Thanksgiving

Happy half-term! Or at least we are hoping it will be! I do love Autumn half-term, this time of year being my favourite :-) Elin continued to have a pretty bad week- one of her worst in terms of the Dystonia. However yesterday brought some signs of improvements and today she is better again. As today was a teacher training day and I was on a course Elin spent some time with her old faithful friend Heather and her three little boys. Blog fans will know Heather was Elin's childminder until she went to school and she is basically amazing. We owe her so much. Anyway Elin got up to plenty at Aunty Heather's -including some Pumpkin carving for which she sat in her buggy for a full 15 minutes-and did a lot of smiling and even some laughing. Given that we haven't really seen 'our Elin' for a good week this was great news and of course I am hoping it means she has, once again, turned that elusive corner. It would be marvellous timing if she has. Fingers crossed.
On a different note, in Heather's absence in Elin's daily life now she is at school full time,  she has been lucky enough to acquire another 'Guardian Angel' to be with her when we are not there. Several actually. They are not friends or family, or even people we would ever have known if things had been different. They are the staff at Elin's school. Not in any way obliged to go the extra mile and dedicate every day to her wellbeing with unwavering focus, but doing so just the same. Because. Not because it is a job, or just because they are paid to do it. Because they want to. Because they love to, and they love her and all the other amazing children in their care.
This photo I took this afternoon is for you.
You deal with Elin's Dystonia brilliantly- not to mention everything else- and I simply could not leave her each day with anyone else.  I had a dream last night which kind of prompted me to write this. I was watching David Attenborough before bed and right at the end there was a Leopard stalking around. In my dream, this great beast of a Leopard was in Elin's school and nobody knew where he would go next. I somehow was there warning everyone and I shouted to Elin's key worker that the Leopard might come for Elin. (How crazy lol). She picked her up, turned around and began to move shouting to me over her shoulder 'No he won't, not while I'm here' and I swear in this crazy screwed up, funny dream I had utter faith that the Leopard had no chance of getting Elin-because she was with you.
Happy half term to all you wonderful workers and especially you, Elin's key worker, who deserves her own blog post really but wouldn't want it because praise and thanks are not why she loves her job. You all help to give Elin a better quality of life than we could have wished for (it doesn't take a degree in psychology to work out what my dream meant!) Have the break you deserve and I hope this photo goes some way to starting off your holidays on a positive:

Thank You.

All our love, Mummy and Daddy Drake xxxx