of a 41yr old English girl
I am finally “officially” participating in the digital scrapbook blog train. I have in the past just uploaded the kit I designed with the colours, a little later once I had finished but for once I was ahead and got things done and uploaded in plenty of time! Go me!
Rather excitingly, I got back into designing. After planning on getting to Level 3 last year, sadly time did not allow me to be able to do it and I uploaded one design for the entire year. This year I was determined to get to level 3. I made a plan and set up Obsidian so that I can view and keep an archive of what I’m working on and what I need to do. I managed to do it just last week by uploading the 150th design of Level 2!
Becoming Level 3 means I now have bigger upload caps and the ability to upload a small number of kits and 1 bundle per week. So I started with the OG kit. The Commons is a place where people upload their designs for free 🙂 You can download each item for free as you can get 5 free downloads every day (so as not to overwhelm the site!) On the bundle page it will list all elements, papers and cards that are available to download plus each kit. To complete level 3 I need to just upload 300 designs (have uploaded 10 this week, so 290 to go!) at the moment, the rest of my starts are looking great! All being well I should get listed for level 4 by the end of the year if I keep up the momentum 😉 It also gives me a sense of purpose and something to aim towards at present.
I have an old blog train post from April 2021 that I shall be packaging up next week due to the 1 bundle a week rule on the site and I shall be sure to post it here as well – it is a blog train kit after all, and a great start to add to the tag here. I can’t guarantee I will be participating every month. I’ve hit a creative wall a fair few times over the years of trying to join in and have the kits started but never finished as it doesn’t look as good as I had hoped. So we shall see!
Here we are, February 2024 and our tribunal is in April. The LA (local authority) refused to accept that Dylan needed a specialist setting so we appealed, they denied and we have been in the tribunal process since. Dylan’s current school cannot meet his needs and therefore he has not been in school for almost a year now – things started going downhill from Easter last year and he has struggled to attend school since. It took us until almost half way through to January of this year for Dylan to receive mentoring in the hopes that things will begin to improve and he will get out of the house. He has had 3 weeks of sessions and now it’s half term so we have gone right back to how things were previously. Hoping next week we can start getting back in to a routine.
The LA approached a number of other mainstream schools and they all cannot take Dylan. Our preference has rejected him twice now, and there are no other specialist schools with space or able to meet need. We are pretty stuck. I am pinning all hopes on a school that opens this September – that it will be the right setting (with his needs being met for sensory etc and for his academic ability) and that he gets a space. Otherwise we just got to hope that’s something right comes up, send him to a school that will meet his needs but won’t challenge him academically until he is settled and then will be moved (which will then cause issues as he doesn’t handle change well) into a setting that can challenge him.
I’m still learning, have been reading books on PDA (pathological Demand avoidance) and just this week started a new book on declarative language to make Dylan’s life at home a little less stressful – we need him to brush his teeth, get dressed in clean clothes and today I did manage to get him to wash his hair but it was a struggle… Need to read some more of the book!
I am trying to give myself some goals to aim for in the groundhog days we are in. I want to be level 3 designer at digitalscrapbook.com and I want to finish the other SEN books I have been reading for a while. Level 3 will be complete in just 2 weeks now so I’m excited for that. As for the other books, I need to finish the declarative language book first and then dive into the PDA book before finishing off the sensory smart one. Once all those are done I have more to read, but the next one will be The Explosive Child as I’ve heard good things about that one.
Freaking heck, another year has almost gone. Tomorrow is the 1st of December and I plan on doing a month-long journaling exercise in a book – I will be participating in December Daily but I just doubt I will do anything creative during the month as I often end up finishing the project another time. In fact, I am behind on 2020 and 2021, so this writing every day will hopefully help with the creative side of things when I come to do it. I keep my documents on my Google Drive so thankfully I have everything I need including the photos via Google Photos to get it done. Who knows, maybe I will have a bit of downtime and make sure I do some for this year and look at catching up on the others in January. I am behind on my 2021 documenting (almost finished though!) and SO behind on 2022!
