All the things.

It's almost March 2022. Did anyone tell you? ALMOST. MARCH. 2022. 

They always say the days are long but the years are short when you have little children, don't they? Well. These years have lasted a lifetime. So, so, SO much has happened and is happening and I just haven't found the strength, inspiration, whatever, to try and chronicle our lives over in the Motherland. So here I am sitting in the middle of soft play, on a Friday afternoon (aka The Hunger Games), hoping my child is somewhere in that big cage of wild animals having fun and not causing mayhem. A perfect setting to gather one's thoughts and try to make sense of the madness that has been our lives for the last...well...forever really. Perfect. 😰 Oh my god, there is just so much screaming. SO MUCH. 

I actually don't know where to start. There is a constant shitstorm of stuff to sort and agencies to phone and things to chase and paperwork to fill in. It is endless. Actually, actually endless.

Emilio has been in school full time since the end of October and really loves going. Like, I can threaten him with not going to school as a way to get him to do something (go on, judge my parenting - go oooooon!). He has a one to one support person and is absolutely challenging every single person he comes into contact with in that no one really knows what to do or how to best support him. With the best will in the world, there just isn't enough specialist knowledge or experience or skills or resources in a mainstream setting to provide him with what he needs for his very unique, complex situation and neurodivergent humanness. If I could just run through briefly what that is, in no particular order: 

• a five year old
• a five year old with no experience of nursery or previous access to typical social situations with peers 
• a five year old who spent the previous 18 months pretty much locked up with his mum, who was trying to work (teaching, on Zoom, all the time), often with no childcare
• autistic
• a sensory seeker with both proprioceptive and vestibular challenges not being supported due to being locked up in Lima for so long
• spent his first 2 years 9 months in an orphanage
• adopted by a mad foreign woman who brought a new language into his life as well as a myriad of animals
• significant language development delay
• motor planning difficulties
• lost an important caregiver in the middle of a pandemic with no warning and no explanation
• moved house twice then moved country twice in the middle of a pandemic
• moved house yet another time once in new country
• flung into a big, busy school with 80 children in his year group and not a single person who understood him 
• has then lost another temporary childcare person because mum is now working full time
• has new, often overwhelming, experiences, people, places and situations literally every single day

I mean, my head is spinning and I deal with this stuff every day. Imagine, just imagine what it must be like inside his wee head. He has had more happen in his wee almost six years on this planet than a lot of people have in their entire lives. And he has very limited ways of communicating how he is managing all of it, what he feels about it, if he is coping with it. In fact, I really couldn't tell you at all what he thinks about most stuff. What I do know is that there are times when he really, really needs me and, because I'm a solo parent and need to work so that we have what we need in life, I'm not always there. So my heart breaks and I get stressed out and don't manage it at all well and therefore he does not get what he needs from me then either. 

Oh, it is a mighty, mighty shitshow.

We are very lucky in finding some really excellent people who are doing everything they can to help get the support in place for him at school. After months of kind of trying to figure it out and trying to get all the people on board, we now have a team consisting of an OT (who I may or may not be crushing on 😂), SALT (Speech and Language Therapist), communication device people (Keycomm - Edinburgh and the Lothians - amazing service!), ASN (Additional Support Needs) service, disability social worker, Ed Psych, community child health as well as his teacher, three assistants and Deputy Head. That's quite a squad. I think there's been a bit of an 'oh shit, school are really not coping and he's really not coping and this guy is way more complex than we anticipated' type of scenario and they are now coming together like the G7 summit to make a game plan. It is undeniably frustrating watching from what feels like the side lines, while everyone scrambles together to try and work out what to do and how to understand him and what he is trying to communicate: I just want to be there in the middle telling everyone what to do because, obviously, I KNOW BEST. But on the flip side of that, I am constantly full of fear and anxiety because I actually often DON'T HAVE A CLUE. Emilio's current party trick is legging it out the classroom/up the playground/wherever, meaning that he is not completely safe. You may recall this particular fondness for just tanking off from me from previous life in Peru and brief stop in NYC. Why don't you run out of a restaurant and half a block away before I catch you in the big, busy city, Emilio? Why not? I have CLEARLY not been pushed to my very limit yet!! I digress. At school, yes, the gates are there but all it takes is for someone to forget to close it...and we are all human and we all make those mistakes. It's just that a mistake like that might mean my child getting hit by a car/kidnapped/getting a job in Scotmid and no one being any the wiser! This is obviously my anxiety taking over and sending me down the rabbit hole of the deeply disturbed 'what if' scenarios...but I lived in Venezuela, my son is faster than a big bag of fast things and I have a very active imagination. What's a person to do?? A friend said to me the other night that I should maybe stop trying to do everyone's jobs for them and let the people who are responsible for my son between 9am and 2.45pm do their jobs and figure it out for themselves. It's not entirely clear why I'm unable to do that or why I don't feel like he is their responsibility or why I still feel like I have to apologise for all the difficulty. What is that?? My kids in my class are my responsibility and I totally always feel that. I'd never call a parent and tell them something their child had done and then expect them to tell me what to do - this is literally my job. Deal with the stuff on my watch with their input about whatever is going on at home, etc. But I somehow feel like I have to try and fix everything for E and for everyone around him. Could be the hangover from being locked up in Lima. Could be just the solo parentness of it all. Could be that I'm a giant control freak and never realised this before. I really don't know but it's definitely a big part of the constant tightness in my chest/lack of sleep/overactive mind that feels like it's going to actually explode most of the time. 

