Bus, Moon and Jelly - what do they have in common?

The answer to the question is ..... Alex's new words - yeah!

I was playing flashcard with Alex on Tuesday morning and he said "Jelly" when he saw the picture. Then I showed him a picture of a bus, he hummed "wheels on the bus" and refused to say the word. The next card was a moon and he said "Moon" - just so proud of him.

Later in the evening, he looked out the window and turned to me ..... "Mama .... Moon" and pointed at the full moon outside our window. Wow, that's a two word sentence and he is sharing his new word with me ..... gave him lots of praise and he was so proud of himself.

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We went to Oriental City in London yesterday. Alex and I went there with Amelia, her husband David and their son Anson. Jeremy was working late yesterday, so The Cox Family came from Oxford to take us there in their car.

It was around 4:00pm when we left Bracknell and had to use the M4 to London. Half way through the journey, Alex asked to go to the toilet .... (we were in a traffic jam and there was no way we could let him go) I said "Alex, can you hold your pee until we reach London?" he nodded. Along the way, he saw many buses and he said "bus" looked at me and pointed. Two hours later, we arrived at our destination. He was still dry - Thank God!

We had dinner at the food court and yum yum yum - we had "Nasi Lemak" something I craved for .... for ages. Then, Alex couldn't hold it any longer and asked to go to the toilet.

I knew it was tricky as Alex hates public toilets. He hates the echo in the toilet, the sound of the hand dryer, the tight cubicles and most of all, the flourescent lights. I had a hard time taking his pants off as the toilet was filthy and had to do everything as quickly as possible without touching the floor ..... had to clean the toilet seat with one hand whilst holding a screaming child with another. Soon as he had done his business, he held on to me for dear life and I could feel a few bruises coming up. Oh ..... all that just to go for a pee.

At Early Bird course, we learned to use the iceberg exercise to identify why these responses may be happening and I could do this exercise mentally prior to things happening. That's why, Alex is a contented child with very little tantrum. Unfortunately, in such circumstances when we are out and he needs to go, we had to use a public toilet.

Julia, our trainer suggested that we use social stories to prepare him for such situations. On a few occasion, it worked but I could understand why he scream his lungs off yesterday. The toilet was filthy, poo all over the floor - it's pure disgrace and plainly disgusting. I would suggest the Department of Health pay a visit to this toilet beside the food court.

Apart from the horrible toilet, we enjoyed ourselves and Alex fell asleep in the car on our way home.