Bursting!

Oh gosh, I'm so excited.
Yesterday I took Rye and a friend's child to Gymnastics. 
Rye was very, very resistant and I confess I bribed him with chocolate in the end, along with pretty much pulling him into the gym, standing with him a few moments, and then legging it.  Yes I know doesn't sound particularly gentle, but I've found with Rye's quirks, a good push is sometimes needed to break him out of the spiral of negativity when he feel anxious.

Anyway, for the first 20 minutes he watched, he ran around, he sat on the floor mat and waggled his legs in the air, and I told myself that perhaps I should have let him take this week off, after all he was very ill over the weekend, and I was discussing with a, new to our group home educator and, new friend that perhaps I needed to ask the coach if I could be in the sessions and encourage Rye that way... and then suddenly Rye is joining in!

Not only is he joining in, but he's walking across the beam and allowing the coach to help him, and he's listening to her instructions, and walking back along the low beam on his own.... and then he had a go at walking along sidewards, again with the coach helping him.  He's talking to her, smiling and he came running out after the session smiling and telling me how much he enjoyed himself!  Fabulous!

So proud of him, and so incredibly happy that he did join in and he's clearly building up trust and liking for the coach.  I think it helped too that there were a couple more children in the group this time, and I guess he wanted to join in with them too?  Either way, I'm bursting with pride and joy.

I'm considering signing Rye up for dance classes. There is a local dance studio run by a male dancer, and I think Rye would respond to a male instructor very positively, this would also be a mainstream group, and not a specific home ed group, which I think would be good for Rye too.  Expand his social bubble as it were.

And to finish off, I bought some fully closed daffodils for our season table a couple of days ago, and they've now opened out and look beautiful on our season table, which at the moment is cross between winter and spring - appropriate really, apparently last week (while I was ill and bed ridden) the weather here was lovely and spring like, and so far this week, it's been rather cold and wintry!