Anyway, the next step is looking at a more specialist provision for him. And so begins the battle of trying to get him a place whilst fighting the battle in my head as to whether this is actually the right thing for him. You know how they don't give out a rule book when you have kids and you just have to kind of make up the rules to the game and hope for the best? Well. When your child is adopted and also autistic, this game is uplevelled by about a squillion. And when you've no other Adult Human to help you make the decisions, well... I don't actually play games coz I think they're stupid so this analogy is falling to pieces but it is REALLY, REALLY HARD, OK???? We are just at the beginning stages of finding out about it and it's obviously complicated and there are very few places and they're obviously all taken at the moment so... again, I just don't know. My dad used to say to me, when I'd talk about bringing Emilio to live in Scotland, that I was better where I was with all the support I had there. And I would be flabbergasted (what a bloody brilliant word) because I was just so lonely, I didn't see how where I was could possibly be more forward thinking/clued up on autism and trauma than the UK, and that having a nanny wasn't the same as being with your family and friends. Now we are here and my soul is much, much happier but holy moly, everything is hard. Every. Single. Thing. Childcare - impossible. Therapies for E - on the waiting lists. Working/living/going to school in the same area - FAIL. Finding somewhere to live that suits our needs, in the right area, that won't mean I'll have to sell my body (though, really...😒hah!) - IMPOSSIBLE. It is just all a massive struggle. There is definitely far more in the way of support services and advice and advocacy groups and stuff here than in Peru but man alive, is it hard accessing it! Phoning all the people, chasing the paperwork, filling out more fecking paperwork is honestly, potentially, maybe even harder and even more of a full time job (on top of my full on full time job) than the adoption process in Peru. There! I said it! But I said maybe... It's truly exhausting. And I think the irony about that is that we parents of children with additional needs or adopted children or children who just don't fit your typical mould are already friggin' exhausted. We already have so many extra bits to our lives as it is. And then we are expected to find out the information, fight for the support, shout as loud as we can that our kids need more, source the support, fund the support, find out why there isn't the support and continue this until we die and we. Are. Already. Exhausted. Why is it like this? Why??????? I say all this as 'we' because I've had the great fortune of tapping into a little group here of adoptive parents and parents of children with ASN - haven't met too many people in person because when in the chuff have I got time for that, but there are some excellent online groups who are a font of wisdom and care. So, so many of our children are just being failed, failed, failed by the system. So many of our children aren't in school. And so many cases are just accepted as that being the way it is. I think this is probably for another blog post rant...

So it is hard. It keeps being hard. I keep waiting for the time when someone asks how I'm doing and I can just say, 'yeah, grand' and actually mean that. But that time seems like a very distant land from here. 

  

Another hard thing that is hurting my heart a lot is the smack-you-in-the-face reality of no friends. When I used to picture our lives here, I imagined that I would have loads of parent-friends from school and E would have his wee pals. One of the reasons I did not want to stay abroad and have him go to my school was that those parents would never be my pals; the richy rich don't mingle with the help (with the odd exception and you're lovely and sorry but it's totally true!! 😆). But because of our lives taking us on this cu-ray-zee rollercoaster from leaving Lima and going to NYC then kind of sending us skidding to a halt in Scotland, skint knees and mud all over our clothes, we weren't able to start school at the same time as the other kids so I didn't get to do the new P1 parent chat in the playground and make friends. And Emilio being as he is means he doesn't come home and tell me about his classmates. When I talk to my friends with kids, they are always off to birthday parties and playdates and whatnot. We are not. I've made a half hearted attempt to try and connect with some parents on one of the groups but honestly, have I mentioned I'm tired?? It's just one more bloody thing that is a huge effort. And then there's the fact that he is different so he won't play the way the other guys do. So it's putting ourselves both out there and hoping that it's ok that he won't really speak and he's likely to play by himself or be right up in that child's grill, shouting 'HI BOY!!' and whatnot. And that is also exhausting. Just this weekend, we have been at two soft plays and had two situations where he has not been met with kindness/understanding/acceptance but instead hostility and judgement. Fortunately, I don't think E really notices other people's reactions to him but the truth is, again, I really don't know. At that first soft play (one week later, back in the same place!), I was sitting doing some work so not really paying attention when I saw the guys that work there all gathering and looking for someone. My heart sank. I knew it would be Emilio. I went down to find out what was going on and it turned out that he'd jumped on the counter of the snack place and then was entertaining himself by pressing all the levers of the soft drinks...this was not the first time he'd delighted the staff with that particular hobby... I apologised profusely, said I'd pay etc and went to try to find him. But I was stopped by one of the staff who told me he 'wanted to talk to me' because he'd had a complaint that Emilio had pushed over another kid and didn't stop to say sorry. Well, no. He won't, will he? He then went on to say that he'd just heard Emilio was 'severely autistic' at which point I nearly f*cking lamped him. STOP WITH THE FUNCTIONING LABELS!!!!!! Then he asked if I was on my own. 

