Birthday part the second

given that presents on Thursday night count as part one 😉

Long day though first, as there was lots to be done. Small had a hearing appt first thing this morning, so he and I were out bright and early (well, 9.30, which is bright and early for a Saturday I think 😉 ) and he navigated us into town with his upside down West Yorkshire atlas. He got a round of smiles when he walked into the health centre still using it that way!

He really enjoyed the hearing test (he would, wouldn’t he?) Still not convinced that it tested to the limits of hearing, as I heard the vast majority of the sounds, but it was certainly the most thorough test yet. The audiologist said that if it wasn’t for the family history and the slow speech development, she’d have discharged him there and then. As it is, she’s going to recall him in 9 months for an independent ear test – ‘he’s what, 3 now?’ she asked.

‘Not til May.’

‘ah, he’s a bright boy then. Well, I still think he’ll be able to do the headphones test in 9 months, so we’ll try it then.’

Could have been wrong, but I suspect if she’d tried it this morning he’d have surprised her 😉

So that’s good news. I suspect we’re never going to find a cause for the speech reluctance, but as it’s coming on pretty drastically now, I’m not so sure I care all that much. He still signs a fair bit, but he’s also willing to try to speak (or shout, :grin:) so he’s becoming more intelligible to ppl outside the immediate family which is good.

After the hearing, we shopped and then home for lunch. Then I parcelled up and headed out to the post office, having first checked it was open. It wasn’t. 😡 Rant alert: What is the point of having an easily updateable website with information about your branch opening times if you don’t keep it up to date???? Anyway, hiss, spit, ebay parcels not posted, but I bought birthday cake and came on home.

First guest rolled up within about 20 minutes of me arriving back, just as Big and I were setting up to do some more programming. So that went by the board, and she was rather disappointed. Must try to fit some in tomorrow, as I’d really like to keep up the momentum with that. The other thing that she did a couple of times today, was demand that I write her out ‘some maths’ by which we discovered she meant sums, and then mark them when she’d done them. She did that a couple of times, even once she had lots of ppl around to play with!

Small was thrilled to see other boys – amazing the way he idolises them, especially Big’s friend A. Probably helped by the fact that they look similar – used to be when I was out with Big and A I’d get comments about how lovely it was to have twins 🙂 They don’t look particularly similar now, as Big is, well, Big, and A is more small (with a lower case ‘s’ 😉 ), but 5 years down the line from meeting as not even toddlers, they are still incredibly close. A has moved away now, and I had this mental picture of them being at least an hour away. Turns out that it’s more like 25 minutes, so I can see weekends still involving sleepovers after all 🙂

Anyway, I digress. Lots of children, lots of pizza, some tea and barleycup, and a generally pleasant evening all round. Finally poured those staying over into bed just after 8, and left Big reading them a bedtime story, Bear in Sunshine. Still quite remarkably chuffed at her doing that sort of thing 🙂

As we’re off and about tomorrow, may not blog til later. Plus I have to find a missing library book, “Family Circle” Easy Sweaters: 50 Knit and Crochet Projects, – got a letter from the council solicitors today! Bit annoyed actually, I only remember one reminder, so had hoped that I’d taken it back already, although a sneaking suspicion that it’s lurking somewhere in a pile in a corner. But please explain to me why they want to charge me £19.95 to replace it – does it really cost libraries that much more to buy books? They are doing something wrong if it does…