It has been a struggle this year. So many things going on for Dylan – numerous meetings and seeking help for him. On the 14th of November, we finally got his autism diagnosis. The next step to get any help as we have now been told (geez, thanks local council!) is to access an ADHD assessment. It’s just never-ending. The special needs parenting course I am currently taking finishes on 13th December where we are having a little “Teams video Christmas gathering” so I need to ensure I have some Schloer to drink that day! I am reading and absorbing all the information I can get – books, classes, webinars… You name it. It’s exhausting and it has all taken its toll on me to the point that I’ve been speaking with a mental health specialist and was put on medication. We continue to fight for Dylan to get the help he desperately needs as he is struggling in the school environment. He is very capable of doing the work (as was shown by previous tests he completed when he scored full marks!) but he is demand avoidant with high sensory needs, so we have to go along through the system until we can finally get Dylan into the right school setting for him – and at present, we are starting to worry if that will even be before he starts secondary school. In fact with Dylan’s needs and his EHCP which was granted in July and revised this month, he has to start looking for a secondary school placement a year early and put his options in during the start of year 5 when other children need to do it in year 6. He is currently in year 4. Because of this, I’m starting to think about visiting some of these schools. We did go to visit a specialist school nearby and both me and Gareth absolutely loved it and knew that was the sort of setting Dylan needs, but as we have been told it is super expensive so the likelihood of Dylan getting into that school is very slim. So I know of another specialist school (secondary one) that I will look at visiting and will most likely have to visit some mainstream schools and ask SEN questions of them. We could find a mainstream school, but Dylan will most likely struggle more there as you need to go to different classes and it’ll be busy, and noisy and he wouldn’t manage to get himself to the right class nor keep track of his belongings. He’s said how scared he is that he will be constantly in detention… Plus the school could also say they can not meet his needs and then we will be well and truly stuck.
Anywho, hopefully it won’t be so long until I post again.
Well the inevitable happened. After managing to avoid Covid for so long, after the Christmas return to school and the Omicron variant being absolutely everywhere where I live… So many people I know were posting “It got me!” on social media, and well. It got us too. I was highly angry when it happened as I have been so careful all this time and it just spread through my son’s school and because of the current government rules we didn’t need to be notified about it so the first I was made aware was Dylan being really upset in the middle of the night, complaining of a headache and spending a couple of house awake with him trying to soothe him before suggesting he take a covid Lateral Flow test to be sure (our go to – if you’re out of sorts, take an LFT) and there it was, a very faint line, but I saw it. While my hubby wasn’t so sure and couldn’t see a line himself, Dylan the absolute trouper that he is, took another one for us and it was clear as day on that one a mere 3 hours later.
Being in close contact with Dylan once he had tested to make sure he was OK and if he wanted cuddles and comfort then heck covid or not my boy was getting it. I know he was anxious and upset about it, and those first couple of days for the boy who loves to jump around and won’t keep still, he just lay on the sofa complaining about his bad head and fighting off taking a nap – which for a 10 minute window he couldn’t escape any longer and conked out asleep on the sofa but promptly woke back up. That Monday was day zero for him, and as we are allowed to test from day 5 (you need 2 negative tests in a row to be able to come out of the 10 day isolation early) he continued to test positive and then he did not want to test any longer and was getting visibly distressed. I called the school and explained our dilemma.
Well, of course I woke up on Thursday and felt unwell and took an LFT… Negative. I knew it wasn’t right and booked in for a PCR test through the nearest drive through test centre. I woke up on Friday early still not well at all and tested on the LFT (habit by this point as I was testing daily since Dylan was positive) and boom. Positive. 6.15am my PCR result came in from Thursday and it was indeed positive. Knew that LFT was incorrect. Friday hubby also tested positive on his LFT.
So you see our dilemma. Dylan was due back to school before we were allowed out of isolation and he was still testing positive on day 7, so it didn’t bode well for us. Speaking with the school and going over Dylan’s needs, he was allowed to miss school on Friday – as he was still testing positive before he stopped taking tests, the fact we didn’t even know if we could come out of isolation and just to be sure in addition to the fact he had been off school the whole week before and most of this week to only return for one day… It was deemed setting him up for failure. So he has work set but that’s a whole other battle to get him to do that at home when there is the switch and his tablet to play on. *roll eyes*
Here we are, day 6 for us and I’m still testing positive, I had to miss work last weekend and this weekend is fast approaching – my days 9 and 10 of isolation. Ideally I need to test negative tomorrow and Friday. At the very least I need to get up really early on Friday to test as they need to be taken at least 24 hours apart to count and test in enough time before my shift on Saturday and test negative on both of those. If my result on Friday is still positive then work on Saturday is a no go and I will need to test early Saturday and again on Sunday. If Saturday is still positive then it’s another weekend off work for me 😦 I would then be officially out of isolation on Monday so that would be on the school run with mask as I have been doing it since 2020 and staying at home for a couple more days.
We are really hoping we test negative soon as it is getting to all of us. Dylan needs to go back to school to see his friends, hubs needs to get out of the house, and this mummy needs a nice long quiet bath and a rest which is long over due and dare I say I’m missing the fresh air and walking the school run. I am embracing a Notion set up to help me navigate everything in the home and keep up with everyone and enjoying what it can offer me. I have my Dashboard set up with my important stuff for me personally and I have begun setting up a household Hub that I will add hubby to so that we have things like recipes and a wiki including how to use the washing machine, to hand.
