Soph's School of the Mad: Week Thirteen

The fifth and final household birthday of the year took place on Saturday. Alex was FIVE! We went to see his grandparents, and he reacted completely normally to being sung to...


On Monday, I asked him to sound out this word:

"SUN-KUH! CUNT!"

No...not quite.

This week, as the end of term draws near, Jimmy has been asked to do a piece of creative writing so his teachers can assess his English ready for year seven. On Monday, we started with some planning, and also looked at Cinnabar moths. Our garden is OVERRUN with cinnabar caterpillars, but apparently they'll all eat each other soon so we won't have a garden of beautiful red moths. Boo.

Jack's topic this week is SPORT. Ostensibly, the cancelled Olympics, but he has requested to learn more about rugby as well. So...I guess we will.

On Tuesday, a relatively quiet morning. Jim worked on his MAGNUM OPUS, screeching with indignation because I disabled the autocorrect grammar tool on Word. He WILL learn what punctuation means.

Jack had to interview me about lockdown life. He asked some good questions: "Do you like Boris Johnson?" (NEWP), "How much beer or wine have you drunk?" (ONE BOTTLE, JUST ONE). We also took a lovely SELFIE:

God, I need to dye my hair. I haven't been this blonde since 2011.

We also got word on Alex and Jack's class allocations for next year, which sent me into a panicked spiral. HOW CAN HE GO INTO YEAR ONE WHEN HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A SENTENCE IS???

On Wednesday, Jim got up at the CRACK in order to finish his Great Work. Jack watched some videos about bullying and nouns. Alex did absolutely nothing, because (and I'll own it), I fucking forgot. Jim can go into this mode of being so absolutely overwhelming that you lose the will to live. Full Colin Robinson style. And on Wednesday, he did this with such FEROCITY that I was close to tears by midday.

I also bought some school uniform. Who knows if they'll ACTUALLY go back to school in September? Who knows anything anymore? What ARE plans? What IS the future? Based on this instability, I have refused to pay £6.20 for a single, tiny logo'd polo shirt, and bought supermarket crap. SUPERMARKET CRAP ALL ROUND. Jim gets to wear black polo shirts next year, because he's in year 7. I don't know who's more delighted: him for getting to wear black, or me because I don't have to do a white wash every week.

On Thursday, Jim edited his Great Work (reluctantly):

And illustrated My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson. Jimmy HATES this poem. It is for 'babies' apparently. No taste:

We also looked at how far two metres is.

About four times further than he initially believed.

Jack was asked to do a sport related newspaper frontpage, and WE WENT ALL OUT MOTHERFUCKER:

Look, it's been a really long week and sometimes I like to overachieve on my children's behalf.

Alex has spent the week in a post-birthday comedown. Yesterday, he VERY SLIGHTLY grazed his foot and went around for the rest of the day wrapped in a fleece. Then he fell asleep, so we couldn't get him to bed when the time came. Then he had a bath and WOULD NOT PUT HIS SLIGHTLY GRAZED FOOT IN THE WATER, so spent the bath on one leg, like a fucking flamingo. Sometimes, parenting autistic children is a voyage of discovery and genius. Mostly, it's trying to persuade your kid to do things like PUT BOTH FEET IN THE WATER.

C'est la vie.

FRIDAY, FRIDAY, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY. Jim did some beautiful botanical drawing, as he's supposed to be learning about plant biology, but apparently 'already knows it all'. Steady on there, Carl Linnaeus:

Yes, that's the real poppy alongside.

He also has some FEELINGS on time travel.

At one point this morning, I turned to see Jack's book review descending into madness:

QUITE.

Anyway, one more week, and it's mostly a week of doing FUCK ALL, THANK GOD.