Pre-school plans

Charlotte has been offered a place at a little Montessori nursery from January. After all my angsting about schools for her, I am pleased that she has been accepted somewhere. She will be going three afternoons a week and we will see how she gets on. In fact, while I am interested in Montessori for her, this particular one isn't my first choice. I'm planning on moving her if she gets accepted elsewhere. It is fine for now and, if nothing else, it will get her used to being around other children and socialising that way. I'll report back when she starts.

Too dark!

I've been very neglectful of this blog recently. Life has been good, Charlotte is a total cutie who makes us laugh every day, and I have not had anything to say about Achromatopsia. No news is good news! I thought I would share this cute anecdote from this evening though: I had the light off in the kitchen and on in the hall outside. Charlotte said, "Too dark! Ligh' on in ki'ken!" So I had to turn on the light.

Disability Living Allowance

Charlotte has qualified for her DLA. She is getting the middle rate and we can apply for more when she is 3. I'm pleased for her, we'll save it up and hopefully it will make a difference to her future. It feels strange, she seems so normal. I guess she is one of those people who the government will move from disability to jobseekers benefits. Probably right, she probably doesn't really qualify but while she does, we'll save it up for a nest egg for her.

Disabled parking

This thing is not without it's silver lining: Charlotte has qualified for a disabled parking permit. Never mind the fact that she is too young to drive and doesn't have good enough vision to qualify for a licence anyway, she gets parking perks. I'm sure we'll be suitably grateful if she has significant mobility issues in the future, but for now they're perks.

Now, where we live, these parking perks are particularly valuable. We can park in any resident's parking bay almost anywhere in London. Given the fact at there is no free parking anywhere in central London, this is huge! To put it in perspective: if we go for a playdate by car, we would normally have to put the car on a meter; I have to buy an annual parking permit just to park the car outside our own house. Thanks to Charlie, I never have to pay for parking again!

Baby ride!

Charlotte is doing fantastically well this summer, she is having a good time in the garden every day, doesn't care if she is in the sun or the shade, wants to run races against her older sister, loves to go swimming, climbs to the top of the tallest slide and sends herself hurtling down. She is quite the thrill seeker and a bit of a daredevil but she really seems to know her limits and to test herself on them. She is not just doing crazy things because she doesn't understand the consequences, she genuinely appears to weigh up the risks and act with courage. She is also tenacious and insists that we don't help when she is pushing herself to master new things.

My favourite thing I've done with her this summer was when we hired bikes with child seats on the back. Emily didn't like the tipping feeling she had before we took off and took forever to settle down during the ride. She cried so much we should have turned back. Charlotte, on the other hand, loved it from the start (OK, she had a tantrum when we made her wear a helmet), she thought she was riding, grabbed her little handlebars, wouldn't let me touch them, and chatted the whole time. She kept saying, "Baby ride!" She can't say her own name and calls herself Baby, her other favourite was "Whee!" every time we coasted down a hill. I can't wait to take her horse riding!

Our "little holiday"

The girls and I went on a little holiday this weekend. I won a hotel stay through an event at work and I couldn't get a Saturday night so I took a Friday instead and M took the train to join us after work.

So I set off alone with the girls and drove almost across the country to our hotel. They were absolute angels and such a pleasure to be with. We picnicked in the grounds, then went for a swim, ran around the gardens some more and went out to dinner together before I put them to bed, all of us in the same room. Every night at home, I go in to their room to look at them before I go to bed. I smell their lovely smell and wish I could just roll out a mattress on their floor and spend the night there. That's what I got to do last night (but with a real bed!). Today, we had breakfast together, another swim and then packed up and drove home. A little holiday.

I need to work more on appreciating the here and now with them. Too often, I wish away the time or wish I was doing something else. They are the most precious things to me and yet I don't always feel grateful for the time with them. I must read more stories with them, laugh with them more, shout less and generally enjoy the present more. Not because I have to but because I want to. These thoughts have been on my mind a bit recently and someone at work told me about The Happiness Project this week. It sounds pretty good and I'll have to look into that some more. It's probably why SouleMama is so popular: whatever our lifestyle differences, her writing is all about appreciating the here and now. We saw a terrible accident on the motorway on the way home - they had landed a helicopter on the road to transport the casualties - I was (and still am) so affected by it. People's lives have just been changed forever. I am so happy with my lot, I just need to stop, remember that, and savour it.

Adaptive technology

Great video from the Achromatopsia Convention on one of their sessions here. Thanks for uploading guys - can we have any more?

It is a session showcasing adaptive technology available to Achromats and it's a bit salesy but I don't mind.

Products to remember:
Digital Handheld magnifier - quick, easy, small and light, shows you anything up close.
Colourino - who knew, a machine can tell you what colour something is!
CCTV - while I am not sure many Achromats actually need them for reading, the mobile arm could make a big difference in seeing across the room as well as up close magnification.
Voice-to-text software - to make typing email or notes quicker

But to my mind, the very best thing about this video is the presenter. It's not shown in the conference materials and it took me a while to work it out, but I think he is an Achromat. I only worked it out because he was talking about what works for him, otherwise, he looks like a regular but super-confident guy: giving a presentation in front of a room full of people, seeing hands raised for taking questions, talking about his grad school, his wife - yay! I looked really closely and wondered if he was wearing red lenses but couldn't really tell and he dislike of peer into reading materials, but nothing that would make anyone point and stare.

Point to remember: other people don't notice or care. He told the story of being self-conscious using his monocular in class and the guy sitting next to him for a 10 week course noticing on the final day!