Please keep your fingers crossed for us all! I will be back at some point soon to post about my Memory Keeping plans for 2022 🙂 Until then, chat soon everyone!
We went back into another lockdown at the very end of December and only recently have shops allowed to open (except for essential shops which never closed, like the one I work in) Stay at home changed to Stay Local and then just the other week changed again and the border opened up with Wales and we were allowed to go visit my in-laws and walk around a big field and drop off Christmas presents we have been unable to give them since plans changed back in December. Today was the first time I have ventured out of the house that wasn’t for work/grocery shopping/something important like collecting meds or attending an appointment and to a shop where I spent my Hobby Craft gift card I received for Christmas – I got a super bargain too, a gold glitter effect travellers notebook reduced from £25 to £5!
I put in an application to be a commons designer over at digitalscrapbook.com too. I have dabbled in designing stuff off and on over the years and once I found this great community I decided I’d jump in and do it again as it has been so long. I am currently a level 2 designer and am (slowly) working on getting to level 3! It’s fun to have something to focus on that’s not everything else I have to do. It has been really tough – that third lockdown plus stuff going on in my personal life it has just all weighed me down. Luckily my dad seems to have a bit of time where he is able to get up and about on crutches and he has been out on a mobility scooter to go with my mum when she has gone on a walk, but he still has some bad days where he’s in a lot of pain and can’t do much and it’s really sad to see 😦
Dylan? Well just this week his school hours are now completely returned to normal, though I’ve had some hiccups at pick up time once we have left the playground with him leaving his girlfriend behind – there’s a girl in his class he has been very good friends with for a long time and he said he was in love with her and asked her to be his girlfriend – it’s super cute and it helps me get him to school but a little bit stressful at home time as he doesn’t want to leave her! Just this week she drew him an adorable picture of the 2 of them together that I just had to scan in and preserve for him when he gets older to remember lol. He has also (thankfully!) pulled his front baby tooth out that was giving him problems and it was no wonder it was a struggle to come out as the one side of the tooth was so long it was holding on for dear life LOL! He is relieved it is out and we are hoping his adult teeth which were already coming through, can finish off coming through with ease without that baby tooth stuck in the middle!
For my birthday this year I had a wonderful surprise – I couldn’t get to have it for a while though sadly because I managed to take a chunk out of my thumb literally days after my birthday so that and the fact I had to take the weekend off work as I was in no fit state to go into work with my thumb how it was and not being able to physically do much and I hadn’t had a sick day for 2 years either! But anyway, it was a vintage sewing machine. As someone who can’t sew well at all and had numerous issues with my old machine… It was amazing to get to use my new-to-me machine and was surprised at how quickly I managed to learn how to use it and how much better it is than my old machine!
Anywho that’s pretty much all of an update that I have as there really hasn’t been much more worth to share 🙂
It’s crazy to think it is gone mid November already. This year has been super testing and feels like it has been very long but at the same time it has whizzed by. 2020 has been just… nuts!
In August Dylan was fully embracing the summer fun and no schooling at home anymore, but there were news reports that all children had to return to school in September or parents would face a fine – and we were super anxious about him going back, thinking that in hindsight maybe it was a good idea for him to have returned back in June when the school opened up to just 2 year groups so limited pupils and his year group was one of them. But we kept him home.
The transition back to school wasn’t too bad though he was not keen on going back, he was glad to see his friends. The first term went well. We decorated for Halloween and went on a pumpkin walk on Halloween before it got dark when there weren’t many people out and about. We went for a long walk around the block looking at homes with pumpkins in their windows.
After the half term, Dylan was back at school for just one day when one of our fears were realised… I had a text at lunchtime on the second day back to collect him from school because there was a positive test in his bubble. The way it has worked in schools here is that each class or year group is a “bubble” as there is limited social distancing possible, and that way if there is a positive case, the rest of the school can continue but that bubble needs to isolate for 14 days. So he only returned back to school on Wednesday but they introduced hot school dinners again after providing packed lunches only, but for the infants (Key Stage 1 pupils), so he was happy to have his roast dinner days back, and it was week 3 menu which is his favourite! We were lucky that he was fine those whole 14 days, and as we were not in contact with the positive case, myself and Gareth could continue on as normal so I could go out and get groceries still and go to work, it was only Dylan who had to stay home those 14 days and it was tough going for him.
