So much to write, so little time

I've been meaning to blog for a few days now but time just escapes me. Here are a few highlights:

Shannon has been spending quite a bit of time putting the organs back into the anatomical man, and doing fairly well!

Her language is coming on every day, with more and more full sentences and new phrases. I love it! This morning I told her she was going to see Mandy (the childminder) later on and she said, "I'm a bit sad." "Why, because you're going to see Mandy?" I said, surprised because she absolutely loves going to the childminder. "Yes," she said. "And I'm a bit excited!" I thought that was a lovely summary of her mixture of feelings!

I did a poster together with Jade earlier this week, of all the things we could think of that are good/lovely about her or that she is good at. She really enjoyed doing it, contributed a lot, enjoyed decorating it prettily and has it hung up in her bedroom. Something at least has helped - last night she got out of bed and came downstairs again while I was on the phone, and while hanging around waiting for me she wrote a note "Jade is nise." I've been trying to remember to thank and praise her every time I catch her doing something positive/helpful/kind.

I've also had a breakthrough with getting help for her selective mutism. An acquaintance I bumped into last weekend who is a speech therapist in Sheffield told me that in her area, parents can refer their own children for speech therapy, and she suggested I enquire whether we can here. I did, and we can! So I did! She is now on the waiting list for the local speech and language therapist who hopes to see us by the end of September, and what's more, she has obviously treated SM before as she talked knowledgeably about it! Result!!! So many people get referred to people who haven't got a clue, so I'm really encouraged. The referral to Mental Health services remains in place as the SLT said she can often work together with the MH team with good results.

Persuaded DH to come swimming with us all last weekend, because Jade is at the stage where she needs a bit of one-to-one support and she'll soon be swimming without armbands. We had a fantastic session and she is so close to being able to swim. She just needs the confidence to know she can do it, TBH. And Shannon made her own breakthrough in letting go of a parent for the first time, and hanging on to the edge of the pool and walking round on tiptoe on her own, the first time she's touched the bottom!

Had a real disappointment this week also. Money is extremely tight in this household, and holidays are pretty scarce (our entire holiday budget is £30 per month) and are pretty much always just a week away in our ancient and tatty caravan, that's if we manage to afford anything on top of MuddlePuddle camps! Going abroad is a sweet but extremely rare luxury. A few weeks ago I managed to grab some Ryanair tickets to Venice in early October for all 4 of us. Even 1p flight offers are too much for us after you've added in taxes etc, but in this offer the airline were even paying all the taxes! All we had to pay was £10 each for baggage handling. I didn't tell DH about it because I didn't even know if we would be able to find anywhere cheap enough to stay, so thought I'd sit tight until I'd searched and seen if I could come up with anything. I was innocently telling my Dad this tale on Monday, and like the true treasure he is, he went home, checked with his wife and then phoned me to say they'd give us £200 towards accommodation! I was really thrilled. I could actually truly begin to imagine us having a lovely week's holiday in Venice! DH came home that evening and happened to be telling me about how his boss had to have some surgery, and told me the dates and I nearly had a heart attack because it overlapped with the dates I had booked away. Just to backtrack a little, DH works in a university (in computer services) and as far as I was concerned, he had been told that he couldn't have holiday in September because that's when the students arrive and they all have to be allocated computer access and got set up on the network and so on. Anyway I thought I'd better tell DH about the holiday booking, which I did, and he said he would check because he wasn't allowed holiday from mid-September to mid-October!!!! Turns out there is no way he can take holiday for when our flights are booked. Expletive, expletive, expletive! I am so disappointed!

To try and have a bit of spontaneous fun, I have decided to take Jade to London tomorrow. My Dad will have Shannon for the day. First Great Western are doing half-price train tickets this week on our bit of line due to it being closed for about 4 weeks after the floods. We'll be arriving mid-morning, hopping straight onto a tour bus, hope to go to the National Portrait Gallery and then Covent Garden market in the afternoon where there is free entertainment connected with Kids Week. I have been dithering about it all week, again because of the cost, but I got two work expenses cheques yesterday so suddenly feel like I can afford it!

I'm sure there was loads more educational stuff, but it's disappeared from memory. Must try harder!