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Single autistic mother of three awesome autistic kids. These are my anonymous ramblings about life, love, parenting and the rest – emptying my head of the weird, the wonderful and the mundane. Hope you enjoy.

Wednesday 30 November 2011

Alternative Transport

DS2 has a book he reads in the bath about a teddy who has three bath toys - duck, whale and turtle. DS1 was very proud last night because, in addition to DS2's usual 'duck', he taught him to say 'turtle' and then 'whale'. However, he was less than impressed when DS2 having said 'whale' a few times, obviously searched through the database in his head - which almost entirely consists of songs - to find where he had heard this word before. Having clearly located it, he very confidently started singing the well known tune:

 'The Whales on the Bus, go round and round, round and round, round and round'.

Altogether now....

Sunday 27 November 2011

The upside of parenting alone

"This is what I think I would struggle with most in a relationship: if my children are being unreasonable, I can send them to their rooms. I've heard you can't do that with husbands .... I'm not sure how I'd cope."



I heard myself say to an old friend yesterday:

"I really admire people who have children in relationships"

and I realised I meant it. It's strange to think that I now genuinely believe that, in all but the very best of relationships, having kids with someone is probably harder than having them on your own.

The first and most obvious reason its easier, is that you can be pretty certain, your kids won't ever have to cope with their parents splitting up - because there is only one of them. One of the greatest joys for me of being DS2's only parent is that I know he'll never have to do the to-ing and fro-ing and emotional processing that DS1 has had to do - and that I have seen cause him so much pain. I hate the fact that DS1 has to not be with his mum in order to be with his dad, but when you have two parents who don't live together that's the reality.

Friday 25 November 2011

Just like mummy....

I'm loving DS2's morning routine - he has obviously decided the thing to do is copy whatever the bigger people do, it is very sweet, it goes like this:

  1. Wake up, complain until sleeping bag is taken off, get off  bed
  2. Go to the stairgate, shut and lock it (just in case any small person falls down presumably)
  3. Wait til DS1 gets up and goes for a pee, watch him and then copy washing hands and drying hands on towel (should make potty training easy)
  4. Watch mummy put moisturiser on and copy by rubbing fingers over face and neck.
The last is the cutest, makes me laugh everyday - I'm thinking of getting him his own moisturiser just so he can do it properly. Bless.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Australian Soaps and Facebook - better than Prozac?

As usual, I've been stressing about the lack of time I have and the list as long as several arms of things I have to do. When I get like this I always think that if I just worked a bit harder, or watched a bit less TV, or was on Facebook a bit less that I would have more time (see The Trouble with...).

I've been testing this out recently though, and I've realised three things:
  1. I do work bloody hard, much harder than I give myself credit for.
  2. I'm very rarely just watching TV. I'm usually breastfeeding or e-mailing or sorting washing or eating, or its after 10 o'clock at night when I'm so tired and zoned out that my brain couldn't cope with anything else anyway.
  3. Neighbours is about the only thing I watch without doing anything else, and, along with Facebook, I think its responsible for keeping me (mostly) sane.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me...?

It's not been a good couple of weeks: me ill, DS1 ill, car problems etc. so I was really looking forward to my birthday on Friday. I'd taken DS1 to the garden centre after school on Wednesday, given him a tenner and promised to close my eyes so I couldn't see what he picked. He'd wrapped everything all by himself, and made cards - one from DS2 and one from him, So you can imagine, I was really looking forward that morning to opening everything and seeing the fruits of his efforts. I thought, I'll just switch my phone on.... and that's when I discovered that O2 had cut me off - on my BIRTHDAY!!!!

Wednesday 9 November 2011

The trouble with e-mail, self-employment and old cars...

It doesn't seem to matter how many seminars/webinars or any other kind of -inars I listen too, I can't seem to break the habit of checking my e-mails before I do anything else. I know its bad, I know it eats time, I know nothing can be that urgent or someone would've phoned, and I know I certainly don't need to keep checking them every 5 minutes once the computer is on, but I still do it. In fact today, I checked my e-mail first thing, found a webinar I'd missed and listened to a whole hour of it, which began with telling me not to check my e-mails first. Ahh, the irony.

Monday 7 November 2011

A short realisation...

Finally! We have at last worked out what DS2 has been singing for the last week! DS1 thought it was the theme tune to Totoro (late 80s japanese animation), I thought it sounded like the old hymn 'Immortal, Invisible..',   but it turns out it was the second two lines of the 'second verse' of Row, Row Row your boat i.e. '..if you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream!' - it was when he added the scream at the end that the penny finally dropped.

And you only have to re-read that the once to realise that while we may attempt the ordinary, it feels unlikely we'll ever achieve it   ;)

Wednesday 2 November 2011

Halloween and the exploding nappy

And so the second half of the Autumn term begins. I was still in a bit of a daze on Monday, and spent most of it getting ready for Halloween - which is BIG in our house. DS2 and I made buns while DS1 was at school. It was a bit sad not to have DS1 there - its the first year it's not been on a weekend since he started school, so it was strange getting ready without him. When he got back though, there was still a whole load of manic rushing round to do, beginning with me trying to throw an old shower curtain over a privet hedge.  And why not?! It did look like a ghost... honest - more so once I'd gaffer taped the eyes on, in fairness - and fortunately no one carted me away before that.  DS1 was already knackered from half term, so was ridiculously over excited about Halloween and went into panic mode everytime a trick or treater arrived to make sure he offered them all the right treats. Then, when there weren't any, he kept running out into the street shouting 'Where are all the trick or treaters? We've got the best treats here!'. He'd lost the plot completely by the end of the night he was so knackered, but he did love it, which was main objective achieved. DS2 was also extremely tired, so we took to putting him behind the stairgate when the trick or treaters came, to stop him escaping out the door and into the road. However, because he kept pressing his face against the bars, in his outfit, it just looked like we'd captured a small live pumpkin and caged it. Very festive.

The end of half term, tantrums and good manners

It was a crazy half term really, even without the illness to start it off. I tried to give DS1 some extra one-to-one time with me - we had a day out with a show and lunch, and we went to a film with a lovely woodland workshop afterwards. This was all very lovely, but in between we had his usual letting rip - with added angst as it had been 3 nights at his dad's because of half term, and because all the activities meant he wasn't getting much downtime. Ah, will the joy of motherhood never stop?! DS2 just got his head down and played with his vehicles as usual - I am very lucky to have such a convenient toddler - he seems to know when its not his turn to yell, although he happily makes his mark when it is, god love him.