We were put in a second lockdown the day after Dylan began isolating so apart from work and grocery shopping, I have been happily at home. Gareth has continued to work from home, and work has under gone different measures over the months as well – we have some screens put up which means no more people leaning over our counters (hasn’t stopped people putting their heads down to the opening at the bottom of the screen nor trying to reach underneath…) but it is much nicer. We are supposed to finish lockdown on December 2nd but I’m not very confident that where I live will go back into tier 1 restrictions as we were going into lockdown as our cases have increased. We just have to wait and see how this current lockdown works.
So now it is just Christmas prep. I’m still doing my weekly stream, and at the moment those are working on my past December Dailies. I’m slowly getting some YouTube videos prepared for my old December Dailies, though at present I have been posting a new one daily to my IGTV. I’m hoping to get the Christmas decorations up this weekend, and we are getting a new fridge freezer pretty soon (it has been purchased, just awaiting a delivery date!) we have gone for an American style one so we have more space as every week it is a constant game of freezer Tetris and have had to ask my parents if they could store stuff for us 🙂
I am so behind on my Goodreads challenge for this year… 6 books to read and I’ve only read 1 😦 I’m still constantly feeling overwhelmed and had the weekend off work which was definitely much needed. Working in retail during all this really does take its toll. We have officially passed day 100 of lockdown, though things are starting to open and ease up, we haven’t felt very comfortable in going out.
I wear my homemade masks every week for work and shopping. At work I slot in a disposable mask just as an extra layer – I really need to look into getting some non-woven fabric instead so that I can wash and reuse. I took Dylan out to get some sweets last week to the local newsagents as well, which was massive for us and he did the best he could – but once out of the shop he had to take his mask straight off so I had to do my best to carry it home looped over 1 finger. He’s finding it hard, but we did manage to get out for a socially distanced walk with his friend M to go see the horses in a nearby field. I know he really needed that.
Our holiday at the end of July has been cancelled and he has been so upset about it as it’s his favourite place to go, only we couldn’t see Rory the Tiger, or go swimming in the pool, or eat in the restaurant, or do anything else – including his ultimate favourite thing of visiting the arcade… We could literally just sit in the caravan or visit the beach with literally everybody else, with just a 20% discount… so it was a big no from us! All the images we have been seeing with how others are acting have just put us right off and it’s a lot of money just to sit in the caravan for the week.
Saturday 4th of July was dubbed “Super Saturday” when lots of stuff reopened such as pubs and restaurants. We did not leave the house. There are far too many people out there who just don’t care and are putting others at risk. It’s just so upsetting. I am going to attempt to take Dylan out to Hobbycraft as he needs some more picture beads as he has been loving making Mario characters to be ironed and kept from the beads but we are low on black and white beads. I know he will enjoy getting to go out, especially in the car. I honestly can’t remember the last time he got to go out in the car! I have seen on their website how they are dealing with queues and people going into store and I feel like they have it under control with social distancing (just like in our store at work) so I feel a little comfortable going to see how it goes. Just having that info on the site made all the difference to me actually deciding to go with monkey 🙂
School work is very much difficult to get him to do hence why as he has only been doing a little each day, he will be continuing through the summer holidays just doing a little. We do really hope that the week we were due to go on our holiday we can do some activities as a family but we need to play it by ear and see how things go. But top of the list of things to do it a picnic up the local hill 🙂
You can also see Dylan lost his first tooth as well and was super excited by a visit from the tooth fairy! We have had a socially distanced visit from his teacher and the SEN lady from the school (they stood at our gate to talk to us) to see how he is doing. It’s a bit sad that he has pretty much missed out on Year 1 at school. We also had info from the school about his teacher for Year 2 and when he saw the list of teachers and teaching assistants he told me he didn’t care who his teacher was as long as he had a specific TA (she has been in the other class all year in year 1) but myself and Gareth knew who we hoped his teacher would be as the one teacher was in our sports day group for Dylan’s year in Reception… and that’s his teacher… in addition to the TA Dylan wanted, so relief all round, and as they usually swap classes around each year after seeing how the children are during the school year as they did after reception class, this year they are keeping classes as they are due to all the disruption this year, so we are also relieved that though there is going to be a massive change with a new teacher, TAs and new room… the people in it plus the one TA will be familiar to him.
I have fallen out with my sewing machine. Last night I had it apart trying to get it sorted and gave in at 11pm (which is waaaaay past my bedtime) and then spent hours from after Dylan woke me up at 6.30 still trying to fix it. I went through all the trouble shooting and finally it started working… but the tension was all wrong. I tried everything I could but I couldn’t get it fixed. I managed to finish the project I was working on at the time (I figured bad sewing was better than no sewing) and I boxed the sewing machine up and shoved it back where it was stored.
