Little Cotton Rabbits

The great pudding crisis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being autistic, Toby's life is governed by a requirement for routine, especially when it comes to food. In his mind certain foods go together and can never be eaten alone, for instance crisps must always come in a bowl with a chaser bowl of marshmallows and petit filous yogurts must be eaten in pairs, first a raspberry one and then a strawberry one. He likes the same tea every day after school (or for lunch at weekends and school hols); first a crispy baked potato with the potato flesh scooped out and mashed with tuna and mayo to a consistency that is crumbly and not too wet. The mash is always eaten first and then before he eats the skins his plate must be cleared from the table. Next comes a slice of chocolate fudge cake on a pink plate and after a drink comes pudding eaten with a well worn blue spoon.

Now when I say pudding you've probably guessed that it has to be a particular kind and you'd be absolutely right. Pudding to Toby has always been Hipp Organic apple and blueberry baby food and he has eaten a jar of it every single day since he was around 5 months old. Now to my reckoning that means he will have consumed around 5,475 jars of this baby food over the last 15 years and that will be a conservative estimate as some days he has one after his evening meal too! Though not any longer it seems. In fact Hipp organic are about to wonder why sales of their apple and blueberry puds have fallen off a cliff because unfortunately for Toby they have changed not just the packaging (which has always caused him temporary consternation in the past) but also the fundamental taste with a brand new recipe. Poor Toby is bewildered to say the least and mealtimes look like being difficult for him until I can find a replacement pudding that fits the bill. Still it is an opportunity to introduce something a little more age-appropriate and I won't miss the funny looks I get in the supermarket when I have a basket full of baby food! 

Anyway, apart from pudding catastrophes (and a distinct lack of summery weather) we've been having a good summer so far, busy with the usual summer activities of plum jam making, garden time, wood walks and visits to the local garden centre for rides on the miniature steam train and then an ice-cream. All in all Toby is coping with the change in routine, hopefully that will continue for the other half of the school hols and hopefully there is a perfect pud for him out there somewhere, please keep your fingers crossed :)

 

June catch-up

 

 

Well, here we are at the start of the school summer term. Happily it's a long 7 week one so I'm really hoping to get a lot of things ticked off my to-do list before the summer break starts.

The half term hols went well here with lots of warm sunny days for Toby to enjoy bouncing and bubbles in the garden. I also tried to get him to help with a spot of gardening but it didn't go to well - too much goes in his mouth for him to be a good gardener! But nevertheless our little patch is looking good with all the herbs, beetroot, kale, rocket, beans and spinach all growing well.

 

 

I'm trying wherever possible to involve Toby a bit more in household chores, though it is very difficult for him to grasp the purpose of such tasks. We have one eye on the future here as it is our hope to continue caring for him at home once he leaves school - something that is fast approaching and is a really daunting prospect so we are trying to take small steps now towards a meaningful, enjoyable and busy weekly schedule for him. Over the school break l've involved him in pegging out washing on the line which, as long as the items are small, he is getting quite good at, though he has yet to understand the need to stretch things out and to use 2 pegs for some things. We're not doing quite so well with clearing the table after dinner. He has a very strongly defined sense of order and is good at knowing where things belong; cutlery in the draw, glasses in the cupboard, plates on the shelf etc. but he has yet to understand the concept of clean and dirty and so will tidy away any dirty spoons or plates that he comes across. We are working on the idea that dirty things go in the dishwasher or by the sink and hopefully he will eventually start to understand and be able to do some of these household tasks semi-independently with just some verbal prompts and simple supervision. Later this year he will turn 16 and so begins the transition over to adult support services. There is so much paperwork involved that I already feel exhausted and we've not really started, it will be a case of a day at a time and hopefully things will fall into place.

In knitting news I am currently finishing off a small batch of animals so will pop back with an update when they are done. For now I'll leave you with the pictures I took a month ago (and have been meaning to post ever since) from a visit to a local orchard nature reserve. It's a wonderful place full of ancient apple trees buzzing with busy bees who are based in the hives on site. There is a flock of very grumpy geese who hiss and posture as you walk past their enclosure and up in the woods there is a large badger sett - I hope to go and visit one evening as there is a viewing hide where you can see them quite clearly from. 

