Mood: grumpy! peaved!
We're back from our holidays, but I lost all my photos in one tragic moment when my smartmedia card came out of my camera and got erased by the bright sunshine (at least that's all I can work out that happened) - the pic's were there minute, gone the next - all 80 of them!! Valuable un-repeatable pictures of people, some of whom we may never see again due to their age, at my Nan's 80th surprise party and then some other lovely ones of Paul's brother and nephew, who we rarely see either, together with our own children. I am gutted to say the least! :(
An update on the plants;
We came home to find my neightbour, who had been asked to water the plants and feed the guinea pig in the absense of all my friends (who were also on their hols), had over watered them. Despite me saying to only water them if didn't rain for two days, she did it 3 times a day - according to the little boy upstairs! I planted them in water-retaining compost on the basis that kids forget - so they were completely water-logged - 2 inches of water on top of the soil!! The peas & beans were ruined :( They were just beginning to flower when we left and there were a few tiny beans, but when we got back they were all floppy and dying. Pouring off the water didn't help - just disturbed them more and now they are all but dead! But the sunflowers loved all the water of course and they shot up. The Pumpkins did OK too, but then our perilous other-neighbour drove over the only two baby pumkins we had growing! We seem to have a lot of flowers, but only two actual pumkins - and now they are gone too! As you can see the toms are doing fine, but there doesn't appear to be any fruit on them yet... Here's hoping we get something edible from all this! Oh to have a REAL garden and grow things with the hazards of pots & cars!! So this is how it all looks right now - looks more impressive than it actually is I think! (click the Fickr album on the right to see more plant pics).
We've started back with a little school (just Bible and finishing-off / reviewing last years maths + lots of class TV!!), but things haven't changed much! Over the summer Jake seemed to relax a fair bit, but as soon as anything is required of him that is not his own choice to do it's a whole new ball game - and that's not just to do with school stuff. We have started on the assessment route with a little trepidation. My GP was happy to go ahead on my reasoning and refer him to an ADHD clinic. They then sent out a community Paed' to pre-assess him at the surgery - in a doctor's room! She was less than helpful really. She talked to me a lot and hardly spoke to him at all. She was Asian and her English was not to intelligable by either him or me (not meaning to be rude or anything - that is just the truth) and I had to speak really slowly for her to understand me! She had never met anyone who home-schooled before and was completely stumped by it (seemed horrified in fact) as it meant we couldn't jump through the right hoops for her - i.e. have a school assessment done! She totally missed 'attentiveness' cues that she should have picked up on, like Jacob failing to complete a list of his siblings' names and ages without going off on a tangent - well actually he just stopped talking mid-sentance! I was really not impressed. She said he had sat well throught the interview - but she was looking at me and had missed all the fidgetting going on while she was note-taking what I said - and he was in a doctors surgery where he knows he is expected to sit still, so he tries to! But the up-shot is he will now have a 'speech and language' assessment, plus I have to fill in 'school' forms, Paul has to fill in 'parent' forms and Helen has to fill in 'other close acquaintance' forms - then we see where to go from there... Hoops, hoops and red-tape! Why can't he simply have a face-to-face, comprehensive assessment with a proper psychiatrist and skip all the beurocracy? Ho-Hum!!
Baby stirs - now feeding 3 times a night - rrrrr! That was NOT the plan! P's back too!
I'll try to post again tommorrow - bet I don't!