However, this week I have managed to make a face mask for each family member – it was hubby’s that broke my machine. It was really as a “just in case” as many other countries are following a rule of having a face covering when going out and as yet we have not had one but there are rumours in the news that it could be announced. I grabbed an old bed sheet that I stashed with my sewing supplies and cut out my own and Dylan’s masks and made them. For hubby’s I had a navy fat quarter laying around which has also been sun damaged – it’s been laying around for quite some time! While far from perfect, I’m pleased with how it turned out and find it a lot more comfortable than a “proper” mask I had been given to use which just didn’t fit right at all. It was my nan (a seamstress) who on our weekly chat mentioned a pattern for a face mask prompting me to get online and find something for her that I could print off and post in her letterbox… As much as I wanted to ask her to make some for us, I thought I would just give it a go myself. And while I can no longer make more than the ones we already have, I can get them in the laundry and into the tumble drier pretty quickly.
It such a crazy time right now, I sometimes sit and try and process just what the heck is going on. Just sometimes I have a wave come over me about it all. I’ve not been having the best week neither (my sewing machine no longer sewing correctly is just a small portion of my bad week – and it’s only Wednesday). Schoolwork is still a struggle. Just going to pee in peace is no small feat. Luckily we have “Wellness Wednesday” and the last 2 weeks I have jumped on a video chat. Dylan got to catch up with his friend on video chat as well today and it was nice to say hello to her mum and have a quick chat. I know I should get in touch with my Florida friends as it would be cool for Dylan to chat to one of my friend’s daughters. Dylan also has a class video chat too tomorrow which I know he is looking forward to as he hasn’t “seen” any of his school friends since the school closures in March.
I will be sure to do another check in soon, but for now, I need sleep!
We have slightly slipped into some sort of routine, though this week is “back to (home)school” after 2 weeks of Easter holidays, so I knew it was going to be a bit difficult to ease back into it. BBC have been doing “Bitesize Daily” and the first 2 days wasn’t too bad but today in addition to the technical difficulties that it didn’t go up until a bit later, it just wasn’t happening. It wasn’t that he didn’t do anything because he did and that’s something at least. I think the only reason bitesize held his attention yesterday was because there was a gross yeti who ate yellow snow that made Dylan absolutely howl with laughter and request “the yeti part” over multiple times. Yesterday morning I even managed to turn his mario gameplay into school work and submit it to his teacher… He was playing Mario Maker 2 – so building and debugging by checking his level to make sure it is playable and as we use class dojo via the school, he managed to get dojo points for doing it!
He has managed to persuade me to play some Mario 3D world and we have done a bunch of levels that we struggled with (there was one level I refused to do because it was too hard and I didn’t think I would ever be able to do it…. I completed it with all 3 stars, the level stamp AND gold flag! GO ME! Not gonna lie, it did take a while LOL!)
Mondays I spend the morning (after having a short cuddle with monkey) tidying up the kitchen and starting the new week’s chores, and we do some school work. Tuesdays are super busy as I head out to Tesco around 10am and don’t get back until about 11.30, During this time Dylan has all the tablet time as he needs to sit in the spare room with daddy who is working in there. This is the day home school doesn’t start until around 2pm as we have lunch and then I have to get bins, food waste and recycling sorted ready for whatever is being collected that week (recycling and food waste every week, bins every other week). I also do my best to video chat with my nan this day.
Wednesday is general chores in between other things. We do some school work. Evenings I watch Goldbergs (8pm, though tonight I am catching up on the computer while I can as I can just get on E4 and watch all the shows I like) Schooled is 8.30 and then when I’m sleeping and I don’t get to watch it while it’s on is Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist at 10pm but I watch that on catch up when I can – I try on Thursday. Thursdays again, try some school work but by this part of the week, it’s waning. Fridays we try our best lol. On the weekends I am working the early shifts and I catch up on any chores I need to do and just try chill if we can.
My flare got worse and the hospital never responded, so I spoke with the doctors on Monday and they took extensive notes and decided considering the situation they would prescribe it to me but I would need to speak with the hospital who actually did actually call me back after that call when I updated them. I was in so much pain on Sunday, I’m wondering how I managed to get through my shift at work. Monday was another bad day (hence the call) and I’m hoping next week the meds will kick in and it’ll be so much better (it has eased a bit already thankfully!)
And saved for last, the best news! I have managed to claim my .co.uk domain back! Long story short, they reset all open tickets, I opened a new one asked them to change my WHOIS info they said no (they actually responded!) so I took full advantage to ask them to transfer my domain and now I’m free from them! The domain currently points here to my blog.
Journal 