My week in brief - 23/03/14

I love Sunday nights! While most people are dreading Monday morning being just a few hours away, I like to think about the week gone by, and make plans for the coming week. Sometimes it's nice just to relax with a hot chocolate and reflect.

This past week has been mainly uneventful. Neil was off School on Monday because St Patricks day is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland, and then was off again on Tuesday as he wasn't well. He wasn't well for the most of last weekend actually, after vomiting everywhere on Friday, he was fine on Saturday and then on Sunday morning woke up with a temperature of 40c and an awful chesty cough. He spent most of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday just lazing around, looking like death.

On Thursday night I went along to an 'Autism parent time' meeting. I signed up for it a few months ago and had almost forgotten about it until an alarm on my pad reminded me. I wasn't really sure what to expect, and was actually ready to change my mind about it at last minute, but I thought I would just go along and see what it was all about.

Because I had dilly dallied, I was one of the last to arrive, and there's really nothing better than walking in to a room full of strangers all sitting around tables silently. To get started, the lady leading the group asked everyone to introduce themselves, and tell everyone a little about their 'autism story'. It was a bit like an AA meeting, but for parents of Children with Autism. "Hi, I'm Lauren, and my son has ASD".

This was something I had actually mentioned to my hubby when I was deciding if I should go or not. When she asked us to do introductions, I debated for a moment just walking out. When I'm in the company of people I know, I could literally talk the hind legs off a donkey, but strangers? No thanks!

I decided to stick at it though, and it was nice to hear everyone's stories. After the introductions, there was a chance just to chat, and for people to ask the group for advice on certain things. I suppose everyone has their own experiences and may be able to share some knowledge on things that they are familiar with. It's on for another 3 weeks, so I look forward to seeing how it goes.

I was working on Friday and Saturday, and once I get home from work and we've had dinner there isn't much time to do anything so we just had a few relaxing evenings.

Today we went out for a walk in the sunshine and got some Ice cream. The weather was beautiful, but it was still flippin freezing! It's deceiving at this time of year, the sun feels warm through your windows and you convince yourself it's warm enough to start wearing summer clothes, well I can assure you, it's not!

During our walk, Neil started to exhibit a new fear. Lamp-posts. He's spent years in this village, walking the same streets, but today he decided he couldn't walk certain ways because the lamp-posts were too big and might fall on him. He proceeded to scream and shake with fear every time we went too close to one. Only certain ones though, big ones, apparently the one outside of our front garden is ok because it is it only little.

I'm not sure where this fear has come from, but he seems to take these notions when we are out walking, like the time he screamed his whole way up the hill to our house because he was afraid of heights. The hill to our house from the main street in really only a small incline, but he was terrified and I had to carry him home.

I'm a bit anxious for the week ahead, as we have an appointment at the Autism Assessment Centre for Neil on Tuesday, which brings us one step closer to diagnosis. Strangely, the appointment is for my hubby and I, without the wee man, apparently another appointment will be made to see him in the future, so I'm not sure what to expect. It feels a bit frustrating, as I feel this appointment will just be us answering all of the questions that we have already answered when we saw the Pediatrition in the hospital in November, but I suppose you have to go through this process if you want to get everything sorted.

I'm looking forward to a block of 3 days off this week though, which will be nice!