Tag: SAHM

Christmas Eve (and Eve-Eve) 2019

Well it’s here again. Five days ahead of TT’s birthday and the tree is up, presents are under it and both children are sleeping.

So we seem have some traditions forming now. The first is that we go for a nice meal on Christmas Eve-Eve (yesterday). One friend informed me I ought to call it Christmas Adam. I’m tempted. But another friend (who is Danish) informed me that in Denmark it is actually known as Little Christmas Eve.

I love both of these ideas. Tune in next Christmas to find out which I go for.

We went to Buffalo Wild Wings last year. This year we went to Bertucci’s – a lovely Italian chain.

Olive Garden is vile – we don’t go there

And I have my own tradition now:

The kids ate well and I’m off the dairy-free bandwagon. My mental health has been in the toilet this whole month and I cracked like an egg.

But I feel so much better mentally, if not physically necessarily.

And so to today.

We went to the Flaming Grill and Buffet in Malden today for lunch. It’s a Japanese-Chinese-American fusion buffet. It was a resounding success.

My plate:

The hus-creature’s:

TT’s:

#1 Son’s:

All completely different. And everyone ate and ate well.

A resounding success. We will go back there again.

Then we spent the rest of the day at home. Yes, the kids got progressively more and more excited, but not wired.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.

Here is what we left out for Santa:

The apple is for the reindeer – the hus-creature has researched this and apparently reindeer farmers genuinely give people apples to feed to them as treats.

The kiddos went happily to bed and tomorrow will be awesome. Food is planned. Drink is planned. The hus-creature and I will be a team cooking and hopefully the kiddos will be distracted with new things.

And I think they might just have been on the Nice List:

We can confirm that Santa does indeed appreciate macarons and Japanese whiskey.

Goodnight all. See you on the other side ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Apartment Life

Can suck. Suck utter balls.

We live on the first floor. The landlady lives above on the second floor.

Around December last year, after significant unpleasantness, new neighbours moved in downstairs on the ground floor.

I took down soup and apologised in advance as I have two children, one of whom is around full time.

Everything seemed fine.

While we were away, one of said neighbours complained to the landlady that:

The children run around so much it shakes the light fittings.

Now I admit, my children can be… boisterous… but no more so than any other 3 and 7 year old pair of siblings.

In fact, #1 Son, when left to his own devices, is perfectly happy snuggled in his room with his tablet.

So I was mortified. Since I thought we had dealt with this issue last year.

Apparently there were issues with doors slamming. We put large rubber bands over the relevant door handles and the problems went away

However, more information has just come to light. The landlady and her partner came to do some light maintenance (with about four hours notice this time 🙄) and the topic came up.

Side note: if you’ve never had kids do not try and discipline someone else’s thank you very much. Yes the landlady attempted to talk to TT and #1 Son about the excessive noise and, rather unsurprisingly, was ignored.

However, as it turns out, downstairs have set up a Meditation Room and have placed it under my kid’s bedrooms.

I’m more than willing to work with my neighbours, but that? That is taking the piss.

Fortunately, the landlady’s partner has grandchildren. He understands kids. She is child free, and kind of seems to view children as little aliens/a different species. Which is fair, but I am not hobbling my kids. They are entitled to live in their homes.

And though I would never put it like this – we were here first. They saw us all leaving the house en masse on the day they viewed the property. So they knowingly rented an apartment where they knew there were kids living upstairs.

So, there have been discussions of what can be done. The landlady and partner have suggested they will buy large Ikea rugs for the relevant rooms.

I’m not footing the bill for it. Rugs are a bastard to keep clean.

And I have suggested (and will follow through with) buying slippers for the kids. I have no problem with that.

But I have stated, on record, that while I will happily have “no running in the house” as a rule (indeed have been trying to institute that since we moved in) I am not stopping my kids from playing in the place where they live.

TT is in bed before 7pm, #1 Son before 8pm. That is not unreasonable. I am not putting their lives on hold for a Meditation Room.

I will not be shitty about it, we all need to live together, but I have my limits. I know my kids well, including their flaws, and they are not as bad as is being made out.

Mama Dinosaur mode has been engaged.

Many things

It’s been a busy few days.

TT is (whisper it) 100% reliable during the day on the toilet when it comes to doing a wee!

We have also had two days in a row where she has successfully done a poo in the correct place*

We have had no accidents all week thus far.

Night training is not happening, as we are attempting to wean her away from her middle of the night bottle and it’s just cruel to do both at the same time…

That and the one night we tried it she screamed bloody murder, fully woke up, and then actively refused to go back to sleep without said bottle – she won that round!

But she’s doing amazingly – especially when you consider she’s only 26 months old!!

Okay so she doesn’t now need the “cooling” pull ups we bought, or the plastic pants. Bugger. Ah well, we live and learn. And if we hadn’t have bought them, we would have needed them.

Sadly we had a bit of a backslide with #1 Son on the behaviour at school front today. He ran out not once, not twice but five time today, and even ran back into school at pick up time whilst the Mothership was talking to his teacher about the previous five occurrences.

I received an email from her this afternoon confirming that he had had an “emotional” day (stating that no-one would play with him and that he felt that no one loved him 😰) outlining her strategies for helping him tomorrow and giving us a framework to talk to him.

One of the problems is his refusal to accept that other children might just want to play games of their own choosing too – we are working on this…

He has had two more party invites though (one of which is ice skating – but thankfully with options for non skaters) which ought to help a little.

The other is a bouncing party – your guess is as good as ours on that – but that should at least be fun for him.

The lovely H brought up some presents for the kidlets today and he completed one of them

Momma and I are hoping that H will be able to join us on a small night on the town on Saturday.

