Tuesday 25 February 2014

Fresh Eyes

Can you remember the last time you saw something which blew your mind? The last time you saw something which stunned you into a captivated silence? A time when you found yourself awestruck, heart pounding, body rigid with excitement. Can you remember feeling like this at all...ever?

One of the purest pleasures in my life is watching Mojo experience the world. Experiencing it with a level of enthusiasm reserved exclusively for toddlers (is it weird that I resent that word 'toddler', mojo doesn't toddle but she's a toddler...I've said toddle too much now, I digress). I love to watch her exploring and processing things, laughing and watching.

Mojo spends so much time in therapies, Physio, OT, Portage, Speech and Language. Each of these
programmes leaves us with homework and targets and hours of things to do. Were we to do all of this homework mojo could easily spend all day, every day 'working'. Sometimes I think maybe if we did this her progress would suddenly be textbook. The approach we take is different. We take all of the elements and targets and weave them around our normal daily life. Last week when mojo did a spontaneous new Makaton sign, Pig, we 'positively reinforced' by heading to Bocketts Farm to meet some piggies and watch them racing (Our pig won! Go Bradley Piggins!). To my mind the excitement, joy and wonder she experienced that afternoon was worth a whole day of therapy.


With our new Firefly GoTo chair the supermarket has now become a wealth of learning opportunities. Sitting up at my eye level in the trolley allows her to practice language, choosing, grasping and releasing as well as maintaining her interest in food, which is an on-going battle. The first time we went to the supermarket with the new chair was so exciting for her that it made me see the experience completely differently, A chore becomes an adventure and the scream of excitement every time we went down a new aisle makes you see groceries in a whole new light. Mojos desire to reach out and touch the bright fresh fruit, the leafy herbs, the shiny tins and the fresh crunchy bread made me suddenly LOVE all the mundane groceries I usually don't give a second thought to.

Mojo, throughout her life, has taught me to truly value the big things, like the ability to breathe and the strength to stand and the full use of all my limbs. As she gets older it's the minutiae that she renews my appreciation for. The really specific things that are amazing and we just take for granted such as...




Penguins...Recently we met our first Penguin.
This was the reaction 




Then there's how we feel about flowers...   




                                ...and birds









Oh and brand new days are pretty flippin exciting too...
...and of course Supermarket shopping.



It's almost impossible to leave the house these days without finding something else which is the most exciting thing in the whole world. It is impossible not to join her in her enthusiasm because she's not wrong. The world IS amazing and exciting and full of fantastic, hilarious things it's just that you stop thinking about it after a while and it's so much easier to focus on the negatives.

By the way I completely acknowledge how eye-rollingly irritating I must be to encounter in daily life if you are just trying to get your weekly shop done or walk a dog or just keep yourself to yourself and there we are being awestruck by the world with all the bouncy energy of a Cbeebies presenter. I can only apologise and sadly know that it will only be a phase and soon Mojo (and therefore I) will start to view the world like normal people. But for now....