What??

I'm not going to lie, it took everything not to start crying in the middle of that arena, surrounded by screaming children, watchful parents, judgey eyes and the staff all looking at me. Yes. I am on my own. Yes. He is my child. Yes. I know he's likely to run rampant but I did indeed let him go in and play without watching his every move. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes, I understand that you're basically saying if we come back again, I'm going to have to go into that friggin soft play with him and not leave him unattended. So there goes that tiny little piece of time where I can sit with a coffee and either get some more work done or attempt to read a book or write this stupid blog while my son is living his best life charging round a place where he's safe and can't escape. There goes that, too. Then I watched today in another soft play (yes, we do spend our lives in soft plays, what of it?!) as a very angry mother literally yanked a ball out of his hands which he had clearly stolen off of her kid. The aggression! Unreal. 

 

These are not unique incidents. They are not infrequent. This is the reality of being the mother of a child who is different. It is absolutely soul destroying at times and it is pain like no other seeing him be misjudged and misunderstood and treated like that. I've spent my teaching career falling for the wee ones who have a tough time with behaviour and trying my very best to understand them. Kids aren't the issue. Ever. I remember one of my wee tootsies who had such a difficult time and seeing the parents stand outside my classroom bitching and gossiping about what this wee girl had done now every single day. Eventually I asked for a meeting to try and teach these parents that their kid might be struggling with maths, that other one couldn't make the letters bump together to make a word yet, another one again who couldn't hold their pencil properly yet. Were any of them judged? Nope. We accept that these are things that need to be taught and each child learns in their own time. But the kid who has behavioural challenges? That one?? AWFUL. Don't want my child in their class/group. Terrible influence. We accept that we need to teach maths and literacy but we EXPECT our children to know how to behave. Well, my child doesn't. And may never know or live up to society's expectations of behaviour. But he is hilarious, ridiculously intelligent, curious, resilient, stubborn, fun, kind, energetic and bloody amazing. He's come through an insanely difficult set of circumstances that life threw at him and he is just bossing life regardless. People couldn't possibly know that by having a brief interaction in the soft play but maybe, just maybe, they could stop being so judgemental and respond with kindness instead. 

Maz out xxxx

The Scotland Edition

Chapter 4593

A whole new book!

It's been a minute since I've felt even close to being able to unscramble our last few months onto the old blog. And really, I'm not convinced of it making the blindest bit of sense right now either but here we are and so here it is. 

After our mad exit from Peru into the Land of Uncertainty in NYC, there was a whole load of backwardsing and forwardsing about whether we could get to Oman or what was going to happen. An enormous amount of stress and anxiety coupled with E's very understandable meltdowning behaviour (rip his whole life out from under him, transport him to a giant new city and expect no consequences, did ya??) and it was all just getting too much. So I took it upon myself to move heaven and earth and get him the Emergency Travel Document and get us home to Scotland. HUGE big up to the UK Embassy in NYC - that there vice consul did do an amazing job and got the seemingly impossible made possible and to that we got on our plane and flew to London. Although this was only 2.5 months ago, it already feels like several different lives ago...so much has happened in the interim and E has been through so many ups and downs, we could actually have written a book just about these few months since leaving Peru! 

All the parenting everything about adopted children or those with any kind of trauma sing the same song - consistency, routine, structure, safe space, familiarity, etc, etc, etc. If you could put a wee window into the minds of those who suffer with parent guilt, you'd see the mental bashing most of us give ourselves. Add in 2 long haul flights, ripping away everything that's familiar to E, not actually knowing what was going to be next and no real way to communicate what was happening or what would happen next (even if I had known!), and you can maybe get a wee picture of the chaos and doubt and guilt, guilt, guilt that's been whirling around inside this wee head for the last few months. To say it's been difficult is to say the pandemic has been mildly inconvenient for us all. The effect all of this moving around and changing and lack of routine and consistency and familiarity has had on E was pretty devastating for about 10 weeks or so. I really thought I'd broken him. But more about that later...

