Arguing!

I think I committed a cardinal sin in the autism-blogger world by not blogging at all during April, autism awareness month. I had a couple of ideas for posts, maybe something about surfing, or something about how under-used AAC devices are in the UK. After all these are the two topics I’m happy to promote awareness of, both within and outside the autism community. I was held up for the first week of April by work and then ended up rather depressed by the whole autism awareness month thing. My Facebook and Twitter feeds  reminded me how terribly political autism is. I nearly ended up writing a post on how autism is really autisms and we in the autism community maybe need to be more mindful of the different needs of the various groups that make up so-called autism. But life carried on and I never really managed to put a coherent post together. 

So with autism awareness month out of the way for another year it’s time to update on Archie’s progress. A lovely new development, that I have to admit I am enjoying is that Archie is now arguing with me. A typical exchange occurred today:

Archie: Granny and Grandad Ireland’s house tomorrow
Me: No Archie we’re not going to Granny and Grandad Ireland’s house tomorrow
Archie: Yes
Me: No
Archie: Yes
Me: No

Repeat x20

It perhaps doesn’t seem like much, but considering it’s not that long since Archie realised he had choices it reminds me how far he’s come in the last few years.

We’re also back in the water. After a 3 months break we’re finally managing to get surfing again. Archie has been overjoyed to be back out in the water with Harry. I’ve discovered that taking a break from January has left me really unfit, but we’ve had some fun Sundays catching waves in the sun. Archie and Harry have had some long runs into the beach on some mellow waves while I’ve been spending most of the time falling off an SUP. I had some success and managed to catch a (very small) wave standing. I think Archie’s going to be in his spring suit for the next trip out and I’m going to be able to bin the boots. Life gets better.

I don’t have much in the way of recent photos so I’ll link to the first surf video I took of Archie to celebrate the start of summer. He looks very young in this video but seems to be spending a lot of time watching it at the moment. I did genuinely seek permission to use the accompanying Aphex Twin track as well, one of Archie’s favourite tunes.