FEELING UNWELL

Hi all This is to say that Callum has not been feeling himself for over 4 weeks now. I don't know what is going round at the moment, but it seems that everyone is feeling grotty and has been since Christmas. Callum had managed to avoid it when I had it, but he's definitely got some kind of very persistent bug now.

It started as a cold, coughing, sneezing, that kind of thing, but it just wouldn't go away. We did the usual plenty of fluids, rest, tlc, but he was getting fed up with feeling crap. Anyway off to the docs we went last week and he was given antibiotics to clear up a phlegmy throat (yuck!). The antibios were finished yesterday and he still isn't right, poor bugger!

All this week he has woken up with migraine type headaches with light sensitivity. He's been walking around the house wearing sunglasses. To be honest he looks like an extra from the Blues Brothers as for the past few days he's been wearing his black pjs as well. Back up the docs we went today. Apparently his throat is no longer phlegmy and his chest is clear, so it's back to tlc, fluids and paracetamol. The worst thing is that he keeps feeling so tired. One minute he's his bouncy self and then he's as white as a sheet and wants to go to sleep. Unfortunately, being an Aspi, he will not give in unless he drops (see pic above). Bedtime is 9pm and he will not go to bed before then. Oh well.

Undetered, he's been keeping up with his home ed work, so fair play to him. We are now trying another new approach! I'm going to give him a list of things that I want him to do by the end of the week and he can choose what order he wants to do them and when he wants to do it. As long as the whole lot is done by the end of the week. So far, admittedly it's only been a week, it's working and he's enjoying ticking things off.

The idea came from a discussion with some friends whose children go to school. They are getting their homework at the beginning of the week and as long as it's handed in by the following Monday, they can do it as and when. I thought, why not. It means that if he wants he can work really hard at the beginning of the week and have the rest of the week off. Or he can spread it through the week evenly (or mad rush it if he really wants to - haha). What it also means is that he's taking responsibility for his learning. I've started off with a fairly basic list that is easy to follow and to do and he's working his way through it nicely! Each week I'll add a bit more until we are including experiments and artwork. At the moment it's just review sheets, maths, a bit of documentary watching and some computer research work.

So, all is not well on the health front, but on the work front things are going pretty swimmingly.

Cya

PS: The little dog in the picture is Merlin. He's my daughter's dog, a Chiuaua/Jack Russell cross and he's fully grown!!

FIRST DAY OF SPRING!

Hello all

Happy Ostara to you all. It's the first day of Spring today and it's been a beautiful day. The sun has been shining and Callum awoke in a very good mood.

He came down and decided to make a cup of tea for me and for him and sort himself out some cereal. He then sat down on the sofa with his breakfast AND his maths! He whizzed through his questions, pointing out that he wasn't up to date on some of the sheets, so he was going to do extra to get them all on the 50 mark. He'd finished both breakfast and maths by 9am!

As I was totally unprepared for this rush of inspiration, I decided I needed another cuppa to get my head around it. So Callum played on Wii Sports until I'd done what was necessary.

He then spent another hour on the computer researching pictures and some pictorial information about two of our projects that we need to sort out. Doing title pages for both and cut and pasting relevant pictures he'd found. One was for Waves, which we are doing at the local Home Education Science Fair in May and the other was for Transport which we are hoping to cover in a couple of months. He still has Titanic (we are going to the exhibition at the O2 next month) and Space, which we have been covering off and on since Christmas, to do, but he'd had enough and, to be honest, he'd done quite a bit.

After lunch, and still happy, we went off to trampolining. He was fine on the way there, fine when we got there, fine going in and then suddenly he was playing up. Wouldn't listen to James and started mucking about and being very half hearted about the whole thing. We let him have a play bounce to see if that worked, but it didn't. 20mins in he still wasn't himself and I stopped the lesson and asked, seriously, what was wrong. "I don't want to do it, it's boring!" was the reply. Well, I know for a fact that he doesn't think that, so I asked if anything was bothering him. He replied "no". I told him that he was wasting James' time and his if he was going to muck about and asked him if he wanted to continue or get off. He said he'd get off and then promptly burst into tears! This is when Asperger Syndrome can be it's most challenging. I know Callum's triggers and I hadn't seen any. I rechecked in my memory and still couldn't see any. James had a think and he couldn't come up with anything either. I know that there doesn't always have to be a trigger, sometimes it just is, but it's a lot easier to deal with when you know what's going on.

