Raising Maisie

Maisie turned three two months ago and we have seen huge progress in her speech development since then. Little miss chatty, who says her brother and sisters names and calls out “dad, dad…daddyyy” when she wants her favourite persons attention. I’m her favourite person also(phew!) but never together so when we both want a cuddle with her we have to squeeze her tight otherwise one of us could be swatted away. Some of our happiest times with Maisie is watching how happy she is. She’ll burst into a room waving her chubby little arms in the air with the cheeriest smile and babbling loudly for no other reason than being delighted with herself and the world. In the mornings when she has playschool once she’s all dressed(she runs away when a nappy is mentioned)she grabs her bag and baby doll and off she goes, excited for a morning full of fun and learning with her amazing teachers Claire and Fiona. Once her daddy and I collected her together and entered from a different door. To say she was excited was an understatement. The brightest of smiles lit up her face, her little feet danced with joy. Memories like these are for bottling up for when it’s not all sunshine and fairy cakes. 

Dozens of Lámh signs are turning into actual words in the past few weeks. She communicates so well, “yeah!” and shakes her head for no. She can say “baby”, “ball” “off” amongst others but some need a bit of fine tuning! All the time we sign for and with her.  Her big sister Evie enjoys using Lámh as does her brother Tom but really just watching Maisie play or engage with her siblings makes us feel very proud of them all. Maisie loves to play with her dolls in particular but put some music on and she’s off twirling and throwing lots of cute dance moves. Evie goes to ballet so we’ll dress Maisie in her ballet costume and both girls perform in the kitchen to The Nutcracker, although any attempts by me to join in are quickly shut down! Maisie uses the sofa arm as the Bar as she puts one leg up in the air. I’m not even sure she saw Evie do that move!

Obviously there are challenging times as with any toddler things can go south all too quickly. A fall here or a toy mischievously taken from her, tears roll down her soft pinky cheeks, hands up in the air followed by a swooping into my arms. But thats the easy stuff. I think my biggest peeve is having to constantly clean and change her after meal times. I especially hate Weetabix! I hate that it sticks to everything and I especially hate when it’s glued to her hair. Once I returned to find her giving herself a facial and head massage with a smoothie! But hey why am I complaining, isn’t that still the easy stuff? Being a parent is hard and it always feels like I don’t have enough time to spend with each of our three kids, nevermind keeping on top of all the speech activities I’m meant to be doing with Maisie. Even today after attending her group S&L session, I came away feeling overwhelmed, even though Maisie is doing well there’s still so much to do.

 Ultimately as far as we’re concerned we have a happy three year old who is thriving. Right now we’re doing whatever we can to encourage Maisie to talk and we feel lucky to have excellent resources where we live in terms of accessing disability services. 

Here she is enjoying not one but two biscuits on holiday in Lanzarote for mid term. How lucky we were to get away and enjoy some much desired sunshine. The kids had a ball. We returned to the same hotel as last year and it’s totally geared up for children. Our eldest attended soccer camp some days and didn’t mind hanging out with us on the others. Middle kid wasn’t keen on going to the kids club😩and preferred to hang out in the pool. But at least we got to relax (a bit)there and Maisie loved splashing about and washing her baby doll. There was a great soft play area also so she got plenty of exercise followed by a decent nap in the afternoons. This allowed me time to escape to the pool to read my book and then a heavenly swim in the sea. Caolan and I even got out for dinner once and the babysitter took the kids to the nightly disco. Money well spent! 

I can see the rest of the school year flying by. This September Maisie will start ECCE playschool, another milestone and another change in her environment. We hope it will go as well as it did for the other two but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a bit anxious about it. We’re sending Maisie to a pre school that is closer to her sister’s school, so it will be a new experience for us also. Will her new teacher be full of warmth and encouragement and will the management staff be supportive of her needs? I really hope so…

But in the meantime I’m going to enjoy Spring and spend more of my free time in the garden planting seeds, tending to them as they grow into beautiful blooms(in much the same way a parent endeavours to do) I’ll endeavour to nurture our kids supporting them on their own unique journeys and try not to get too worried when things aren’t going as perfect as I’d like them too!