Sunday 29 June 2014

The One Where I've Been Away

It's been exactly 6 months since I last blogged.

Most remiss of me - I'm sorry. You probably all have forgotten who I am by now. 

In that time a lot has happened in the Randomhousehold. Some of it good, some not so great. All of it I will share with you in the fullness of time. 

So many times I've gone to write a blog and I just couldn't bear to talk about myself. My drafts folder is crammed with half started posts of various quality and subjects. None finished and many now I have no idea what they were going to be about in the first place. 

So in attempt to get my blogging mojo back I've given myself a new look and I'm having an official re-launch. 

That makes it sound very grand, like I'm having a big party in a fancy art gallery with celebrities or I'm smacking myself over the head with a bottle of champagne and shouting 
'I declare this blog well and truly open. God bless Random Woman and all who sail in her'.

But in truth I've just jigged about with the colours and fonts and added a privacy policy, which I am now required by law, or something scary like that, to do and held my glass of wine up to the screen and said 'Cheers all the best' to myself. 

So here's a quick appraisal of what has happened in the last 6 months.

1) We've moved house. It's loads bigger and has two loos and a drive and patio doors and everything I've ever wanted. Yes I'm that easily pleased. I have an office now too, which is covered in boxes, a rolled up futon where Oscar kips, a pile of stuff we keep meaning to put on Gumtree or E-bay and endless CD's and books. Still it's my office (holds onto that thought as she trips over yet another box)

2) We have 'acquired' another cat. 




Bob had been hanging around the old house since the end of last summer but she finally moved in, in November when the fireworks were going off and we just couldn't leave her outside. We tracked down her owner and spoke to them just before we moved in March and they hadn't seen her since November. As she would no longer come in their house since they got a puppy, they said we could keep her. Her real name is Fluffy (she is so not a Fluffy) but hubby called her Bob because her ears make her look like an American Bobcat. Once we found out she was a girl, we carried on calling her Bob because Bob, quite clearly, is short for Kate!

3) The boy. Oh the boy.  Where do I start with the boy.......? We've had a lot of 'challenges', as Hippy Chick likes to call them, with the boy. He is as always wonderful, funny, full of mischief and imagination but since last October when I heard those fateful words from the SENCO at nursery "Can I have a word?" nothing's been quite the same. 

It's nothing massive. In fact we don't even know what it is. We have no answers yet. It's not physical. It's a learning thing. Or maybe a concentration thing. It could be a understanding thing. Or a communication thing. We've had his hearing tested and that's ok. He's 'baffled' (yes she used that word) the speech and language therapist. He's not great at forming relationships they say but he seems happy enough to me. He doesn't follow instructions and will only join in with group time or free flow play after a lot of encouragement. The thing is the games he devises for himself in his head are way more fun.  

The other theory is that the boy is just mucking about and doesn't like doing as he's told. 

He's a 4 year old boy, of course he likes mucking about and not doing as he's told!

He's not living in the real world they say. Well who they hell wants to live there if they can have any kind of choice about it?  

The trouble is the real world beckons. He starts primary school in September. 

He does need strong boundaries and structure, so maybe school will sort out the mucking about and not listening.

This coming week we have a primary school trial morning on Tuesday, a speech and language appointment on Wednesday and a transition meeting with the school, healthcare worker, SENCO and speech and language therapist on Friday.  

It's going to be a busy week.

So anyway that's us. I guess I just haven't felt like sharing all the boy stuff until now. It's nothing to be ashamed of and believe me I could never be ashamed of my boy it's just all so... surprising... I guess. To be told that your son isn't progressing as he should with his social and learning skills, well it was all a bit of a shock. 

He seems as bright as a button to us. Creative, a great sense of humour, a good musical ear, he loves books and rhyme and stories - but he learns by repetition so he soon knows them off by heart and doesn't actually need to read them to act the books out.

And if one more person says - "I wonder who he gets that from?" - like being able to act or to take after me is some kind of curse - I'll belt them one! 

So now I've finally shared it all and blogged again and I feel better for it. 

In my humble and biased Mummy opinion he's come on leaps and bounds in recent months. All children learn, develop and grow at different speeds and at different times, and every day he never fails to amaze me by creating incredible stories, or riffing lyrics while hubby plays guitar or making up hilarious, if not slightly surreal, jokes. 

So who knows he's probably a creative genus. A square peg the system wants to cram in a round hole.

But whatever it is... he's still my special, wonderful, amazing, funny boy and nothing anyone says can change that.