Luckily James didn't need to rush off so we gave Callum plenty of time to relax and 'come round' before we had to leave. When asked if he wanted to do a lesson next week to make up for it, he replied that he would. See, I knew it wasn't because it was boring. At least at the end, we ended on a good note.

Afterwards we went up to the Medway Park sports complex to ask about swimming lessons and we had a nice look round and a cuppa in the cafe. By the time we left Callum was much happier and we had a nice laugh and joke whilst doing a bit of shopping.


On our return we got out the Arts and Crafts drawer and started making flowers, buds and butterflies to go on our Season Tree (a bunch of twigs tied together which we decorate in accordance to seasons and festivals). So we now have a nice Spring themed 'tree' with chicks around the bottom. And mini chocolate eggs in a basket to nibble on as we walk past the table.

So in conclusion; we started the first day of Spring on a good note, it spiralled a little downwards in the middle, but it's ended back on a high again.

Cya

PS: We've just had a bit of a crisis. Some chick shaped candles just burst into flames!!!! Callum was a little freaked, but didn't panic. One wet T-towel later and doors open to stop the fire alarm, all is well with the world again. Plus a nice little lesson on fire safety! ;-)

Hi all, what have we been up to this week?

Well Monday and Tuesday were pretty quiet. Callum watched some catch up documentaries with me and we wrote up a bit about The Wonders of The Universe with Brian Cox. It was a test run as I'd like to start doing a little write up of what we have watched. I did some basic questions like What, When, What Channel (I thought I might use this information later on to show what channel we watch most - pie chart anyone?), What Did I Learn and What Would I Like To Do Now. I wrote it out this time with Callum giving me the answers, but I want to get him to start writing it out himself. It's good practice for writing up experiments, etc, and it gives me an idea of what to do after a show that has grabbed his interest. We had an hour long discussion on attention span issues and what works and what doesn't. We have come to the conclusion that we may have to watch hour long docs in two halves as, although he can watch for an hour, his ability to take in the information starts to lapse after about half that time.

He also continued with his maths questions and he seems to have got the gist of rounding up and down to 10s and 100s now, so am going to introduce some subtractions - his choice. I know this is a little going back to basics, but it really is necessary for me and him to be 100% about the basics before going onto the more complicated stuff he should be doing. It isn't that he can't do it, but he needs to be able to start working a little quicker so he doesn't get so frustrated, so a bit of revision on the basics won't hurt!

Wednesday we visited some friends and took along our old children's garden tools and a couple of packets of unwanted seeds to give them. Callum has outgrown the tools, but they are still usable. And I'm so behind in my garden that I don't have enough beds prepared to plant all the seeds I've got (I sent off for loads of freebies last year and I'm now seeded out). All had a great time and it was lovely to have a cuppa (or two) and a chat.

Thursday Callum helped Phil paint the bathroom ceiling as I was on a course for the day. He, apparently, didn't like using the roller, so he did all the cutting in with a paintbrush. I must admit that he and Phil have done a grand job!

Friday was another play date with his bf Callum D. They haven't seen each other properly for a while, so it was nice to get them back together again. They had a great time and I hardly saw them all afternoon. Michelle stayed for a cuppa for an hour and it was good to catch up.

Saturday, we had to go to Tunbridge Wells to find out/sign up for The Arts Council Bronze Art Award. Phil was working this weekend so we had to do a bit of advance travel research to find out how to get there. The best route, if not the quickest, was by bus, so we set off at 10.40am to catch the first bus. It was running late, but luckily so was our connection, so we still managed to get there on time, arriving at 1pm. 2hrs and 20mins! A journey that would take just over 1hr by car!

We had to be guided to where we were supposed to be going as nothing was signposted And when we finally got there, the hall (high ceiling) was full of kids, most of which weren't even signing up for the Arts Award. Only 6 kids were signing up proper. This was not the impression she'd given me. I'd explained Callum's problem and she'd made me feel that it would be in a room with maybe one other signee. As you can imagine this was not good for Callum who, at first, wouldn't even go in and then promptly hid!

