Madison had a friend come and stay for a sleepover last week. Not your average sleepover granted but still a sleepover in Madison's books. The funny old fellow called Humphrey lives on Madison's school bus. He sits up the front of the bus to make sure all is well and the kids are all happy!
He is quite a large Bear and Madison is happy!
He must be heavy too!
Greg is Madison's bus driver, he is always cheery and likes to make the kids laugh and Cheryl is the bus aid. Cheryl is very kind and nurturing she also
shares Humphreys job in making sure the kids are all ok and happy as well as helping them on and off the bus.
They are our very important bus friends and Adam and I appreciate them very much. It's a big task that they do, getting our baby girl to school safe & sound and then home again. I think a person must have to have that little bit of extra something to do the job they do, I'd imagine it's not easy being the staff on a special needs school bus. You can tell they enjoy it though and it put's our minds at easy knowing our girl is being looked after with such care.
Madison has a very long school day, well the whole week actually. I get her up at 6.00am to be on the bus at 7.10am. I think she gets to school just after 8.30am then leave school from 2.45 pm to home at 3.50pm. Long day, hey! Thanks god for the little tv (dvd player).
You probably wonder why I just don't drive her. Well that is a tricky thing. For a start she wont get out of the car at school with out a fight, as in a physical one, because she never wants to go to school. I am unable to go to school
functions because as soon as she see's me we are going home! I still go of course but I know I will have a little friend with me for the car ride home.
Madison also likes to play chicken with cars and you have to park on a main road to get into the school. She does have a little awareness of danger but not all danger and doesn't realise that if one of those big fast moving cars hits her it's all over red rover. The girl is a runner and she is fast, I mean really fast. You blink and you've missed her, she is that quick. Adam always thinks he could catch her but I say not a chance honey bun, it's really not worth the risk. So someone is always hanging onto her when we leave the house or go anywhere.
I like that Madison can catch the bus and is able to have that little bit of independence, it is one of many life skills she will need. Being able to detach herself from her mummy and also knowing how to get on a bus, knowing the appropriate behaviour to use, being tolerant of others, using her words to communicate her wants and needs. There is a lot more to catching a bus than many of us think.
Greg and Cheryl assure me she is happy on the bus. She will often have a snooze on the way home and she has her movies to watch. I guess until I see real signs of distress we will keep getting the bus.
We have our morning routine that we do stick to every single day and god forbid if something doesn't go to schedule. Lets just say thing's get slowed right down and there is a lot of noise. Then the race is on!
On a good day she will get up have a drink watch tv for about 5 to 10 mins then into the big shower in our bedroom for about 20 mins, she always looks like a drowned rat because she wont let me brush her hair, haha. I do have to dry her and dress her, there are some skills we are still working on.
Ad is always on at me about the water bill but I figure what ever makes her happy and me de-frazzled in the morning, it's a good thing! Then the all important computer time. If she misses this, it's all over, we may as well all go back to bed and wake up the next day!! Some days I might get her to have a little bit of Gf/Df toast or she just wont eat. Then we have got to pick out the movie for the bus if we don't do this well in advance the poor bus waits. Sorry Greg and Cheryl :)
So when it came time to try and get Humphrey back on the bus I did have a slight feeling of Panic!! I thought for sure this was going to be disastrous. I thought she was going to want to keep him for ever like she wants to keep every puppy dog we go past in the street. My chest had a rather tight feeling as I was trying to work out every scenario in my head as to how this bear thing was going to go down.
It was a great sleepover though, they watch youtube together, ate there dinner, watched some movies, played with all of her toys and he did have to sleep on the floor next to her bed but he's a bear, so that was ok. Perfect friend for Madison, he did everything she wanted him to do and Humphrey doesn't talk so you cant get much better than that, haha!
I was so surprised when there was absolutely no kafuffle getting on the bus. OMG someone was definitely watching over me on this day, thanks Grandad, I'm sure you had something to do with it! We got him, Humphrey back up into his seat, Cheryl strapped him in and off they went. Bloody Awesome!!
Madison's last little chat before they get on the bus, too cute!
Thanks Humphrey for being such a good bear!
Steph
x
No comments:
Post a Comment