Monday 5 September 2011

Some things change, and others just stay the same...

This morning, O went to Pre-School. It's not quite as a big a deal as it could be - last term he was going there one morning a week, but this term he will be going four days a week, two of them whole days, so it does represent the start of his life moving ever so slightly out of my control, which is a little scary. (As I type this, M has approached me and hijacked my lap, so I'm not completely bereft yet. And stop whacking the keyboard, you pesky little thing!)

It's been strange this morning, only having the one child to look after again, and knowing that this will be increasingly how things are over the coming weeks. Next year, he will be at school, and the year after that, even M will be gone in increasing amounts. Well, that's a long way off, but I tend to react this way whenever anything changes - I start envisioning further changes and how those changes may cause more changes, and how that will, ultimately, turn my eternal quest for routine on its head again.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had a seizure this morning. Well, I had a seizure yesterday, and two on Saturday, so this isn't particularly news, although it's unusual for me to have seizures in the morning. I guess it's probably all that contemplating about change. I have this paradoxical love and hatred of things being different. On the one hand, doing the same damn thing every day and never being spontaneous drives me mad. I hate it. It's dull. On the other hand, too much change, and I can't keep up. I start to forget things more - especially my medication, which then means I have more seizures, which then means that things change again as I have to adapt to the limitations that imposes. For example, this summer I have had more seizures (a lot more) which has meant I haven't been able to take O and M out. This has obviously had the knock on effect of having to entertain them more within the confines of our house, take O along on the occasions where we do go out to stretch his legs and offer some variety, and lean rather more heavily on W's parents and their larger garden to offer him somewhere to run around.

It has made me feel a lot more under pressure, which hasn't helped. I must admit, to a certain extent I have been counting down the days to this just waiting and hoping that it will offer a reprieve for my health. It quite possibly won't - after all, I still have M at home with me, and I still have a wedding in...less than five weeks. Yikes, I should probably get to work on that skirt, shouldn't I. (Actually, I'm remarkably laid back about that, all things considered. I worry W, because I have an unfinished top and no skirt at all, and my opinion on the matter is, "Eh, just chill, I can get it done!")

Anyway. O is back from his first morning of the term now, and says he had a lovely time, just playing with toys and "the other kids". Hmm. He also says he didn't go to the toilet, he "just pretended to wash his hands" and he didn't have a snack or a drink. I think perhaps he is not the most reliable person to ask. Tomorrow my mission will be to find out what he actually gets up to during the day, at least vaguely. While I wouldn't be surprised to find he has told me a whole heap of codswallop about his morning (he is, after all, three years old), it also wouldn't be impossible for him to have slipped through the net on a chaotic first day. He does have a tendency to get so wrapped up in play that he doesn't want to do anything else, and I know that the pre-school have a more free-form attitude to snack time than we do here at home. They have to go and get the snack themselves, and I wouldn't put it past O to have just not bothered, while they might have expected him, as a child who has been before, to know what to do and be more focused on the children who are brand new.

Oh, look, I've found something else to worry about. I think my brain has it in for me. Why can't I take my own advice and just chill?

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