On top of that the woman we saw seemed a bit unorganised. She dished out a load of papers and rushed through the explanation and then started getting all the other kids who were signing up to show each other how to do something and taking photos of them doing it. Showing someone how to do something is one of the things he needs to do! But obviously he wasn't going to do that with strangers. I asked if he could show either his sister or some of the kids he already knows and she said that was fine - phew.

Another thing was that she didn't tell us we needed to pay in advance, so I hadn't taken my cheque book. I've got the address now to send the cheque to. She didn't even tell us how much it was going to be until I asked!!!!!!

Anyway, I had a chat with some of the other mums, who seemed to feel the same as me (she'd given them the impression it would be in a office not a hall and they weren't expecting to have to do something on the day either). This made me feel like it wasn't just me being stupid. After that, I managed to get the info I think I needed and we left so Callum IS going to do the Arts Award. It does look really simple, so I don't think he'll have a problem with it.

Nearly 3hrs later and we were home. Nearly 5.5hrs of travelling for 1 hour of hell (for Callum at least). Can't win them all and I'm very proud of him for even going in, let alone staying for as long as he did.

Today - nothing. PJ day. Total chill out and it was lovely!!

Cya

Blinking heck! Can't believe last post was in November!!!!!

Some people may be wondering if we've given up home edding. We haven't, I've just not been doing blogs! Partly due to last computer playing up and having to find my way around a new one and partly because we've been a bit autonomous and partly because we've been 'hibernating'.

December was full of Christmassy things. Card making and writing; present buying and wrapping; cake and biscuit making and generally doing all the things that come along with the festive season.

January we were both ill. First me, then Callum, so we pretty much wrote off formal ed and stuck to watching docs on TV and looking at books.

February brought Phil into DIY mode and as our house is already practically a building site and none of the rooms have 'sealed' ceilings, we ended up not being able to use the 'school' room/dining room as he was ripping the bedroom above it to bits and everything was falling down through the gaps around the edge of the room. Needless to say there were dust sheets everywhere and this meant that home ed resources, equipment and the computer were out of bounds for about 3 weeks!!!

Now we are in March and trying to get back into some sort of routine, but it isn't working as Phil has taken another week off to do the bathroom, so chaos is reigning again! Plus Callum has had a rotten cold again and is a bit hit and miss on the concentration levels. But we have started going out and about again and he is still reading loads AND the other day he came up to me and said he wanted to do Maths! Yes, WANTED to do MATHS! Apparently he is concerned that his mental arithmatic isn't fast enough so he wants to go back and do some basic adding and subtracting and build up some speed! Turns out that instead of mentally rounding up or down to 10, he's rounding up or down to 5!! Eh? Means everything is taking twice as long, so am glad he raised the issue.

He's also stopped his group trampolining and is just doing a fortnightly private lesson instead. He says it's because he is doing more complicated stuff and wanted more time to practise which made a lot of sense to be honest. Attempting to do somersaults and flips in a 1-2min section is a bit rushed. Now he has 1/2hr to practise as much as he can and he's a lot happier!

We also might be signing up to do an Arts Award, but have got to have an interview next weekend before signing up/making a decision, so will see how that goes!

As to projects; we have 4 to complete before the end of July, which sounds a reasonable amount of work, but not too pressured. Am hoping that we can complete 1 a month from April. Will be happy with that.

It does appear that we are pretty autonomous at the moment, but that is fine. We seem to have done a year semi-structured, a year autonomous and then back to a year semi, so this year, being our 4th year, being autonomous is probably about right! hehe

Anyway, update done!

Cya

GRUMPY GRUMPS

Hi all

We've had a grump week from Callum so far this week! :-(

Now I don't know whether it's because of the weather; because of us being out quite a bit; because he is still slightly suffering from a cold or because I said we should do some work this week. I think it could be a combination of them all, but, boy, has he been grumpy!


