In awe

At the end of a marvellous night of fun with the boys, I took Reuben into the playroom bathroom to do the nightime routine of cleaning around his tracheostomy and changing his trach tie, a routine which he is so accustomed to, 800 trach ties on, that he takes a tie from the packet, opens it up and pretends to attach it to his trach. I'm wearing the Santa hat from our fun night out and whilst Reuben had no intention of signing Santa to the real Santa earlier, he looked up at me as I held his trach ties in place and signed "Santa". I laughed. He then set about signing his opposites: hot/cold, wet/dry, yours/mine, yes/no, short/tall, clean/dirty. How can I truly describe how utterly in awe of my boy I am? how absolutely I adore him? how much he makes me smile and laugh day in, day out? how much he makes me laugh with his own made up jokes and his delightfully charming sense of humour. When I sign "towel", he signs "town" even though he knows I'm saying towel because it's become a standard joke to not only sign opposites, but to sign words which sound the same. I must add at this point that Reuben is actually deaf, spent 6 months in intensive and 11 surgeries later, is a walking, talking, miracle.

We mucked around the Christmas tree for a bit, Reuben in his delightful plush dressing gown, picking off decorations from the tree, here one of his long outgrown tartan baby slippers.

One side of his crib is now down with a view to converting it fully to a toddler bed this week and how lovely it was to be able to actually lie in his little bed alongside him, to look across at the stuffed animals he so adores, to look through the crib rails from within to out, and to experience what he does as he goes to sleep. The battery to his musical acquarium was starting to fade and sound jaded and he signed "broken" so I went through, pinched baby Callum's illuminated acquarium and brought it into Reuben. Well, he couldn't have found the transfer more hilarious! Two acquariums, one dodgy, the other beautifully musical. Then, finding only one of his two favourite doggies in his bed, he started to look around for the second. I knew exactly what he was thinking, what he would soon be signing "doggie, same" so I retrieved the second doggie from the adult bed that sits alongside his, put the Santa hat on and let it rise above the covers in his bed. A huge smile again erupted on his face as he lifted the Santa hat from doggie 2 and he signed "Santa, Santa, Santa!".

I think, finally, that Santa is his friend.