i'm bad, i'm bad, you know it, i'm bad

It would appear that last time I was here, I made all sorts of rash promises about being a better blogger, not leaving all my lovely readers in the dark, committing to the blog, and so on.  Promises, promises.  I guess I am just über-slack.  (But proud that, twenty years later, I remembered to use an umlaut on the u in über.  Frau Finlayson, what was that C all about?)

So what's been happening on board my ship of fools lately?

Well, in no particular order, we bought a new car.  It's a white wagon.  Where has my cool gone?  I love it and its capacious boot (trunk) which has ample room for my stroller, the dogs, and some luggage.

Because we are now a two car family, Pacino (and for Pacino, read ME!!) had to organise a park in the city.  Holy Guacamole Batman, the City Council must be ski-ing in Aspen on what they charge to park a car!  However, we found one that won't require us to sell one of our children in order to pay for it, so it's all good.

The Gig is on school holidays.  Yay for not making school lunches.  Yay for not waking a sleeping pre-adolescent!  Yay for not having that sick, sinking feeling in my stomach as I wait in the car wondering how her day was, and if the mean girls were mean today.

Oh, and the Gig is nearly eleven.  I know what you're thinking.  How on earth, you're wondering, could Millie possibly have an eleven year old daughter?  She's far too young, freshfaced and hip to be old enough for that!  What?  You weren't thinking that at all? 

As for my little Bear, he's doing really well.  He is getting a new word roughly once a fortnight, and appears to be keeping them so far.  He has developed a massive case of Echolalia (repeating random words and noises with no sense of their meaning), which can be, depending on the circumstances and my mood, very funny, very depressing or very annoying.  I try to focus on the fact that it's really very encouraging, as the mere forming of the words shows that the capacity for speech, in whatever form, is there.

He has also developed a few new ASD traits.  This is probably the real reason I haven't been blogging lately.  I just haven't felt ready to talk about it yet, but haven't been able to think of anything else to blog about.  He has started hand-flapping, and also a funny little face-flicking thing that's very hard to describe, and his new obsession is unscrewing jars.  Nothing, nothing, I tell you, is safe from his exploration.  I seem to spend my days now running along behind him trying to clear the path of his destruction.  And he's not a destructive child.  He doesn't break things on purpose; it's more that he literally can't rest until he's explored what he needs to explore.  I am beyond exhausted.

We are waiting desperately for the call to say he has a place at the ASD specific centre.  I can't wait; he really needs it.  I do too, for what it's worth.

Anyway, that's what we've been doing lately.  I'll try to be a better bloggy-girl from now on (but a word of warning - I'll be away towards the end of this week visiting my sister who is about to abandon me move to England with her family. 

Right, I have a whole lot of blog reading to catch up on - I'm looking forward to finding out what's been going on in your lives.  See you later!