Monday I suggested that it was about time we knuckled down and did some serious home ed instead of just watching DVDs, reading books or making origami dinosaurs (well I made one as it was actually really hard and Callum gave up and went and played with his cars. I, on the other hand, wouldn't be beaten by a bit of paper)! I'd managed to download some sheets from the computer and wrote up 10 questions on a book he'd just finished. Wasn't asking a great deal, but he hrumphed and grumped like I'd asked him to climb Mount Everest unaided and be home by teatime! We didn't get pencils flying around the room at least, which is an improvement from latter years. Anyway, he finally decided to do 3 questions of the 10 and wrote down all his answers unaided and without further arguement - yay!! We then got sidetracked by mail that came in and started doing maths!!!??? It was a bank statement I think that prompted it, but can't complain as he was adding up and doing balances - oo er, economics, coo!

I gave up after that as he had no interest in anything, so I went out in the garden and cleared up my courtyard. When I got back in he announced that he'd like to get on with the Christmas cake!? OooooKaaaaay! However, it was now Phil coming home time and it wasn't worth starting until after dinner. He then decided he'd go out with the dog and dad! I was hoping that this bit of fresh air might improve his general mood, but it didn't and he was a grump again when he got home. We finally weighed out the fruit for the cake at 8pm! He loves helping out with the Christmas baking, so I do try and encourage him as much as possible. I think he just likes helping himself to the raisins, cherries and sugar to be honest, but he did well and gave everything a really good stir in the brandy! "Ah, that's Christmas!" he says as I'm pouring 3 very large spoonfuls of brandy into the fruit mix whilst trying to avoid tipping it over his head which kept diving into the bowl for a sniff. Bless!

Tuesday was Chiropractor for me in the morning and then a shopping trip straight after. Oh dear, Callum is grumpier than ever today and tried (unsuccessfully I might add) to persuade me to go to Chiropractor without him, travel home via Chatham, pick him up and travel back to Chatham for shopping! Errr, I don't think so! Anyway, with Grumpy in tow we go off to Chiro. I'm pulled about, he sits outside in waiting room. Back on bus for trip into Chatham. Pop into Game to drop off old games and get points on the reward card. Then he finds a PC game he wants, so back in the queue to buy it. Then just as we are leaving the shop he spots a huge advert (why he didn't see it earlier I don't know) for the game he's seen on TV that he wants. He's had the right hump everytime the advert comes on as it's advertised for the XBox which we haven't got. But, aha, on the big window advert it states that for a limited period it's available on other formats including the Wii, which we have got! Soooooo back into the queue we go to preorder it! I finally escape from Game after being in the queue 3 times and pretty much getting to know the staff personally!

Then off to Superdrug to buy bits for the Shoebox Appeal (moans and groans from C), cafe for lunch (cheerful), toy shop for a look round (also cheerful) and manage to get his best mate's Christmas present, then home! He decides then that it's been far too long a day and he doesn't want to go to Youth Club! Bang goes my idea of popping to Asda with my beloved partner to do a bit of shopping and nose round for Christmas bits. Callum then proceeds to hrumph and grumph on the sofa! Finally agreeing to complete the Christmas cake and get it into the oven. It's 7.30pm and it takes 4 hours. I knew it would be a late night again for me!

Wednesday was haircuts! Now, normally C is badgering me about getting his hair cut, but this time he threw himself onto the bathroom floor and sulkily announced he didn't want to go! "Okay, why don't you want to go?" "I don't want my hair cut." "Why?" "Because I want to grow it!" "Right.....I can always ask if Jess will just cut your fringe a bit and tidy it up, would that be ok?" Some reluctant pouty expressions and some umming and ahhhing. "Yeah, that would be ok!" "Great! That was easy wasn't it? Just talk to me and I'll attempt to sort it out! Now, can we go as we are now going to be late?"

We walk round to hairdressers and he's ok, quite chatty. But on approaching, he goes all sulky again. He wants me to have mine done first, so I do! He's flopping all over the sofa and the floor behind me. Then he refuses to sit in the chair. Jess, brilliantly, manages to get him in the chair and get his hair done as he wants it. She's fab is Jess. Calm, firm and always manages to make him laugh, even if he is determined not too! Anyway, hair done!

