Holiday over, bring on Christmas!

Well that was over far to quickly! It was nice to get away and be just the three of us for a while. We spent some time with one of my best friends who lives near to where we stay. It's one of the reasons for going there. We were at college together, nearly twenty years ago now. I lover her to bits and I wish we lived closer. But her life took her to East Sussex and ours took us to Cornwall. But we try to catch up at least once a year. So far she had been pregnant almost every time we see her! She is twenty weeks with her forth. Her first baby was a lovely little girl who died within seconds of being born. Jamie was only a few months old at the time. She then went on to have two healthy boys within 18months of each other. And now, with the youngest only just turned 18 months, she's five months gone with baby number four. But when I visit them there are two beautifully framed poems dedicated to little Libby, and it makes me realise how grateful I am to have Jamie. With all his problems he is here.

So then. On my last blog I made a thing of saying how I was going to increase my word count on novel number two. Well, um.. how shall I put this? I didn't write anything all week. I took the lap top and notebooks, and lots of good intentions. Then everything else got in the way. So now I need to start again. Hopefully having a week off will be a good thing. I did think through a few things and decided a couple of scenes need reworking. So I shall set to work. Well I'll do as much as I can with Christmas and all that.

Can well all please take a moment to mourn the passing of Charlie. My parents were left in charge of the cats and fish while we were away. And under there care Charlie died. To be far I shouldn't think there would have been much they could have done. As Bonnie said about her own poor Gilbert, there aren't many fish doctors about. But that was not all. We had a call mid week to say they had to take Twinkle to the vets because she was limping. Twinkle is the prettiest little black cat you can imagine. She seems to be getting better now though. On the up side however out black and white Mollies have had babies! So we mush be doing something right. There are three tiny little fish swimming around, so cute!

Jamie loved his holiday, although he didn't sleep much. And he had started playing with 'proper' toys. Before we went he had taken an interest in his leap pad. But while we were away he started playing with a postman pat van belonging to Elizabeth's boys, and a singing IgglePiggle that we bought him in Brighton. He has taken IgglePiggle to bed, which I think might prove a mistake. I can foresee a night spent listening to him sing.

Autism confirmed

We had the call from one of Jamie's doctors the other day. He has so many different professionals involved with him, about 11 at last count. Anyway this was the local community paediatrician who had organised the autism assessment. The various bods who had been into school to meet Jamie all met up and decided that, yes, he is autistic as well. I have to say I'm still not 100% convinced. I have a first cousin with Ashburgers (spelling?) and when I look at the two of them together they are so different. For one thing Jamie does what everyone says autistics never do, shows affection. And he looks directly at you when you speak to him, and will come and give you a hug without any prompting. There are autistic traits there. He goes off in his own world, is very obsessive about certain things (although he's never bothered about any change in routine), flaps and 'sings' to himself. I don't know.

The trouble is that Sotos is still such an unknown syndrome. It is quite possible that the autism experts who came to see him have never experienced Sotos. If you read about Sotos it almost always says 'autistic like traits', but it is not part of the autistic spectrum. I would have been happier if a Sotos expert had looked at him and said that certain aspects of his behavior were not Sotos. It would be very easy for someone with no experience of Sotos to assume he must be autistic. The trouble is there are no Sotos experts out there, as far as we know. I just hope the autistic diagnosis doesn't overshadow the Sotos, which I still think is the dominant condition.

We had to cancel the lumber puncture because Jamie developed a really nasty ear infection. He's still on antibiotics three weeks later. His main paediatrician, who was going to do it, decided to cancel until it had cleared up. And as we're off on holiday on Sat I guess it won't happen this side of Christmas now. Still at least it will be done in Barnstaple rather than Bristol.

Just to make the week even more fun thee of the new fish died. The two Rams and one of the Gurami's (not Guppies as I said before) got white spot. They must have come from the shop with it because they had only been in the tank two days. Still a lot of funny blue stuff in the water and a water change seems to have done the trick, the others are all fine. And amazingly the five cats haven't taken the blindest bit of notice of them. I was expecting them to line up with napkins and cutlery!

On a positive note, the sun's out!!!