Well, it is half way through the Easter holidays and we are all still in one piece. We had a lovely day today. In the morning I took the children to the Coping with Chaos offices where they had the chance to stroke a whole range of animals from a cockroach to a dog. Not surprisingly the dog was the winner in the popularity stakes! The magical effect that animals have on people always amazes me, especially those with special needs. My son absolutely adores animals and is far more gentle with them than he is with people. He would absolutely love a dog and I do feel a bit mean not letting him have one, but at the moment I can only just manage two special needs children. We have decided to add a dog to his ever expanding Birthday list. I think that he must be the only 6 year old who wants a urinal for his Birthday!

Easter weekend was lovely but chaotic as we had some friends and their three great children (all "normal") to stay. Everyone had a fantastic time and it was so nice to see our two accepted and tolerated by mainstream children. I think that because they have all grown up together they accept our son and daughter's foibles as just part of them and do not see it as a big issue. It is always quite hard though making the inevitable comparison between your own children and others and realising that whilst indeed ours are coming on so well, in relation to their peers they are so far behind.

I remember having a conversation with my son's physiotherapist at the local Child Development Centre. She was going on about the great progress he was making, but at the same time that I was agreeing with her all I could think was “but he still can't sit up”. In the special needs world he was doing fab and coming on leaps and bounds, but in the real world, all his peers were doing handsprings with their eyes shut! I know that we should not compare, but we do and there is nothing that we can do about that. Welcome to Holland is a fantastic piece of writing and I have taken a lot of inspiration from this. However, if I was truthful, I would still rather be in Rome!