Half way back towards Aldi he decides he needs the toilet. Now this is normally fine, but we are supposed to be going to Aldi's and then getting a bus to Maidstone, grabbing something we can eat on the bus. He then says "We can't eat on the bus, that man said so." "What man?" "The one on Sunday." "Whaaat?" "The man at the bus station on Sunday. He said that as of Monday we weren't allowed to eat or drink on the bus!"

By this point I'm racking my brains trying to think of some bus driver or official that we saw on Sunday that had said anything. But no, it wasn't a bus driver, it wasn't a bus official, it was a very strange man who was wandering around the bus station talking to everyone and anyone! Obviously one of Medway's infamous crazies (not politically correct I know, so sorry). My daughter, who happened to be with us at the time, said that she's never seen him on a bus, but he goes around the bus station talking to everyone and saying all manner of random things. Unfortunately Callum has believed him! So, all the way home we go! Eat lunch there, do the toilet trip and walk back up to the High Street to catch the bus!

Lovely afternoon with a friend. Callum happily playing with his mate! Yay, bliss! Take a wander down into town before getting bus home and am (rather easily I might add) persuaded to go into Game Exchange. Callum wants an old PS2 game and thought this would probably be best place to find it! Do find it! £2. Brilliant. Unfortunately they also have a DVD section, bad move! I end up spending £19 in all, eeek! Back home I'm shattered and Callum is grumpy again as it's a bit late to start playing his 'new' game!

Today, he woke up cheerful!!!!!!!!!!!! Way hey! But then he has decided that he is going to play his game all morning! Oh well, gives me time to tidy up the house, sort out emails and get ready for trampolining. Must admit, he was even happy there too and bounced this week and bounced well.

Am hoping that this new cheerful, less grumpy Callum will last over the weekend. I'm exhausted. So much so that I had a bath, put on my pjs and then realised that I had a meeting to go to. Oh well, dinner eaten, back upstairs to get redressed and off to meeting I went. I think I need a lie down now! hehe

Cya

BUSY, BUSY THEN BLERGH!

Hi all

We are still alive, although no so sure on the well. For some unknown reason we haven't been brilliant for a couple of weeks. I'm sure it's just the winter bugs going round, but we are fine one minute, then feel shite, then well, then shite, then well and so on. To be honest I'm getting a bit fed up with it! We are now on daily doses of Echinacea and Vitamin C which does seem to be helping. Callum however, is going into hibernation mode and I'm not far off joining him. Oh well, might get some work done! Hehe.

Anyway. The rest of October was taken up by preparing for our Halloween party. This year's theme was Pumpkins and Skeletons. So, I thought it would be a good idea to start off in the living room as a funeral parlour and then out through the door into the dining room which was the graveyard. The parlour was dedicated to the pumpkin king and so had a brown/orange alter cloth with a twiggy/orange flower cross, pumpkin stained glass window and of course a pumpkin hollowed out as Jack from Nightmare before Christmas. We had lots of candles and a large yellow throw to tie in colours and a Jack blanket hung up to cover the DVD shelves.

The dining room was covered in black bin liners and I made card 'gravestones' for the chairs and made a card statue to cover my unit in an attempt to make a statue.

I then made a skeleton out of card and laid him on the table. The idea being that the food would represent body bits and would be placed on the skeleton in their respective places.

So: prawn and tuna in mayo (prawns used to line bowl) upturned became brains; hard boiled eggs cut in half and painted with edible food colouring became eye balls; a dish of sweetcorn with red pepper strips around the outside became lips and teeth. Placed on the skull.

Celery, carrot and cucumber strips were arm bones. Rolls cut into heart shapes = heart (obviously); hot dogs cut into strips, cooked and mixed with BBQ sauce = intestines. Guacamole = bile dip; tomato sauce = blood; hummus = cholesterol. Then cheese pastry cut into bone shapes were the legs. I also did bowls of lettuce with marmite 'snails' (puff pastry spread with marmite and rolled up) and slime stuffed beetles (dates stuffed with cream cheese and walnuts, coloured green with edible colouring).

