Dec

The Evil Numbers

On the ‘eve’ of the mysterious celebration of Christmas, I am sure a heading describing something evil, will be all alerting for some!

Dear all, it would appear that the 6 year old has been a little too busy to write his own blog therefore, his Mother will be taking over diary writing in his absence.

Jarrod has been spending a number of days during the week with his Daddy at work, and is so living it up, despite the numbers being Evil. He gets dressed in the mornings sans help???? And packs a bag (there is some intervention from to change it up every day), he prances out the door with a lunchbox saying he doesn’t want to be late for work. He runs to the elevator with wild abandon. Ahem, where was this attitude for school.

Jay-bee is about 5 tasks from technically getting into Grade 1. For home schooling, I am feeling quite positive for him. Considering when I got him back he really couldn’t even remember how to count to 10, I think he has made great strides. I keep having to remind myself how much he has done and remember that you need to ‘parent the child you get and not the child you want’. Who knew that the Post Traumatic Stress was so intense?

I have to say that my sweet, happy, secure child has become one who cries at the drop of a hat and struggles to hold it together on any given day for the full day. Working with a therapist has been really enlightening and of course Jarrod has made progress, but since the grommets experience he has been on a recovery curve. Meaning he has dredged up memories from his days in hospital and has put them into the forefront of his existence. He is still in recovery mode, unfortunately the anaesthesia was ketamine based which gives terrible hallucinations and mares. Poor pumpkin is back in our bed and sleeping on top of one or the other parent. We don’t begrudge it. We’ve chosen to nurture.

Another unfortunate thing is that due to intubation and regression he has not eaten properly in weeks. There are a number of negative things that special kids live with, ours is life or death and accepting that can sometimes be difficult. We want to know what is happening but we don’t. We are not in a position to go overseas to have the angiogram done. However, SA doctors are too scared to do anything. I get that they don’t want to make it worse, but let’s just have a look. That being said, I must also confess I have avoided doing an MRI because if there is bad news, there is nothing physically to be done about it.

So back to Jarrod. I was hoping for better speech considering the amount of one-on-one time he spends with me, but ceremoniously he managed to lose six front teeth, top and bottom. Why ceremoniously? We now have a say it don’t spray it approach to speech. Jarrod himself is quite a scrooge with teeth, has not allowed a tooth fairy, tooth mouse or any other magical figure into our house to collect and dispense with the monetary value of a tooth. These 6 teeth are safely locked up in my safe, in a jewellery box – Jarrod’s choice.

I am not sure if I sing really badly, but Jarrod now hates it when I sing and refuses, stamps feet and gets all grumpy if I sing. He on the other hand is becoming quite the singer, and this includes modern music, classics and Disney. He avidly watches the signboards on the road to ensure he hasn’t missed any movies in the wake of the fact that he believes his parents are no good at keeping all these ‘fun’ activities in control. Despite this, he has managed to see 3 in the last month. He also makes sure he visits You Tube in order to download, watch and reiterate the number of toys associated with the movie that he doesn’t own yet.

We have spent a number of fun afternoons at Granny’s clubhouse, swimming and eating ice cream and eating calamari. I have taken to carrying a costume and towel with me in my car. Although as per Jarrod’s early days in our previous house, he is not above just diving in. You’ll notice in the pictures that Jarrod has dispensed this month with his arm bands. This was aided by Michka just popping one as it lay outside. This is not before he gave me a hectic run around at Sun City. Daddy was invited to the Nedbank Golf Challenge and we took the opportunity to play games and swim. Unfortunately the beach was closed. Who closes a beach during the busiest week of the year?

Our Mom’s tea club had our final tea of the year with all kids and parents in attendance. We swam, played in the tree house and thanks to Colleen, George and Joseph, we had a great time. Daddy joined us after Poker. Thanks to Eskom we had a great adventure of dinner by candlelight and torch. Ironically the lights sprang to life, just as George had finally managed to cook the Malva pudding on gas by candlelight! It was a great afternoon and evening and for the first time in a long time I fell asleep in the car.

You’ll notice in the pictures my child got to his first advent calendar early, hence the need for us to repurchase and recount the chocolates. You’ll see Jarrod pouring over the numbers in book and on flash cards in the pictures. Don’t be fooled, this was not an easy task to accomplish. He looks so competent when you see these pictures, but it takes, bribery, anger and tears to achieve this look. It looks great doesn’t it? Very studious and all that.

According to Jarrod school is easy, but numbers are Evil. My problem is I don’t know what constitutes evil in a 6.5 year old’s life. I monitor his TV but tend to tune out with his You Tube access, although spelling is something he has achieved easily. I suppose different parts of the brain in our case. His vocabulary has become very good in the last few weeks and we talk all day and a lot of the night. You’ll see a picture below with counting blocks, Jarrod loves blocks. He loves planning (drawing) his build and delivering it with great drama in his voice. I need to tell you that the task set was that of 1 block under 1, 2 blocks under 2 and so on, and so forth. Believe it or not that bundle of blocks, has all those components in them, as I was taken through it. However not in the context or format which I wanted. I will have to be clearer in my instruction next time. Clever little nuisance. He made me a Lego crabby patty and counted the number of Lego and informed me beforehand just in case I asked him. *shrugs, pouts and sighs*

Peppa Pig recently made an appearance from Jarrod’s character box. He has all sorts of characters in there and many puppets to boot and he loves to take them through routines and stories as the day goes along. This includes dressing up from his dress up kit daily. There are always forms of superhero’s and people coming out of Jarrod’s bedroom, but not often Jarrod. He even sleeps with a fox mask on. Funny child.

We’ve had a good weekend this weekend with Dad being home and not having to work. We have slept late, gone bowling, played Wii and generally got into a bit of a holiday spirit. Mom was offered a 4 hour a week job, lecturing, so we’ll plan around that next year. Also Jarrod has received some Christmas presents, he is patiently waiting and every now and then bursts into tears telling me how difficult it is for him to understand why he cannot open them. He has three new decorations for his collection this year, which is very generous of friends.

We are homebound this year and we are going to have to find some activities to keep Jarrod busy with. He has hectic energy at the moment. His parents should be thinner and fitter, but hey.

We’ll wish you a wonderful festive season and we’ll blog before the New Year.

To all a good night.

Mom