Eating Out

We went to town yesterday afternoon because my son had to have his yearly eye test. He is on a very high prescription for his glasses and needs a new pair every year. He loves having his eyes tested and marvelled at all the gadgets in the optician room. His favourite was the "machine that turns people into cybermen" as pictured below.

The optician had to reassure him that he wasn't going to be assimilated before he put his chin in the machine!

After the eye test it was getting quite late and the kids were hungry, so I decided to take them to a restaurant. My son is a picky eater, so finding something on the menu that he would eat was hard, but in the end he settled for a hot-dog and chips.

Unfortunately, we went in at the same time as a group celebrating a birthday. They were sitting up the corner making a lot of noise, blowing on these squawky little trumpets. This freaked my son out.

"SHUT UP!!!" he screamed to them. "STOP BEING NOISY!!!!"

I don't think they heard him.

He then started screaming and covering his hands over his ears. Autistic kids are especially sensitive to stimuli and loud noises really scare him. He couldn't bear it and was getting increasingly stressed and anxious.

In the end, I had to call a waitress over and ask for her help. She went and got the manager. Oo-er!

The manager was great. I explained the situation and she went over to the offending table to have a chat. Then it went quiet.

I felt like a bit of a party pooper, but they were VERY noisy. They were not being very considerate to anyone else in the restaurant.

So I guess I probably ruined some kid's birthday, but hey, nowadays it is rare for a week to go by without us raining on someones parade.

Developing Fine Motor Skills

Today I went to help out at school. On a Tuesday I usually have half an hour with my son in the mornings to work on things like handwriting and maths. Today we did something different though.

The teacher gave us a coffee jar and some pegs. The aim of the game was to clip all of the pegs on the outside of the jar. The game encourages the development of fine motor skills. My son found it quite easy clipping the pegs on the jar, so I made it harder by getting him to put one hand behind his back, close his eyes, or use his finger and thumb only.

We had a lot of fun doing it and he ended up better at it than me! It is a simple and easy way to encourage children to develop their hand-eye coordination.

We Are Outside!

So, we are all sitting in the living room when my son exclaims:

"We are actually outside!"

On seeing our puzzled faces, he went on to explain:

"We are in our house and our house is outside, so we are outside!"

Profound eh?

How We Nearly Won £2000....

Back in November, I entered a competition for the Tots 100 blogging network about Britain's best day out. We received free tickets to Waterworld in Stoke and wrote a rather creative blogpost about the visit. The winner was to receive £2000. Very nice!

Anyway, the results are in....sadly I didn't win...but I was chuffed to bits to be one of five blogs that got an honourable mention for creativity! You can see the results here. Lots of people entered, so I feel quite proud of our efforts, and thanks to my kids, who did a good job with the plasticine models and singing!

By the way, I checked out the winner's post and a very worthy one it was too. A blogpost in poem form (darn, why didn't I think of that?) presented beautifully with photos. Congratulations Tired Mummy of Two for your fabulous "Taking the Monkeys to the Zoo"

Still Filling in the DLA Form....

Oh my days! This DLA form is long.

And pointless.

Here are some examples of the nutty questions they ask. Try these:

"Count the steps you take to see how far you have walked. If they walk 10 of your steps they have walked about 90 metres. Check the time when you start and stop and see how long it takes."

Daft.

"Tell us how often they need help each day and how long it takes each time".

Then there is a list of boxes to fill in how long each activity takes. The first box is "wake up". How long does it take your child to wake up? It depends how loud I shout from the bottom of the stairs!

The whole form is a hoop-jumping exercise designed to frustrate parents into mental exhaustion and giving up.

It has taken me a couple of weeks and I'm still not finished. I have a whole pile of doctor's reports to photocopy....

Let's hope it is worth it!

Old Man

There has been a lot of sickness at the school lately and the teaching staff have been hit hard. It is not unusual to see my son's class come out with a supply teacher instead of his usual teacher.

I asked my son how he got on at school.

"Fine" he replied.

"But we didn't have the normal teacher. We had an OLD MAN instead".

He said this really loud, within hearing of the supply teacher. I hurried him away quickly.