Pudding was worms in green jelly (brown jelly worms arranged in half filled bowl of green jelly, another layer placed on top, left to set and more jelly worms strategically placed on top and poked in). Dessicated coconut coloured green and sprinkled on as grass. Plus a variety of ghoulishly iced cakes care of A Zombie Ate My Cupcake by Lily Vanilli (brains, gravestones and mummies) + a concoction of popcorn, M&Ms and melted marshmallows which tasted fine, but looked remarkably like vomit - coooooool!!! Unfortunately, the food got devoured before I got to take photos - hey ho! Must remember to be quicker next time.

Games were equally ghoulish with spider web 'dart board; musical gravestones; pass the coffin; balloon relay; scary story (blindfolded children, one spooky narrator (my daughter) and various bits and bobs to represent the dead man in the story's body bits = suitably freaked out kids); bobbing for worms (more jelly worms in squirty cream and having to be removed without using hands - very messy) and, of course, bobbing for apples! Callum loves bobbing for apples and there is always a bit of family rivallry going on between him and his 22yr old sister! She just beat him this year by 1 second. Watch out Terri, he'll beat you next time!

Callum joined in for the majority of the games this year. I think age has helped and that he has been included in the arranging and ideas. He wouldn't do the scary story though, but one game out of seven isn't bad! He also loved having the trick or treaters at the door (I give out cakes, not sweets or money) and he even wore his costume (see above). All in all a successful and fun party - well I thought so anyway, haha!

The following day we had to go up the high street and Callum took great delight in spotting all the cake cases or half eaten cakes, commenting "one of ours" at every one he saw!

Our next big event was last weekend. We had tickets for Top Gear Live with MPH Show at Earls Court on November 5th. Was a long day, but worth every penny. On booking the tickets way back in whenever I discovered that (in the small print) a carer could go free. I had to fill in an onscreen form and one of the ticket sales team rang the following day to find out more details. To be honest I wasn't holding out much hope as I assumed it would be more for the wheelchair bound rather than ASD Spectrum, but on explaining Callum's problem he stated that we were indeed entitled to a free ticket. This meant that the money I'd put aside for the show would now get me an upgrade to Gold tickets! Am soooooo glad I took that advantage.

The Top Gear show itself was brilliant. Lots of stunt driving, the boys doing silly stuff, etc, etc. At one point during the Cool Wall section Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson came up into the audience and were literally standing in front of us. I was extremely happy and Callum's face was amazing. They also made his day as they did car football which is always his favourite section in the series on TV. He said to me for ages afterwards that it didn't seem real and that he felt like he'd watched the TV prog in 3D. Took him days before it set in that he'd seen it for real.

The MPH show was brilliant too. Loads of cars on show, loads of stalls, lots of stuff to do, but not many places to sit down and it was extremely busy. This is where having the gold tickets came into its own. We were allowed access to a special area where there were tables and chairs and a separate place for drinks and eating. It meant that everytime Callum felt overwhelmed we had somewhere to take him that was quieter and he was able to calm down. Best parts of the show for Callum were the Bugatti Veyron (yep it was really there) - he took loads of photos on his DSi, the Lambogini (don't ask me which one) and the Peel P50. He actually got persuaded to have his photo taken in that one and hopefully that will be coming in the post soon.

We picked up Tshirts, free magazines, posters, pencils and other bits and bobs, so he came home a rather happy, but tired, little chappy. Would definitely go again and would definitely go for Gold (might even upgrade to Platinum).

The following day we went to a firework display and on the Sunday we had our own at home. Callum actually had sparklers this time and went outside!!! Best thing I did this year was buy proper ear defenders for kids. Edx Kids, bright red. Callum loves them. I bought them for Top Gear as the sales guy said it would be noisy and they worked. He wears them for everything now if he feels it may be too much. It has meant he has been able to join in so much more over past couple of weekends, I wish I'd bought them before although I'm not sure if he would have worn them before.

Anyway, since then, as I've already said, we've been a bit up and down healthy wise, but we are getting there. Needed the rest though - haha.

Cya

Hi all

Thought I'd do a mid week update - it's better than nothing, haha.

I should be doing other things, but my brain has not been functioning very well this week, so am going to do this instead.

