We have the lurgy

DO we have the lurgy.

I will spare you the details but it is messy and painful, and all except Himself have been 'laid aside on beds of sickness' as they used to say in our church when I was a kid. Pretty gross description, and in this case pretty accurate. We have had a sad few days. Tigs was first, then Pup. Then me. They are creeping back to normal, I am still shakey and off my feed. Pup is still using it as an excuse not to eat; since food is not his thing anything that lets him off eating is not all bad as far as he is concerned. And he got to play on the Wii and watch TV a lot.
The really rotten bit is that my sister and one of her kids are visiting, and they've come down with it too (guilt, guilt) AND we had guests at the weekend, a family  who are now gone off camping in France. We will find out later if they caught it -  I am quite prepared for them never to speak to us again.

However it hasn't all been a bad weekend, although we didn't get out, some fun was still had:

This is what was happening when I was in bed yesterday, captured by Himself on MY camera. And no, he didn't ask if he could borrow it.

Sad

Because a close relative was getting cross with one of my sons today and shouting at him because his behaviour was irrational and annoying. (it was annoying me too). Yes, he needed checking. Yes sometimes you need to shout because he needs to stop NOW, as what he's doing is dangerous or impacting badly on someone else. But you don't need to shout just because he's being annoying.

Because the same relative read my sons school report and told him off about the negative parts of the report, without mentioning the first sentence which read 'He has done really well this year and should be proud of himself'.

Because sometimes I run out of patience with my kids big time too, and I don't want to.

Because people outside see two pesky annoying kids and don't see two kids who are achieving great things despite all the grot they've had to put up with in their lives.

Because sometimes having kids that are 'different' is so isolating. Even friends who know my kids really well, love them and understand them, cannot know what it is like to live with them.

Because I'm afraid for their futures. And I love them.

A song in his head

  There is always singing in our house in the mornings (along with the shouting, banging, nagging, arguing etc....) This morning it was a medley from Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Do Ray Me. At least they have both moved on from Wheels on the Bus. One day we will get into the 21st century, I'm in no hurry. Nor it seems are they, they prefer songs that are 'singable' to rock or pop music - so far. No doubt that will change .

  It is more commonly Tigs who is singing or humming. It doesn't matter to him that he doesn't know the words, or the tune, he'll sing it anyway. Tig has a few 'tics' and grunts that can be  a little irritating to live with at times, but sometimes if you listen carefully to him you realise that the little breathy noises that are coming from him are from subvocalised songs. I try and ban him from singing aloud at the table or when we are trying to hold a conversation. Sounds cruel? Well if I didn't we'd never be able to eat or talk! But the music usually breaks out at some point.  I tell him that even if he's not allowed to sing out loud he can always sing in his head.

  Having said that Tigs is usually singing, Pup comes a close second. He's in the choir at school, and likes to practice his songs. He has a much better memory for the words than Tigs, so is slightly easier to listen to. And when they are both singing you cannot hear yourself think, let alone talk..... 

  This morning they were doing both parts of 'Any Dream Will Do' while they were supposed to be putting on shoes and coats; they don't know it all yet so the result was 'interesting'.    I did try and chip in with the 'correct' words.  Indignant response: "Mummy, we're doing our version!"  

Oops. Sorry.

Why I am not a troll

One of the few bloggers I read reasonably regularly has just written a post on trolling. I love it.

Not having a big fan base I haven't had any trolls yet. On the few occasions I post on blogs I do try hard to be positive.  I can see how easy it would be to forget that there are human beings that have feelings at the other end of the cable that links my PC to the world. Must keep reminding myself of that.

'the bloggess' on Trolls

One of THOSE days...

Yesterday.

No-one in our house was injured or suffered loss or trauma. I should not be complaining. A tiny boy was killed in a gas explosion in Northern England yesterday. Syria is in meltdown and its people are enduring terrible things. The world is full of grief.

So I have to get some perspective and be thankful. However... it was still a SOD of a day.

