Thursday 19 August 2010

Good News Bad News and Other Stuff!

Good news first! We heard back about the dreaded DLA form I filled in for Sam and we've been awarded high rate care until 2015! This is such a relief and one major stress out of the way. And to know that we don't have to fill it in for another 5 years is wonderful. Now maybe it won't feel quite so bad when we're up with Sam from 2.30am onwards!

Bad news then. Our referral (well, the nursery's referral) for a statutory assessment for Sam was turned down by the LEA (local education authority). When I opened the letter I couldn't believe it. All that was going through my mind was how is Sam going to get any kind of education without any support? After blubbing for a bit, I rang our health visitor who assured me that Sam would still get an assessment and she promised to ring all the relevant people. She called the nursery and spoke to the head teacher who said not to worry, that they've been refused first time in the past. The woman from the LEA rang me herself and said not to worry too. That all they need is a bit more evidence, mainly from the specialist advisory teacher who will be seeing quite a lot of Sam this year. The nursery will rewrite the referral and we'll see what happens.

One good thing to come out of the referral was a paediatricians appointment. We've been waiting 17 months for a follow up appointment. Sam was very good, no tantrums or anything but he did flap a lot and we were able to explain all about Sam's problems as they are at the moment. The doctor wants to see Sam again in a couple of months to review his behaviour (not holding my breath for that appointment).

We bought Sam a touch screen monitor to use to play very simple games on and he's really loving it so far. We've found a few bubble popping games which are proving very popular! Hopefully if he develops more understanding we can find more increasingly challenging games for him to try.

William has started walking!! At 9.5 months old!! He managed a couple of steps last week, but this week he is all about the walking. And he tries it everywhere. When he falls down he claps himself which is very sweet! Sam had better watch out now as he's only going to get better and faster at it then there will be no escape!

Finally, today we went to a fun fair. Wasn't expecting to stop really thinking it would be too busy etc etc, but it wasn't at all. It wasn't huge and there were no crowds of people which made it really nice. Sam looked quite excited about all the rides and got to go on some with Andy. He went on the rollercoaster, the dodgems, and a fast spinning ride (which I would have called the scrambler from my childhood). Oh and of course a bouncy castle too! He seemed to really enjoy them too. He wanted to go on the dodgems when we were on holiday last year but was too little at the time so he was very pleased to go on them this time and had a good flap! So it was a really good afternoon, topped off by a yummy chinese takeaway for tea!

Tomorrow we are expecting Sam's new bed to be delivered so hopefully he will like it as much as he did in the store when he had a good bounce! :)

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Holiday and Post-Holiday

Well we went off to Cornwall for a week. Well it was supposed to be a week, but we came back a few days early as the weather was so bad, raining non stop, and with 2 little kids in a small holiday cottage far away from most of their toys that they can play indoors with, it's a little grating on one's sanity! We did manage to have one beautiful warm day so we hit the beach in the morning and a play farm in the afternoon. The boys loved the beach. It was William's first time and he made the most of it! Trying to stop him eating the sand was probably the hardest part. Sam as usual LOVED it, loves the sand, loves the splashing. In fact if we lived near the ocean he would probably end up being a surfer dude one day!


On the bright side the boys were wonderful car passengers there and back, probably helped by watching Bear in the Big Blue House on the dvd player.

Well, we've been back nearly 2 weeks now and are slowly working through our list of jobs that need doing, next on our list is painting the living room and kitchen!

The boys have been doing a lot of interacting this last week. Poor Sam, he is being chased now by a very fast William who will not leave him alone. He gets prodded, whacked, climbed on, and he just let's him do it! In fact, probably 75 percent of the time I think he is enjoying it. This is great, more interaction has got to be a good thing to help him progress.

Another plus is that Sam seems to be coming out of the toast phase he was in. He's now back to eating his instant oats for breakfast and yoghurts too. It may be a small thing to be so pleased about but when he eats such a tiny range of things it's great to know he's getting just that little bit of extra calcium and other vitamins.