As the years roll by...

Yes, I know I said there were a number of things I wanted to post about - and then never got back to it!
January is a busy time in this household - I turned mmmfffht recently, we have our wedding anniversary and N a birthday too. That's in amongst various other family dates in Jan, catching up with friends and then before you know it I've realised it's almost 'Back To School' time and I haven't even started lesson planning!

But today is a good one - it's our 16th wedding anniversary.
We were engaged for two years while I finished studying and went out for 2 years before we got engaged so all up we've been together for 20 years. I've now reached the tipping point where I've actually spent more of my life with P than without him.

There have been a few people who have said - who wished the other a Happy Anniversary first, who dropped the ball, oohh better have a good evening planned to make up etc.
In actual fact it was a mutual "Happy Anniversary" around 2:30am this morning as we dealt with a petrified T who thought he'd seen lightning!

P gets up before me so he got to FaceBook first - he also braved the severe weather warnings and went out to get some nice muffins for breakfast. I've got a nice dinner planned.

But, it doesn't matter who wishes who a Happy Anniversary first, what we have planned or how we mark it to a certain extent. We often look back on the anniversary we spent in the children's ward with W who had managed to open a bottle and take some of my arthritis meds. How he did it I still don't know because he was 18 months old and by age 4 he was still learning how to open screw top bottles in OT!

Instead of a nice dinner, maybe some wine and a relaxed evening together we wound up eating fish and chips and watching our kid closely in a hospital cot. He went home and I stayed in with W. Then when we got home he took over and I got a rest.

And that's how we work.
It's not a competition - who does something first, remembers the best, provides the best present (although not galvanizing the kids to make me a birthday card this year was a disappointment I have to admit!).
We work as a team.
We back each other up. Often the division seems arbitrary and traditional - I do the house and kid stuff and he earns the money, he worries about the business and I do the health research.

But we keep each other informed, we make decisions together. Usually emails/letters to doctors are written together. When dealing with screaming refluxing babies we tag-teamed - one taking one feed and the 4 hour stint on the couch while the other slept and then switching over.
When trying to ignore the kids' difficult eating as small children we'd tag-team, recognising when it was driving the other to distraction and letting them just leave the room while the other stayed - cool, calm and collected.
When one kid is blowing a gasket we will tag-team dealing with the tantrum and ensuing calm down period.
The team work is such that the kids have never managed to play one off against the other - no mean feat over 3 kids and 13.5 years!
Sadly - these days we can anticipate each others' response to a kid's request and we will often reply in exactly the same words at exactly the same time!

Over the 20 years we have grown and worked together as a team more and more deeply. We regard ourselves as a team and I'm sure that's why things have worked so well despite the curve balls thrown at us along the way.

Communication has been and is the vital key for us - even if we do sometimes resort to sending each other emails despite P working from home!

Even from early on we had some battles to come to grips with - my arthritis diagnosis 3 months into the marriage, the conflicts thrown at us by our differing churches - but we've worked together, talked together, celebrated and cried together.

The stats for marriage break-up in Special Needs families are incredibly high, as are those for families touched by prematurity. Combine the two and you get a rate of around 75 - 80%. Rates for families with an ADHD kids are also high as they are so high maintenance and draining. Much of that comes from one of the partnership being left to do most of the work - or the flip side - one partner being left out of the picture.
P might not be able to remember the kids' birthdates but he can clean a gastrostomy tube, hook T up to a feed, remember which meds belong to which child (without checking the label to cheat! but he knows to check too). He knows the names of the specialists and comes to the appointments.

Yes, we've had our moments, times when things haven't worked, our fights (although few and far between) but those have been pushed through because of our well established communication. There are no taboo subjects although plenty of 'in jokes'.

We are a team, a unit and together our skills complement each other.
It's hard work but good work.
I'm so grateful to be walking this road with P beside me - it'd be incredibly hard otherwise!
I'm actually grateful for the skills and benefits we've gained through necessity too - because they give other benefits to us as a couple.
Together, as a couple, we can conquer anything!

So - the past 20 years have been a roller-coaster but one I wouldn't have missed for the world - so roll on the next 20!

From the ridiculous to the sublime!

There has actually been a lot happening lately and I've written this post many times over in my head already!