So we flew to London, still thinking that we would end up going to Oman once I was double vaccinated and had had a minute to stop and get my feet on the ground and have a cup of tea! Onwards to Scotland! My favouritist Plummy Plum came to our rescue and was our Knight in Shining Unicorn Onesie who gave us a home as well as said cup of tea and a hug and love. It was to her safe haven we drove and geared up for our 10 day isolation station...holy actual moly...to those with young children who did the hotel quarantine: you are superhuman. I honestly don't know how ANYONE survived that! Being in a house with a garden was hard. Being in a hotel room with no outdoor access except for scheduled half hour slots??!?! I can't even. I just kept thinking, 'this isn't normal, it will be better when we can get out, this isn't normal, it will be better when we can get out' but poor Plum must have been wondering what in the name of all that was evil in the world she had let herself in for. Stratospheric meltdowns. The craziest waking hours. Stuff everywhere. All the screaming. ALL. THE. SCREAMING. Tough going for all of us. And during all of this, I think it's fair to say I was an anxious, nervous wreck of a human. My end game was always to give E a happy and safe life with a good school, people who understood him and lots of opportunities - most of which felt impossible in Scotland mid-pandemic because we had nowhere to live, I had no job and teaching jobs are almost as hard to get as when I left 12 years ago, no school for him and therefore not really much going in favour of that move which is why I took another contract. To wait it out until the pandemic was over and life had sort of righted itself again. But the horror show of the last, by that stage, 18 months, was just too much and there was absolutely nothing in my being that wanted to go to yet another new country, on another plane, with another nightmare travel situation, to absolutely no support, straight into full time work and having to set up from scratch all over again completely on my own. It felt very much rock and hard place. Choosing between a job, somewhere to live, an income, school for E, easy to find childcare, etc but no friends, no family, no support and no job, nowhere to live, no income, no school, no childcare but an entire ecosystem of support in my own country where life at least felt familiar and 'normal' was a tough, tough call. The stress that making that decision was causing felt overwhelming and completely unmanageable, as well as dealing with all of E's stuff. 

Thanks to Plum for giving a home, the decision was made and ultimately, we stayed. And it was the absolutely right decision to make. It has been more than a person should have to handle, and continues to be but man alive, am I unbelievably delighted to be in the Motherland, with my people, knowing that I can just go and visit those people who love us at the drop of a hat? You can 100% bet your actual bottom dollar, as they say. And that's not even to mention AUTUMN! THE COLOURS!! The glorious, stunning, vivid colours that autumn brings to the trees and the skies are just out of this world. Giving my boy the chance to play in fallen leaves and find conkers and get totally muddy and run free in huge parks WITH FENCES ROUND THEM has made all of the anguish so, so worth it. 

There's so much still to sort and it has been such a difficult path to get as much sorted as we already have but, like my guru Glennon says, we CAN do hard things. We, though. Not I. I need my people. Grateful for you all xxxx

Start spreading the news

We are in New York, baby! Oh yes we are. Sitting here actually still a bit in disbelief that this is where we are, even though we landed a week ago. It has all been a bit of a blur. After passports arrived and citizenship was granted and shipping went off to wait to be summoned to Oman and we were waiting to be summoned to Oman, it just all got a bit 'WHAT IS GOING ON?'. Well, it has been that way for a long time but I was reaching the end of my ability to live in the limbotown so I decided to make my own plan; namely, go to New York. 

Why New York, you may ask! Why not? I spent a weekend chasing the Pfizer vaccine in my wee car upstairs, downstairs and in his nightgown, having found out that Oman do not accept the Sinopharm vaccine going around Peru *just* at the moment they got to my age group for the vacunaton. Neither do the U.K. (Load of Big Pharma political nonsense if you ask me - surely a vaccine is a vaccine is a vaccine and we just want them in us so this absolute madness can stop and people can stop dying and we can all hug our parents? Surely?) So, I decided that we had to get the hell out of Peru and get me vaccinated and then see what the plan was from there to get to Oman. Back up plan was to stay in New York for three weeks, get double Pfizered and then go home to Scotland to wait it out there. (Obviously, secretly, I was hoping that the back up plan would be *the* plan because I'm oh so homesick and desperate to see our family.)

A genius plan, well received by friends, family and new employer. 

However. OF COURSE nothing is that bloody simple. Emilio, being declared a British citizen, does not have a British passport so cannot enter the U.K. What to do, what to do? Advice from the Home Office? Apply for an emergency travel document so that we can get back to Scotland quick smart and then we can do the passport application from there because it will take longer than normal, him being a new applicant and all. You'd think we would be used to waiting for stuff. *EYE ROLL*

So. Got in touch with British Embassy in Peru who told me to apply for his normal passport and, helpfully, informed me that he wouldn't be eligible for a visa now because he's allowed to get a passport. Thanks. I knew that and the bloody visa office is closed anyway! Can't wait for normal passport as it will take too long and we are travelling like, right now. 

'We will be in touch as soon as there is a decision.'