Thanks as always for taking the time to visit my blog, I appreciate you stopping by and so enjoy reading your comments x

 

 

Tewin Orchard, Early May 2017

 

Quiet time

Sometimes you need to make a conscious effort to slow down and indulge yourself in a little quiet time and that's what I'm doing today. Today will be a pyjama day - the phone will be left to ring, all but the most pressing of emails will go unanswered, there will be plenty of chocolate, a bit of book reading and a little undemanding crochet. It has already got off to a good start with tea and hot buttered cheese scones

 

 

The reason I feel in need of a bit of quiet time is because lately things have been complicated on the Toby front. Not especially so with him personally but with the things related to him. He is entering a gradual transition phase where he is being passed from child services to adult ones and this means many more meetings with professionals, on-going assessments, checks and an increase in the mountain of paperwork that goes along with having a child with special needs.

This year we seem to have had more forms than ever to fill in and each time a new one arrives I have a little wobble as I know the weight of the task is far more than a few sheets of paper. One form that I filled in this year was 48 pages long. It took me over 2 weeks of thinking and planning what to write. There were tears as I recounted particularly traumatic incidents that illustrate the depths of Toby's disability and a great deal of anxiety at whether the words I'd committed to paper really conveyed the extreme challenges he faces on a daily basis. It is an all-consuming task until completed - it even intrudes on your sleep, because you know it's important to your child's future and you also know that the person who will process the form has a very different agenda to your own.

I've also learnt that words can be taken out of context and used to prove the opposite of what was meant by them. We are in that position at the moment and will have to appeal against a decision made about Toby by going to a tribunal - something which I am dreading but which is necessary to protect his rights as he grows into adulthood.

Please don't think for a minute that I am so ignorant or insular that I don't know there are millions of people all around the world in far worse situations than this. I do know that and it does make me incredibly grateful for all that we have. But we are each bound within the confines of our own existence, viewing the world from our own perspectives and at the moment a little indulgent quiet time is helping me to cope with our small difficulties.

I'm grateful to be able to find peace and contentment through playing with wool, it always helps calm me and un-fuddle my head. What do you turn to in times of stress? If you feel like sharing,  I'd love to hear what helps you through your difficult days.

 

 

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PS: Thanks so much for the feedback about instagram. As suspected lots of people don't do instagram and most of those that do don't mind seeing pictures twice, so from time to time I will post photo round-ups here on the blog. I definitely won't be stopping blogging though  :)

 

The haircut

Toby has never liked having his hair cut. In fact since he was old enough to need it, haircut time has been a source of considerable stress for both him and me. We've only ever attempted to have it professionally cut twice (and neither time ended well) so it has always been my job to do the best that I can to keep his hair at a manageable length. When I was at school, if someone had a particularly bad haircut we used to say "you lose a fight with a lawnmower?" and if Tobys classmates could talk I'm sure someone would have said this to him several times over the years, as I have not been a very proficient hairdresser.

At the weekend hair cutting time had arrived again, as it had got really long and Toby had to keep brushing it out of his eyes. I started off with my usual grab-and-snip technique, concentrating purely on not cutting him rather than the aesthetics of the cut. But because it was so long I was doing a worse job than usual so I decided to try the electric clippers H uses on his hair, just to neaten the back and sides. Toby really wasn't keen on letting me anywhere near him with this buzzing thing in my hand and it took both H and I to keep him calm and gently convince him to let me have a go - it did help him to see Daddy get a little bit of a trim too. The trouble with clippers though is knowing where to stop and with the sides and back really short the long top looked even worse, so the only way forward was to do the whole lot. There were a few moments when I thought we'd not manage to get his whole head done but eventually we were there and Toby went in the bath to rinse off all of those pesky little ends that always stick everywhere.