What has been going on in Callum's World this week? Well, for starters he had his first guitar lesson on Monday night with a friend of mine. Callum had been given an acoustic guitar a while ago by his best mate who had upgraded and Callum has had a bit of a thrash about on it a couple of times. I asked him, at the time, if he fancied lessons, but he wasn't too keen as he didn't want anyone telling him what to do. But as time has gone on I could see he was beginning to get a bit frustrated. I told him about a friend of mine who is a lot of fun and it wouldn't be a 'serious' lesson and would he like to give it a go. He said yes, so we did!

The lesson went quite well actually and Callum did seem to pick up a couple of the chords quite quickly although he was having trouble holding the guitar properly. He is pretty good at thrashing the strings, but trying to play chords with one hand and strum with the other took a bit of getting used to. To add to the problem, Callum is left handed, but the guitar is right handed! However, he found it just as easy to hold/play with either so we stuck with right handed, but I think, as he is using the opposite side of his brain to normal, he was finding it a bit difficult to be consistant.

Peter let him have a go on the electric guitar and the pair of them thrashed out some noise together and Callum had a huge grin on his face. He now wants an electric guitar! Hmmm, thanks Peter! Anyway, he had an hour's play about and basic lesson and it's now up to him if he wants to continue. He had a good time, but is unsure of committing himself. Will leave until after Halloween I think and then ask again.

Another first this week is him (and his best mate Callum D) being left at Youth Club on their own this time. It kind of isn't first time as they have been to activity days, but this is a little different and they obviously stay in the building. They both went off quite happily, but seemed pleased when I returned to pick them up. Apparently there was a five year old girl who was lethal at table tennis - their words not mine - who had nearly whacked both of them in the eye with the pingpong ball. They laughed about it in the car all the way home, making up sillier and sillier ways of getting hurt - at least they were using their imagination.

Wednesday we were invited to a birthday party which started in McDonalds and then on to bowling. Today did not go well for Callum! I advised he had breakfast before we got there, but he chose in his ultimate wisdom not to have any. This, of course, meant he was starving by the time we got there and wanted to eat there and then. Unfortunately there was also some children he didn't know, so he went off in the corner and sat with us mums, moaning and stressing about food. I decided that, as I was hungry too, I'd go down, order myself a Big Mac meal, come back, give him my Big Mac and I'd eat my fries and then once he got his meal (Kids meal cheeseburger and chips), he could give me his cheeseburger. I know that that doesn't really make sense in the swapsy way, but he wanted two burgers in a bun and I knew that they didn't do that in a kids meal, so we swapped as I only wanted a single burger. Anyway, he got some food and all was calm for a bit.

Then we went off to bowling! He stressed about the shoes as he hates the feel of them and doesn't do laces, so off to the side we went and we managed to sort out shoes that were comfy with laces tied. Down the stairs to the alley itself and, as is normal for a kids party, chaos reigned as kids needed to be sorted into alleys, names needed to be inputted and there was a general feeling of hubbub and noise. Also the lane that Callum was put onto had a group of adults next door and I think this sent him over the edge! We had tears, we had 'I hate bowling' (which I know he doesn't), we had 'I don't want to be here, but I don't want to go home', we had more tears, we had snotty nose, dribble and general burying in mummy! Those mums that know Callum and myself well basically left him (and myself) alone, but kept a watchful eye - thank you mums! Those that don't know us kept asking if he was ok and could they get him a drink, etc, etc and although I appreciate their concern and thank them, it wasn't helping! However, eventually after much calm talk and reassurance, he was back to normal and joined in the game scoring a strike on his first attempt and coming 2nd overall. He then went on to play a 2nd game, coming 1st!

The only downside to this is that I find he goes from one extreme to the other and he became more and more hyper as the time went on. Thank you Carol for once again putting up with him leaping all over you and pretending to be a plane! And thank you again Lorraine for pretty much the same thing!

He did, overall, have a good time!

Today was bounce! He bounced today, although didn't do any serious work. He was also pretty hyper with the rest of the kids. A residue from yesterday me thinks. However, they were all a bit more active this week and on returning home I checked the moon phase to discover that it was 98% full moon, so that may have something to do with it.

Hopefully off to pictures tomorrow.

So that's it! Midweek news done. Cya