This has now been going on for three weeks and we are in New York and now the Embassy here is helping me because the Embassy in Peru are an actual joke. The lady here called me today to tell me that basically, E can't get this emergency document because he's not got a British passport to start with. WTAF?! I knew that and we had been through that and all the communication I've been getting from the Peru end was that the 'London colleagues hadn't come to a decision yet'. At no point had they said it's not possible. Nor that I should put in an application for his normal passport in the meantime because that is a requirement. THREE WEEKS OF THIS NONSENSE. WHAT CONSTITUTES AN EMERGENCY FOR YOU THEN, EMBASSY???? 

I am trying to be chill. But it is increasingly impossible to be chill because no one can do their job properly, the U.K seem determined to keep us out and all I want to do is go and see my mum and dad, for the love of sweet holy heaven, and get a cuddle and someone to make me a cup of flipping tea!!

Once again, I feel surrounded by inadequacy. 

So. Here we are in NYC, trying to 'holiday' but not really feeling like it because I have no idea what's going on, I'm haemorraging money and there is no end in sight to any of it. 

Oman remain closed it seems and have announced new rules starting September 1st re: being fully vaccinated (2nd dose plus 2 weeks) to be allowed to enter the country and all of its buildings. So unless they get us out of here and into there in the next week, we are looking at the end of September. I can't work from NYC, 8 hours behind and with no childcare, so I don't know what is going to happen there either. The dogs are in the doggy hotel but are being separated into different socialising groups in the day which was enough to tip me over the edge and dissolve into floods of tears the other morning. Enough has changed, they should be together. And Emilio is being Emilio but on a New York scale which is just so unbelievably difficult and terrifying but that's chat for another blog (insta ramble here). So it all just keeps being hard and we just keep living in the limbo and bureaucracy seems determined to beat me but it really needs to learn who it's dealing with, doesn't it? I will not be beaten. I WILL win this. And we WILL get home. And also hopefully to our new home.

But if anyone wants to come and give me a hug and make me a cup of tea to keep the fight in me going, that'd be awesome, thanks. 

x

HOLY GUACAMOLE!

Two things: 

Emilio has been granted British citizenship!

I am now in possession of BOTH of our passports!

IIIIIII KNNOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!

Fair to say it has been a bit of a rough old ride of late, no? A wee touch of coronacoaster, citizenshipcoaster, passportgatecoaster and your actual regular solo parenting coaster. Well. After being assured that our passports were on their way back from the Home Office in England, and chasing said claim through my exceptionally helpful MP's office (BIG shout out to Ian Murray's office - Lesley there has been so helpful and tried her very best to get things moving for us), I was informed this week that our passports had been sent. A week and a half ago!

Well, where in the chuffery are they then?? 

They've been sent by regular post. Signed for, sure, but by a regular Royal Mail postie. To Peru. From England. In a pandemic. When all kinds of shit has been going wrong. And I had asked for their urgent return. Couldn't have DHLd them back like I did to get them there, could you? ARE. YOU. ACTUALLY. KIDDING. ME. ON????!??!!

Needless to say, my belief that I would ever see those guys again was dimming away away down like wee Tinkerbell's light when no one believes in her. A sad, sad day indeed. 

So I have busied myself this week packing, getting ready for the shippers to arrive and take most of our stuff to store in their facility because I can't get the export licence sorted until I have my passport. Packing, packing, stressing, stressing, trying to remain calm and help E understand what was going on. Failing at pretty much all of the above. But. Shippers came yesterday and took the most of our stuff away - a huge amount more than they had expected and another bit of bill for me (I'm never moving again!!) - and were just so kind and helpful and excellent at their packing job. Totally recommend these guys - Gil International - just so professional and efficient. This is something I would, and do, monumentally SUCK at, as demonstrated today when I then tried to move us out of our house where we have been living for 8 months! We have way too much stuff to be getting on any planes anywhere, should we ever actually be able to get on any planes anywhere. As IF we have moved house three times in a pandemic...so far. Josie Jump. 

Anyway. This morning, I was mindlessly scrolling through the socials, inhaling coffee after having been woken up at stupid o'clock by Sir Kelly, King of the Ridiculous Hours. This was after a troublesome sleep due to a rude awakening around 1am by a policeman buzzing my buzzer and waking up the whole house (dogs x 3 going MENTAL) to inform me that I'd left my car window open (see photo of sticker on window as to why this may have caught random policeman's attention) and that I better sort it right now or I could be robbed. In my not-quite-awake-state, I had answered the door, having seen a dude on the camera, genuinely thinking this might be our passports. Dismayed that it was not, I wasn't quite able to form sentences in any language - threw some Italian words into an English sentence with some Spanish grammar I think, whilst nearly crying because I couldn't understand why everything was so wet and also why I couldn't get the window to go up. Thank you, other kind policeman, for pointing out I had the window lock on, hence why it had not been up in the first place!! 'It never rains in Lima'...well, it never USED TO rain in Lima. Climate change, people.  