I had intended to blog about our latest achievement individually - and so much has happened which has superseded it in many way but I think W's latest achievement does deserve space all of it's own and so I will simply write posts over a few days instead :-)

W learns the piano. He has done for about 4 years now. He enjoys it and finds it very relaxing and, like many things in his life - he's very single-minded about it, often practicing 3 times a day.
I do wonder if part of this impressive practice schedule is also an escape thing - the sound of the piano, in a quiet corner of downstairs, cancels out the ructions of N and T!

W recently sat his Grade 1 Trinity Hall piano exam (having done preliminary Grade last year) and so we were expecting his results a bit before Christmas.

He did very well last year - getting a Merit award with 86%. This was exceptional considering he was really sick that day - he got out of bed to go to the exam and went straight back to bed as soon as he got home! Added to that he'd only been out of plaster for about 3 weeks having broken his arm at his birthday party earlier.
So I'd quietly wondered how he'd done if so much hadn't been against him that day while celebrating his magnificent result!

This year he announced he was going to get a Distinction pass as he'd already got a Merit.
Okay - good to have aims and I knew he'd do the work but wondered how he'd do and what would happen if he didn't get that result.

He suddenly stopped practicing anywhere near so much in the few weeks before the exam and I got a little concerned. His view was he had the pieces perfectly and so once a day/every few days was all he needed.
So I talked to his teacher, figuring that she'd know where he was actually at and maybe I was fretting for naught. Her advice was that, yes, his set pieces and scales etc were great but that he could just play through old books to work on sight reading. So I passed this on to W - who disregarded the advice as children do. He knew his pieces were fine and he was going to get a Distinction - okaaayyy.

The day came to sit the exam and W went silent and sweaty and whitish. I'd have worried except I know that's his 'I'm petrified' thing and actually the best thing to do is leave him alone so he and I travelled in with the radio on for mild distraction and to stop my urge to talk, reassure and sympathise.

He came out from the exam and I knew from the way he was moving something was wrong.
My heart plummeted - I knew I should have got on him to practice more, knew I should have tried to mitigate his aims and maybe set his target lower, should have been more supportive.

He was devastated, convinced he'd totally thrown the exam. He said his fingers had slipped on some keys and run a few notes together in one of his set pieces, didn't think he'd done well in another and had panicked during another set piece and struggled to keep himself under control because the examiner had told him off for not waiting for her to say go because she did exactly what she had at the start of the first piece so he thought she'd meant start. He was also convinced he had totally messed up all the sight reading.

All the way home he conducted a grim post mortem of all his possible errors, speculating on his potential marks and telling me how hopeless it all was. I kept telling him the time for a post mortem was when you had the report in your hand, there was nothing which could be done now and to try and put it out of his head until he knew how it had really gone.
He was miserable for 3 or 4 days and barely touched the piano.
He slowly worked his way out of his funk and thankfully he didn't have too long to wait to get his results.

The day they were due I briefly contemplated commenting that this was results day - and decided not to!
Then that morning the phone rang - it was his teacher who couldn't wait until his lesson that day to give him his results which had just arrived in that morning's mail.

W had got 95% and achieved a High Distinction pass grade!
He got full marks on all 3 of his set pieces and only lost 1 mark for scales and 4 marks on the sight reading - which he had clearly struggled with as per his gloomy immediately post exam report - but only struggled a little.

Sheer joy beamed from W's face - not something we see that often!
So excited he jumped in the air and kept dancing around - and then ran downstairs to tell his father.
A huge beam was over his face all the rest of the day and well into the next - as it was for all of us.

This is a fantastic achievement for any child - and as W pointed out, to improve his marks by 9 again next year he will need to get 104% - a little difficult I think my dear!

After his lesson we stopped off at the supermarket and bought items for a special celebration dinner to mark his wonderful result.

A couple of days later he and I were chatting and he brought up some concerns about muscle weakness and pain on his right side - arm and leg. I was explaining to him that it's something to watch and be aware of but not unexpected due to his very mild right sided probable CP. I reminded him of all the stretching and exercise we had to do for him when he was little and how he barely used his right arm aged 2 1/2 but kept it curled up to his chest. He talked about what he remembered of the physio and OT sessions he had for over 2 years and I told him he was still learning how to use that hand better in OT aged 4 years.
His comment then was to express his own surprise at how well he can play the piano now then.

That's right sweetheart - it's hard work that's got you there, first off mostly ours but later mostly and then all yours.

And that's why the grin of pride in his success is all the brighter. 95% is fantastic for any kid but for W it is simply awesome - in the full sense of the word!