His reading has come on in leaps and bounds. He actually asked to read with mom when he got home from school!!!!

He still hates writing, so I think that will have to be the next point of focus, but it’s amazing to see how well he is doing.

Mom met up with his teacher on Tuesday afternoon to discuss his progress and ensure that we (mostly her) are not confusing him compared to how they are teaching him in class.

It meant she got to meet his support team, and see his little cubby that they’ve built for him to (effectively) escape into when he gets overwhelmed.

Yes, it is literally a cupboard – it works for him.

He will also be having weekly sessions with his therapist every Tuesday at 07:15 – this means he won’t be too late into school, thus not impacting on his daddy’s work day too much.

As for me? I’m slowly getting back behind the wheel. I’m not great, but at least when I screw up I’m following through and have not (for example) crashed into a roundabout, nor ran a red light, nor turned into oncoming traffic without signalling.

Which are all things I did back in England prior to passing my U.K. licence

So I consider that I am doing okay. I need practice, and I need to pass my theory test (yet again) but I am studying and having gotten through half of the USA equivalent to the Highway Code today.

I’m now exhausted and have an incipient migraine 😂🤣

I also had my second post-op checkup yesterday.

My doctor is very pleased with my progress. I am to increase my doing of things, though not to lift anything heavier than a gallon until I’m the full six weeks post-surgery.

He does however want me to break up with dairy 🙀🙀🙀

(I mentioned I wanted to lose weight)

At the moment dairy and I are merely agreeing to see other people 😂🤣

I can cope with losing chocolate but not my cheese. And I’m trying to work out what I could put in my tea instead of cow’s milk.

But I’m going to try.

He next wants to see me in six months, and this appointment is already booked 😱

Mom and I also went up to knitting group yesterday and had much fun 👍🏻

*With many apologies to the non-parents in my audience, this sort of thing is big news when you are a stay at home parent!

An incredibly successful day

For both #1 Son and myself.

At 09:00 this morning I strode off to school suited and booted for #1 Son’s initial evaluation meeting for Special Education Provision.

I’ve been both dreading and looking forward to this by turns.

He had to meet certain specific criteria to qualify for an IEP – which is an Individualised Education Programme.

Basically it was to see whether or not he could be statemented.

I spent a year working in the SEN department of Oxfordshire County Council, so I knew how hard getting one of these could be, at least without a metric tone of supporting documentation and medical backup.

And the autism assessment process is stalled a bit. It’s just so slow.

So I had reports from:

  • An Educational Psychologist.
  • An Occupational Therapist.
  • A Speech and Language Therapist
  • The School’s own SENCO

Which came home on Friday, which I read, re-read, highlighted and annotated.

I went up to this meeting agreeing with the reports, but prepared for battle if needed. I knew they wanted to help him, but criteria are criteria and he had to meet them to get the extra help.

At the meeting were:

  • Myself – daddy stayed at home with TT
  • The Principal
  • His class teacher
  • The school nurse
  • Head of SEN services for the district as meeting co-ordinator
  • The school Counsellor – who #1 Son has dubbed “The Feelings Lady”
  • The SENCO
  • The Occupational Therapist
  • The Speech and Language Therapist
  • The Educational Psychologist

It was a full meeting. I was completely drained both physically and emotionally after it. He’s not the only one in this household who can get overwhelmed.

So he couldn’t be registered with a disability due to autism, as the school cannot diagnose that.

He couldn’t get the IEP on cognitive ability because the reports proved he is average to above average in almost all areas.

So what’s left? Well, a few things but the main one is Developmental Delay.

That is a blanket term that covers a lot of things, but the one that covers him best is social, emotional or adaptive functioning.

I don’t disagree. He has severe sensory issues, cannot relate to his peers (but is great with much older and much younger children), confidence issues and is struggling generally.

I just feel a massive sense of relief.

Within 10 school days we will get a copy of the IEP and once we read it, sign it and return it, it becomes “activated” and off we go.

There will be more meetings, more reviews. This is not a one-off thing, but the main hurdle has been jumped and he will get more help.

And now for the second good thing of the day.

I went for a pre-operative assessment with the surgeon who would perform my hysterectomy if agreed to.

Well, take a shufty at this ladies and gentlemen:

For those in the audience who cannot read doctor handwriting (it’s a skill), he had agreed, without any hesitation, to perform:

A TOTAL ABDOMINAL HYSTERECTOMY

WITH BILATERAL SALPINGO OOPHERECTOMY

They are taking Every. Single. Thing. Out!!!!

I could have kissed Mr. Surgeon Man.

🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊

I’ve been warned that because they will go in through the belly it’s going to be the full six weeks recovery time for the procedure alone, coupled with six months to feel myself and back to normal again.

That’s fine.

Today

Was mostly a quiet day. After yesterday’a madness we needed a bit of a break.

So I decided to take a little mosey on up to Lucky Cat Yarns.

It’s a gorgeous little yarn shop only 0.5 miles away, newly reopened and refurbished.

It’s beautiful.

They are so welcoming there, and they run classes and have “Sit ‘N Knits”. I foresee the occasional evening up there with my needles – maybe they can even teach me to knot Continental style…

And some of them are doing the same knit along as me 💕💕💕

It was Bath Night tonight.

The kidlets are no longer sharing. Ever again. Took a very long time to clear up the puddles.

#1 Son actually let me clean his ears (which I had to give up nail cutting for, but they’ll last another week).

TT has decided that having her hair blow dried is the worst thing ever – but I managed to accidentally create perfect ringlets for about 10 minutes.

Already dropping out by the time I took the photo 😰 and I doubt I’ll ever be able to replicate it sigh.