So, point is, I wasn't very 'with' it this morning when I opened my email and found one from someone or other citizenship related with, and I kid you not, A WORD DOCUMENT attached declaring that my beautiful boy has been granted British citizenship!!!!! This means he can get a British passport, live in the U.K. if we ever actually get home and I don't need to worry about visas or us travelling on different passports etc, etc, etc. It's the BEST news. 

How it was presented to me, however, is actually hilarious. A word document, with random red writing in places (possibly the standard letter and the red words you change), attached to an email. Not a PDF. Not all the same coloured text. A WORD. DOCUMENT. I mean, my first graders know how to convert to a PDF. So, thank you, government, for realising that my child, regardless of the fact that he is adopted, is my child and should have the same right to live in the country I'm from as I do!! I'll say it again for the cheap seats...on A WORD DOCUMENT. Give me strength. 

And then, as if that wasn't enough, INCOMING PASSPORTS. I did what I was told and hotfooted it to Serpost to ask for my missed item. 8am opening time, it said on the website. My wee pooches all went off to their holiday home (waaaaaaaahhhh) at 7.30am and then Emilio and I were outside the office at 8.30am to find it didn't open till 9am. Of course. Anyway, they didn't have it. But they did have a what's app number to ask the courier to deliver it back to me urgently (they have 3 days to redeliver) and lo and behold, I text that wee postie (who loves emoji-ing a postie!) and I had a response within 5 minutes and our passports showed up, at our door, at the right time! WHAAAAAATTTT??? Well, actually they were a half hour early so thank goodness for Kellaroo sitting waiting in my house whilst we were out delivering dog crates to be stored and whatnot. 

So. After almost 5 months out of the stated 'up to' 6 month processing time for a citizenship application, with more than 4 months involvement from my MP to get our case prioritised because of all of our extenuating circumstances, another 2 and a bit begging for them to send our passports back so we can leave the country...we have our decision AND we have our passports. On. The. Same. Day. I mean! Hello stars! Or potentially the very lovely man I spoke to on the phone a couple of days ago whose name I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention so I won't, but if indeed he was something to do with this, I couldn't be more grateful. Or to my beautiful friend for making that happen. 

Where does that leave us now? 

I'm not sure. Safer in my mind because we can leave. Happier long term because we can properly not worry about all the visa schmuk and can visit our family together! But in terms of what's next, I don't know! Offices in Oman are still shut to my knowledge. So we might be leaving in 2 weeks and we might not. Watch this space. 

What I do know is this: we shouldn't have had to go through this. Emilio is my son the same as any of my friends who have had their children here. I shouldn't have had to pay £1012 to the U.K. government and go through this hell of waiting, in a pandemic, when I was really close to losing my mind completely, for them to FINALLY decide that E can have a passport. It is not right, it is discrimination and there is no justification for it. 

So. I am going to take this on. I don't want anyone else to come behind me and have to go through this. It needs to change and I'm going to make it happen. But just now, I'm going to have a cup of tea and read my book. 

As always, thank you for the love and support you all give us. As well as postal advice!! My heart is full and warm and my mind is fuzzy. Oh, wait...what??!

Heehee. 

x

Can 'limbo' be FINISHED now? Please?

On and on and on it goes. Almost five months have passed since I applied for Emilio's U.K. citizenship, that which is supposed to take up to six months to process. That which I sent further paperwork for to plead our case for expediting it. You know, so we could get on a plane and get home to Scotland and have a bit of support, see our family, get something of a 'normal' existence in this pandemic after an enormous amount of time of just being us two. Well, here we are almost five of those six months down the line absolutely no further forward whatsoever. When I started writing this blog, it was a way for me to document the bureaucracy leading up to becoming a mum; a Single, a Foreign and an Altogether Unlikely Candidate for being accepted as an adoptive parent over here in Peru. I can remember exactly the night I sat down and started typing. I knew, then, that this was going to happen for me and I wanted to share my experience and have something to look back on and maybe something to show my future child. It then morphed into the process of matching with Emilio, bringing him home and starting our lives together. 

Not once, in any of that time, in any of the moments of fear, of uncertainty, of feeling like at any second they would reject me, did I think THIS is where we would be a few years down the line! (Actually, it is right around this time three years ago that I found out I had been accepted. How funny.) Never did I think that I would be sitting in a house in Miraflores, my beautiful boy asleep, my three dogs sleeping by my side, wondering when on Earth we would be getting our passports back. Flipping out about where we are going to be living in a couple of weeks. Stressing like a stresshead about the vague possibility of not getting to our next country and having to teach online from Peru, nine hours behind our new country. Agonising over whether to put the dogs into an hospedaje when we move to our temporary Air BnB, even though we are still going to be in Lima, or to keep them with us because, even though it will be a nightmare in the tiny apartment, they are our family. I think we all know what I'm going to decide and no, it's not the sensible option. (Having flashbacks to a conversation with my mum and dad when I was trying to decide between Vietnam and Venezuela...My dad said, 'At some point, Marianne, you're going to have to grow up a bit and start listening to your head and not your heart.' And my mum said, 'But we know that this is not that moment and you're going to choose your heart so just accept the job in Venezuela now.' Where would I be if I'd listened to my head, Daddy Kelly?!).