   Tigs was in one of his pain in the backside most delightful moods in the morning. He was not going to do what  I wanted him to do. He was going to do the opposite. Even if he didn't want to do it.. Sadly things degenerated into a battle scene, with a lot of screaming, where I ended up dressing washing tuthbri-ing combing creaming everything-ing him. This is Mr Independant who could dress himself at 2, and hates being 'done for'. It did not go down well. As a result we were seriously late leaving for school. Meanwhile I'd told Pup to set off for school on his own. He's quite capable of getting there safely. However he dawdled and dallied, took 5 minutes to decide to cross a road, and ended up getting to school after Tigs and I did.

SO: Both boys late for school. Tigs burst into tears as soon as he saw his teaching assistant, and had to be taken aside to be dried out before he could join his class. I went home and burst into tears too - sadly no-one there to mop me up. Cuddling the Ginger menace helped.

  Our neighbours have gone away for a few days and were expecting a 'large parcel'. They warned us before they went, but said that they had asked for delivery to be delayed until next week. It came anyway. Not one but two VERY large parcels. Himself managed to get them into their garage in the evening as we could not use our hallway meanwhile.

  My Toshiba portable hard drive died on me, it was my main place for storing all my photos. I can recover most of them, as they are stored in other places too, but there are a lot I had photo edited that are lost, and some personal files too. And it was the only place that I had organised my pictures, so hours of work to do again. I could have cried.

  I went into town and picked up my new glasses. I can see really well with them but they are very uncomfortable, and will have to go back. Then I had to do a massive supermarket shop as we had run out of everything (comes of going away on holiday) Supermarket shops are my pet hate, as time wasters they score about 12 out of  10 for awfulness (thank God for Ocado!)

  The pollen count here is about a zillion parts per million. We have a couple of wild areas in the garden with a lot of long grass, which I decided to tackle. BIG mistake. Had to retreat into the house sneezing and with horribly itching eyes, didn't dare open the windows for the rest of the day.

  And... it rained on the washing, and the tent put up to dry in the garden.

  However, whinge over. Today has been much better. We've made a few changes to how we manage Tigs, we had a happier morning I've sorted some of my photos. Kids did OK at school - no-one got sent to the head teacher, no-one got sat in the 'thinking corner'. Hoping life is on the up.

We've been on holiday

   We were camping in the Lake District. We had some glorious sunshine, we climbed a mountain, rode a train, paddled in the sea, tried scrambling on rocks, both boys bottled out of abseiling.

We've let Pup do stuff that probably no kid with CF should do:

this was a pool at our campsite

We've let Tigs do stuff that probably no kid should be allowed to do.

yes, he landed safely... and did it again... and again.

We haven't lost all our commonsense however. The weather forecast at 6pm on Thursday night was dire. We were debating whether to drive home that night, but decided it was safer to stick it out and go home on Friday morning (instead of Saturday) I am so glad we did. We woke to pouring rain on Friday morning, and all got soaked getting the tent down. By the time we left the roads were quite scary, we had to drive first over small mountain roads that had become virtually streams. Then the motorway was pretty bad, heavy traffic, heavy rain, spray everywhere. NOT nice. It took 3 hours more than usual. However I'm glad we left when we did, because there was severe flooding in the Lakes that day; I think we just got out in time.  No-one was killed in the floods thankfully, but there were a lot of homes and other buildings damaged. 

Cumbrian floods

A bit of a nothing blog

Not got much to say for myself at the moment, so probably shouldn't be saying much!

Our boys behaviours are challenging to say the least..

I'm overtired.

Monocat has had a lot of her teeth removed and is sulking. I think she'll be happer soon, her teeth were  really bad.

The Ginge excelled himself today, he brought two frogs into the house before breakfast, later the neighbours were shocked to found him in their bedroom, he must have snuck into the house behind their backs.

I don't have much positive to blog about work... but I don't blog about my job. BAD idea. However I would like to feel a little more positive about it.  :-(

Any good stuff? Well, Pup is learning to trot! 

 I've been practicing my drawing.

And The Ginge is NOT at all impressed.