Teddy bear, teddy bear, you're so funny

and utterly adorable when you cause my Small to sing with you!

Wind back a bit. This afternoon, on our way home from Melrose, we stopped in at the metrocentre. (Sidestep – hugely amused by Big spelling out Metro kent-re, then agreeing with me that just possibly it might be the metro centre after all….) While we were wandering about, we came across a charity fundraising stall. You know the kind of thing – bright cheerful ppl in colourful T shirts trying to get you to sign forms to give them money. Anyway, this particular charity is one I’ve noticed round and about, and for fairly obvious reasons, its cause is rather dear to my heart. So we stopped for a chat.

Turned out that the woman (well, OK, cheerful American cheerleader) that we started to talk to has the same name as my sister. This makes her the second person I’ve met with that name 🙂 So after we’d got over that shock, we got talking about children and communication, and obviously about the fact that Small hasn’t been talking for very long. He played to the crowd, refused point blank to sign, and ran around talking the hind legs off all donkeys (or at least yellow T-shirted fundraisers in their stead 😉 ) So I signed up to send them some of my hard earned cash every month. I used to have a charity when I worked before, and seems good to have one again. Then in a bizarre twist of fate, it turned out that I was the 150th person to sign up with them, so we won the teddy bear. The talking teddy bear at that. The kids were thrilled, and someone produced a digital camera and asked if it was OK to take piccies for their magazine. Now, being a bit of a cynic at times, I’ve got to wonder if it really was just happy coincidence that their 150th signer also has two particularly photogenic children, one of whom has had communication difficulties in the past. Hm. Ah well. We still got the teddy 🙂

And Small took him to bed tonight, and was singing along with him. It doesn’t get an awful lot better.