Anyway, the point is, this is not where I thought we would be and I am finding it all far too much, most of the time. Feeling this powerless is not something I think many people are comfortable with but I am particularly used to sorting my own shit out. You spend a life getting into all sorts of predicaments, you develop a certain skillset. But my skillset is rendered useless at the moment and it is not sitting well at all...so, Home Office, be a doll and JUST SEND US BACK OUR PASSPORTS SO WE CAN LEAVE THE FRIGGIN' COUNTRY, INNIT?!

The advice I'm being given is mainly about making lists and doing one thing at a time and chunking things and all that. Great. First step - get passports back. Excellent. Right. Nope. So... 

Second step. Wait for confirmation that visa offices have opened in Oman and we can get those visas and get on a plane and go to Oman. Nope. Because first step is still negative. And visa offices are, indeed, still shut.

Third step. Figure out what the deal is now with Emilio going in on his Peruvian passport and not a British one because, oh, that's right, WE DON'T HAVE OUR PASSPORTS AND HE ISN'T YET APPROVED AS A U.K. CITIZEN. Mother of all that is holy in the world.

Fourth step. Sort dogs travel. Can't do that either because of the first two. Absolutely no idea when/if we are leaving Peru and getting to Oman so absolutely no idea when to get them on a plane either. 

Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all of his carpenter friends (line stolen from a hilarious Irish comedian whose name I've forgotten). Really, though. Really. And if I hear one more time that 'it'll all come together', I will actually punch something. I know it bloody will. I successfully navigated the Peruvian adoption system on my own and have managed to keep us relatively safe and mostly happy (hah!) through a global pandemic, with next to no physical support: I am fully aware of how many mountains I can move (she says absolutely cockily!). IT DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY EASIER TO DEAL WITH. Being told you're strong doesn't make you feel any frigging stronger when you are literally the only person you can rely on to do all the stuff. Every single bit of the stuff is up to me. Never before have I felt the weight and the loneliness of that than right now. Solo Mumming is brilliant most of the time and I love our wee team - I would not change this for a single second. But man alive, I've had enough. I just want to go home and see my mum and dad and have a cup of tea and let my wee boy play with his cousins while I hug the bejesus out of my sister. I just want to be held up for a tiny wee while so I can catch my breath and carry on because this is the hardest thing I've ever done. Ever. All these blogs and groups I read about being a single parent...there aren't too many (none) who are stuck on the other side of the world with an autistic child who hasn't set foot inside a school since March 2020, having spent the Christmas/summer vacation already together 24/7. That's the other thing about being on the southern hemisphere in this pandemic. We had just started back to school so we have basically been in each other's pockets since December 2019. No wonder we are losing the plot. 

Anyway. This has just become a bit of a WTF outpouring of nonsense and that is ok. Maybe not that interesting, but stuff I wanted to get out of my head. Onto better things. 

What's the boy up to at the moment? Well, I have gone from being 'Nunny' to 'Monny' which I'm trying hard not to relate to the amount of American TV he watches...but if the shoe fits... 

He is absolutely obsessed with Lego right now, a surprise to exactly no one, and nearly lost his mind when we went to the Lego store a couple of weeks ago. The utter joy! Obviously, the instructions were just slowing him down so they have been abandoned and there is so much creativity and engineering going on that I feel a little less guilty about everything he's missed from school and activities and just bask in his brilliance instead. 

'There you go!' is a current favourite phrase which is the cutest thing ever and also makes me ever so much more aware of his copycatting (F button OFF, Maz). 

We have a new show on the go but generally introducing new things is an absolute NOPE at the moment; choose your battles. This is not the right one for the moment. 

Park trips are still hard but have actually been a LOT better since the last blog...though some dog walks, I have been offering his new wee buggy thing I got for travelling (PAHAHAHA!) because I'm just exhausted with the trying to keep everyone from dying on the streets of Lima. 

He's a negotiator extrordinaire! 'TV is going off, Emilio,' says I...'Five more minutes and then shoes on,' says he. How can I argue?? 