 

 

Anyway, the reason I am telling this story is not to recount my own part in it but to tell you about Tobys reaction to first seeing his new hair in the mirror. I so wish that I had filmed it and preserved the moment because he was so delighted and it was a wonderful, tear-jerking moment. He never takes an interest in his own reflection but when he saw himself in the mirror after his haircut he laughed and clapped and jumped up and down with delight. He's been positively preening ever since and he's enjoyed everyone telling him how handsome he looks. He even got to stand up in assembly and show the whole school his smart new hair. It's been so lovely to see him so pleased with his new appearance and watching him looking at himself in the mirror is priceless. I even managed to get one picture of him without his hands all over his face. I do so love my special boy x

 

 

red lolly, green lolly

 

 

Well the school half-term break has been and gone and we were getting back into term time routines when Toby came down with a vomiting bug. Poor Toby has had more than his fair share of illness this winter, perhaps his system has been weakened by the growth spurt he's been going through - it seems that he's visibly grown every morning when he gets out of bed and he's not far off H in height now. Happily he's over the bug and back at school now, a little thinner and a little taller and still with his poor old callouses from the hand biting that remains a too frequent part of his days.

 

 

Over the half term break we spent some time trying to expand Toby's P.E.C.s vocabulary by starting on descriptive symbols. Motivation is the key to P.E.C.s (which is why teaching it often fails in schools here, as they refuse to use food items as request-able and why on earth would any child want to jump through hoops to request a red cup or a green sock?) Luckily at home we don't have those restrictions and I use Toby's favourite foods all the time to re-enforce his use of P.E.C.s vocabulary and to motivate him to be more communicative with us. Recently he's discovered a love of twister ice-lollies. These come in a pack of half red-with-green-middle and half green-with-red-middle and for some reason Toby doesn't like the ones with the red outside. So when he's brought the 'I want lolly' request to me I've been making him choose which colour.

 

 

It's working really well and he's now independently adding the green symbol to the lolly on his request strip. So green lollies is all he gets and I have a freezer filling up with red ones because although Amy likes them she's out so much of the time and she can't match Toby's lolly eating pace!

True to form I didn't see much of Amy over the half term break - apart from at mealtimes (when she miraculously appears, eats and disappears back to her room again in stereotypical teenager fashion) or in the car (when I'm driving her to or from somewhere - friends house, music gigs, shops etc.). I'm trying to give her the space she so obviously needs at this point in her life but it is hard not knowing her so well anymore and I worry about her safety. I can only hope that all we've taught her so far about the world is enough to keep her safe as she forges her independence.

In the rare half-term moments that I wasn't being mum, I worked on a new shawl - a long crescent shape one which I hope I'll find easier to wear than the triangular ones I've previously made. That's it in the picture at the top of the post, it's from a pattern called 'Crescendo' by Janina Kallio - the yarn and pattern details are on my ravelry project page. Of course I know that knitting directly from an unravelling piece of knitting that didn't work out is a cardinal knitting sin and one I'll probably regret (as the yarn is still crinkly it will not knit up as evenly and I should have unwound it, soaked it, dried it and wound it into a ball before using it) but I was feeling lazy and I hope that during blocking the finished shawl will forgive me and turn out well!

 

 

I've also baked; our new favourite cake is Nigella's easy almond cake which has marzipan melted within it and is deliciously almond scented and moist. I make 1/3rd of the recipe quantity and bake in a half pound loaf tin - the perfect quantity for a small cake as it's mostly me that eats it, especially for breakfast with a strong cup of tea.

 

 

More birds have been coming into our garden thanks to the feeders and seed that my Mum and Dad gave me at Christmas. I love watching them flit between the feeders and the plum tree and recently we've had goldfinches, blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds and a couple of lesser spotted woodpeckers.

 

 

Lastly I've enjoyed the blooming of the little pot of narcissi that I brought home from my friend's funeral, a small and delicate reminder that beauty doesn't often last and though some people may not be here as long as they should, they can remain and be treasured in the memories we have of them.