Girls coming home from the sounds tonight

Took James to the Porirua pool this morning. He has been a little less animated today, no doubt due to him for gawd only knows what reason staying up till 9:30 getting up to Hijinks in his room.
Later on I took him to the Khandallah Park and we went to the cafe where he scoffed most of a piece of Banana cake in record time. We then went on the swings - a lot. Then I took him for a loop walk, he was not keen, but we did it, he certainly quite likes running downhill holding my hand.
On the way out he wanted to go into Khandallah pool, it was a lovely warm summers afternoon with no wind, so I thought why not and paid the $1 entry fee plus $2 for a large swim nappy. Got him changed with quite a bit of protest then into the paddlers area, well he wasn't too enamoured of that either. He pretty soon wanted to go into the main pool, since I didn't have my togs I wouldn't let him and a right grizzly crying episode erupted. He kept running off and going 'Help help help' and it was really hard to pick him up, finally I decided I would go in my shorts and took him and went and got changed, well he howled the house down and there were a few sour faces in the changing sheds I noticed. So we get out and so I try to take him into the pool and now he decides he doesn't want too. I think he was a bit cold, and also I think hungry. By now people were looking at us wrecking the peace so I went and put my top on to go and his to warm him up (which he appreciated), managed to have him turn turtle on one of the picnic table seats and hurt himself, so then crying ensued. got our shit vaguely together and left. In the car park I noticed a guy who had been there with his bubba looking at is with a frown, I think he was wondering WTF, well I could be imagining it but I was stressed.
Home for some afternoon tea and some Thomas video. James is obessed with the beads and wire baby thing I got from the toy library and is getting frustrated with it. After an hour or so I got down and started playing with him, I made a monster out of that Connex stuff and was pretending to biting James' stuff and him too, and chomping bits of Connex, James was really looking at it like it was real and jumping back when I made lunges for him, which was cool.
Out on the tramp for some bouncy bounce, he loves to hold my hands and bounce around with his eyes closed and a look of rapture on his face, I notice that he does that a lot on the swings too.
Up to the school for a little go on the bike and he tried for sure, I'm just gonna keep taking him until he gets it through his own way, but I will put some pipe lagging on the top tube so he can sit on that more comfortably, its what he wants to do and if it makes it easier for him, so be it.
Now he's in the bath and fairly tired I think.
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Thoughts for today:
Been feeling down about our situation, but at the pool I noticed two Downs kids, and also an Albino. At the park there was a little boy about two who didn't seem right he had trouble with his body movements, couldn't walk and was dribbling.
Those things made me feel better, which sounds odd, but what it did do was made me feel less alone. It's really hard looking at normal kids talking and pointing and all the usual things.
Second thought is that I have been concentrating on looking at tasks to do and getting on to them, and looking at my watch and saying right I'm gonna give myself five minutes to get the dishes sorted, and go hard out at it because time with James is important. So getting more efficient with my time instead of drifting and wasting time on the Internet. OK, on that note bloggage done and onto tea!
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Have put James to bed, very tired boy, fed him a decidedly average tea then bed, he was very pleased to be in it.
Well I wonder if James wants friends his own age to play with I know he likes being with me but it's not the same as someone your own age. I was at the park by Mums before tea and James went into the tunnel slide and a boy was coming up it. He may have been four or five but he spoke a foreign language (something European couldn't pick it). He kept coming up, babbling to James and clowning around falling over then sliding down a bit around the corner. James was loving it and giggling and making that excited noise in his throat and flapping his arms.
Then today there was an older boy about 8 or 9 up at the school riding a bike, James kept chasing him and looking at the tires. The boy would stop, then the bike would take off and James would chase and the boy would stop and look at James. James looked at his face and smiled a huge smile and giggled and jumped up and down in pleasure, the boy smiled back and looked at me.
I wonder if he misses Hannah a bit. Hannah is not esp a friend to him and he doesn't always react to her all that positively as she gets in his face and snatches things off him, but she is also fun and silly a lot of the time and doesn't help him and engage with him. Actually I miss her thinking about her.
One last thing I did a bit of a bathroom doorway puppet show with the connex monster for James and he quite liked that and was laughing and looking at it like it was real. But like a lot of things like that after a few minutes he will zone out and not notice.
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More thoughts:
Guess I handled the situation at the pool pretty well. I didn't buckle in to his want to get into the pool, that's because I couldn't! I had my undies on under my shorts (bad form getting undies and pants wet!
another thing was the soft gentle music playing from the pool reception are, James went still and smiled while that was playing. Gotta remember that, he generally all music, but can seem ambivalent to a lot.

Been thinking a lot about me and Michelle and where James might have come from. I do recall in my first class at school in our top filed prefab that I had trouble focusing on the class work. I used to 'day-dream' is what it was called. I would sometimes snap out of it hearing the class laughing and realising the teacher had made a joke of me to the other students. I do recall her following this up one time saying 'Maybe we should have a record player underneath Matthews seat saying 'Wake up Matthew, wake up Matthew'. I felt quite embarrassed and hurt by that. These episodes happened so often that I didn't learn to form my characters correctly. I never really watched when they showed how they were formed so later I had to form my own letters. To this day I write many of them upside down and people will stare at me writing stuff. I did feel like I was stupid as people were doing things around me I couldn't, but I guess perhaps thats because they were paying attention and I wasn't. I used to look out the window a lot at the sky (sometimes there were vapour trails) I recall.
Before long the school rang and told my parents they feared I was retarded. Of course my Mum said what utter rubbish, but it was agreed I would have to do tests. so I got tested for IQ. I do recall a few things from it, that there was a picture of a train and which way smoke was coming out of its funnel, and a picture of a comb with missing teeth. Apparently I passed with flying colours and that was that. the only other thing I really failed to get was long division. So I used to do short division and just do stuff in my head to hide the fact I was a bit dumb and didn't know how to do long division.
My wife has trouble processing speech. She will often repeat what I have said to her back to me word for word before answering. She also has terrible difficulty with listening to someone on the phone when other people are trying to talk to her (me, Hannah). She told me she had her (perfect) hearing tested multiple times as a kid as they thought she had hearing difficulties. Other things about Michelle are that she is obviously clever and she is quite social, but I have noticed sometimes she doesn't she doesn't see some body language or moods or misinterprets something. Not at all often but it's there.
I have also done this, and when I was young felt like girls in particular I could not understand. It took years to work out that whole side of it and so I was just very shy and avoided some situations, perhaps because I didn't understand them. who knows.