There's a whole lot more but I'm losing the will to type right now. It is mighty hard and I'm mighty exhausted and some days, so is he. But as we drove up past his 'first home' on Saturday, something we haven't done before, and I thought about that tiny little boy who was locked far away in another little world...there aren't really words. What a brilliant light he is and I'm going to make sure he keeps shining through the hard stuff. Go and someone send me a wee torch for myself though, eh?! 

xxxx

Why going to the park is NEVER just going to the park

Hands up if you are a parent who is absolutely, completely and utterly SICK of going to the freaking park? ☝I mean, I should be grateful, and I am most of the time, that we are actually able to get out and go to the park - those first three months in lockdown last year were HIDEOUS. We would have given anything and everything to be allowed out with our children who were held captive for a crazy amount of time. It is fully mental thinking about that; our kids weren't allowed outside. At all. And when you live in a city, mainly in apartment buildings with no gardens, it literally meant not going outside of your house. Blows my mind now. During that time, I just had to chuck E in his buggy and hoof it to the shop with the dogs in tow and hope beyond hope that we wouldn't get arrested, walking dogs anywhere past your own street also being prohibited. Madness.

 

Anyway, we were really lucky to move to the beach, just when kids were allowed out for a whole half hour per day. Autistic people had also been allowed out for a 15 minute walk per day. Again, mind blowing to think about it now but that was the life we were living. Being at the beach was amazing as the security people/police were quite happy for us just to go out and run around and use all that space and freedom - brilliant for a wee dude with developmental delays in all areas to tank up and down the stairs beside our house, having been cooped up for 3 months. It was awesome until they shut the beaches again from Friday-Sundays..then it was pretty shit again! When we moved back to Miraflores in the city, I did have major anxiety about how it was going to be trying to go for walks with the dogs and E and all the traffic and general hazards seemingly intent on killing one of my pack, having been so used to just letting everyone run free! I've mentioned before that ALL the parks near us are surrounded by roads or a massive cliff. Fences and gates are not a thing in these parts and cause no end of stress and anxiety. However, we have managed and are managing but it has become increasingly difficult lately and resulted in us both in tears the other day when we were out for a walk. 

See, the other thing that's happened as a result of COVID is that the parks are now used for all the things. Art classes, music classes, gym classes, yoga classes, birthday parties, picnics; you name it, it is happening in one or all parks and this is delightful, of course. The problem we encounter is that all of these things are extremely exciting for my guy and he sees no reason whatsoever why he shouldn't be part of such fun and loveliness. All of it. Again, a problem we have been having for a long time now... E sees something he fancies and so, logically, he runs after it/toward said object, gets it and runs away with his treasure. It has become harder to 'explain' to disgusted looking parents (and trust me, they are disgusted) why a boy of 5 is grabbing their 2 year old's snack/truck/balloon (oh the motherloving balloons!!!!!!) and it has become almost impossible to catch him and return stolen item as he is FAST, man. Anyway, this has all been getting harder and harder to manage, coupled with some major sensory things going on for him that I wasn't managing, and on top of the last 16 months of torture - it just got too much. I found myself crying whilst trying to catch him and stop him running backwards and forwards through a toddler's music class, with ALL eyes on me, him shrieking with delight as he absolutely LOVES chasing. He doesn't get it. I know that. He can't help it. I also know that. But do I respond the way I should and try to help him get the sensory input he's seeking? Nope. I either blow up or cry. Good one, Maz. 

Thankfully, I have amazing resources in the form of our SALT who has amazing resources in the form of an OT friend, and both of these wonderful ladies have given me some things to try and help ease the hell of going to the freaking park. 

Sensory diet: he needs running, spinning, jumping, climbing, pushing and pulling, weight baring stuff, jumping on the trampoline, amongst other things. I can do this. I can make sure he gets this incorporated into his day and I can see when he needs something and now, with this advice, I can try to figure out which 'bit' he needs at that moment. Check. 

Social story and the evil Behaviourism: I HATE BEHAVIOURISM!!!!! But, for his safety and to try and help him learn that he cannot just take children's cookies/toys/bags out of their hands, run away from me and not come back (EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. WE. GO. OUT.), I'm going to try a little tick chart with a reward for each time he comes back when I ask him to/scream across the park. Would I ever, in a month of Sundays, recommend to any of my parents that they reward their children with sweets for doing something right? NOPE. But, I'm desperate, he is not safe and I am losing my mind. So this is our only option for now.

And there ends the story of why going to the park is never, EVER, just going to the park. Every single time I step out of my house with my child, I have to have my own backpack, physically and metophorically, rammed full of: snacks, distractions, calming toys, fidget toys, strategies to teach him how to stay safe, strategies to teach him social communication skills and rules that we just take for granted, things to fulfil his sensory needs, and a whole load of other stuff. It is exhausting. And it feels utterly hopeless at times. BUT. Then I see him absolutely giggling his head off, playing with other children, chasing after them, sliding down together, climbing trees together, drawing together, building together and no, it's not the whole time and yes, it looks different from a neurotypical child's play but he is doing it. Despite how unbelievably bloody hard it is for this boy to exist in this world, and I am only just at the tip of the iceberg of my learning about this, he is bloody well doing it. And I could not be any prouder or love him any more than I do. 

We can do hard things. He can do harder things. 

xxxx