Love it. More artistic, somehow. And I love how you refer to you and son's lives, instead of just saying you're his mother. Don't know if that makes sense!

What a great picture and inspiring thought! It is beginning, for the first time probably, to be good to be a girl. We can think about our daughters' futures and smile. I just hope things catch up for the rest of the world soon.

Such a great idea to start shopping for it in the january sales! I think I'll do that this year. Stockings are important in our family too, as they are a big part on my husband's childhood christmases. And he likes them filled with pretty much the same stuff as you! But we usually end up doing a rushed stocking filler shop in late december... Can't wait to see what you put in them!
My recent post La femme francaise

Gosh that sounds pretty horrible actually. I would really worry if my kids' school pulled stunts like that. I guess the advantage of expat schools is that they're smaller and it's in the teachers' interest to get on with the parents. Hope that doesn't happen again!
My recent post La femme francaise

Totally agree with you. Our son finally got it right this summer. He's 8. He now sits on the toilet every evening without fail and hasn't had soiled under wear for several months, or suffered from constipation. He wet the bed a couple of times last week but that was because we gave him actifed for his cold and he slept too heavily. Although no one told us anything, we were very close to despair and felt he might never get it right. I think that what did it in the end was a better designed sticker chart system!

I really like the Viorst quote.
My husband and I got married allegedly because we couldn't get a British passport for our daughter otherwise (despite the fact that she was born in the UK to a British dad!). But he did ask me to marry him very early on in our relationship, and despite all previous notions that marriage was just a bit of paper tying me to social and religious mores I didn't believe in, I had said yes straight away. When it came down to it, I wanted to be married to him, to make a commitment that the society we're a part of could hold us to. Society in a loose sense anyway seeing as I'm French, he's English, we live in Turkey and were married in NYC.

Sounds like a good plan! Please let us know how it goes.

So glad you've got a positive reason to pull out of the course: it will make all the difference! But pulling out of a college course doesn't have to mean you lose your artistic self again. I reckon painting sometimes changes things as much as writing does. After all, what we need is for people to see the world, isn't it? Good luck to you and Ant.

I agree with you that awareness is crucial. People who are not affected by autism need to recognise it in others so that they can include rather than exclude them, and so that, in difficult situations, they can be helpful and understanding rather than judgmental. We were once picked up in the street by the police when we were visiting relatives in England. Our son was having a meltdown and we'd have to leave a bus and walk back to our relative's house. A 'helpful' neighbour had called the police, claiming we were abusing our son. But as soon as we told the police officers that our son was autistic, they became helpful, gave us a ride back in their car, which calmed our son down instantly. So now, whenever there is trouble looming, I say: 'he's autistic'. Just in case it works, and so that people learn what autism looks like.

I think zombie burgers are much more dangerous than zombie people. To dispose of a zombie for good, you must slice off it's head. Anything else it can do without. But a burger is round. No head. So you can't destroy it.