me helpless.

ALL DAY.

I can say that it was a day of which I was glad to see the end.

Today, we are in a place of equilibrium...as is evidenced by the picture at the beginning of this blogette  feet atop the footstool, both.

The weather has settled,  we are watching Shaun the Sheep and the potatoes are about ready.

Hurrah.

So, apart from my horrendous hay fever, all is well. Well, wellish as the Boy is currently trying to regain my attention by emptying the sink of its contents...that'll teach me!!!

😁😁😁

The End