Holding down the fort

Tools, walks and coke cans,

not fun obsessions.  Breathe deep,
be patient... then Wine!

We dropped Mr KCNQ2Haiku at the station at 6am this morning and I've been trying to manage Ben all day.  We took Leo for a mini walk and had a bit of a guilty kip after the early start and then we had a walk into town to pick up a Cafe Nero panettone and look in the Free Book Shop.  Ben chose some books from his bookshelf to donate and he was pleased to pick a DIY book to bring home.  It's been a very trying day though, attempting to keep him on track.  He was anxious about having a Diet Coke on the walk and then about why we couldn't sit in Cafe Nero to eat the cake. Then he got really cross on the walk home that he wanted to knock on the door of some neighbours where we had seen an ambulance yesterday because he wanted to know what had happened and he could not be persuaded that it was none of our business and we just had to be patient. Then he wanted to look at tools in the shed and got very cross.  His brother helped out a little bit and we de-escalated it to the point where he was playing with water and washing up liquid in the sink for a while and that seemed to really calm him down.  He was also cross about not going to the woods (we'd had such a big walk already that I'd said no) but I ended up caving on that one as I thought maybe the woods would help him to settle.  It's worked out OK although Leo was cheeky and properly disappeared a couple of times.  He did eventually turn up and I decided to keep him on the lead since he clearly wasn't listening.  I think he just had lots of pent up energy but his recall is definitely more patchy as he gets older.. When we got home Ben got really cross about wanting to go on YouTube to search for a particular episode of the channel 4 show Tool Club where they upcycled a suitcase.  We have a no Youtube policy as he gets spirally and obsessive with it, so that was a bit more fun but he now seems to have settled down to playing on the xbox.  Overall, not an easy day.  Would not recommend.  I'd give it maybe a 2 out of 5!  I'm definitely opening the wine now :-D