As Ram has been so tired lately I let him sleep in this morning. I managed to do two loads of washing, make a loaf of bread, answer a load of emails and send off Skippy, our Renault Kangoo, to the garage for some major work, AND get dressed all before he woke up!
Once I was back in bed reading aloud to him (I usually don't get dressed until he does) I thought we would have a lovely day, but not so. The first interruption was someone knocking at the door. I was expecting the Veggie Box delivery so I thought it would be that, and jumped up straight away and ran downstairs, but it was only someone selling tea towels door to door. I explained that my son was disabled and I had to go back to him so I couldn't see his tea towels. I don't think he believed me as he gave me one of those 'looks'!
Ram wasn't very happy when I got back upstairs but we carried on reading. Until the phone rang! This time it was the garage. Skippy is in to have his cam belt seen to, and as they took it apart they found that the water pump was leaking. They had to explain that it might last six months but that they would have to do the cam again when they replaced the water pump and it was cam driven so it would mean double the expense in six months time, or just an extra £100 to do it now. I gave my permission for them to do it now.
All through the call Ram was shouting 'who is it'. He still doesn't get that I can't talk to business people at the same time as to him, so I had to ask the garage to wait while I explained to him that it was the garage and was important. He still didn't accept that and kept shouting. But when I put the phone down he wouldn't talk to me about it, just wanted me to carry on reading.
Then the one interruption that I was expecting came. The veggie box was finally deliver to the right place. I had to talk to the man to tell him that where they have been leaving it for the last four weeks was the incorrect place. Then he started talking about older dogs and their troubles! He was a lovely man, very chatty, but not what I wanted just then.
By the time I got upstairs to Ram he was in a state. He was crying and very angry. It was also getting late by then as he kept refusing to get up due to his anger. I read for another 30 minutes and he was finally calm enough to get up just after midday!
Never mind, he just had lunch instead of breakfast! He got straight onto the computer again. He is enjoying The Sims and I read out an email from a friend about what her daughters get up to with Sims, and he actually helped me reply back to them! Communication by proxy I call it!
This evening we watched Mock the Week and I am always amazed at how many news stories he has picked up. I sometimes try to fill in the background for some of the jokes and he gets that look in his eyes and says, 'Oh mum, I already know that!'
Afterwards I said he could play on the computer again until he finished what he was doing. I decided to play the Popcap game Venice. We really enjoy Popcap games and there is a lot of hidden educational stuff going on with them. Aside from the usual eye-hand coordination, they also help with tracking and focusing, and they often have other educational things going for them like the classical music in Insanaquariam, and spelling in Book Worm Adventures, just to name a few. They even have ones for typing practice! You can play them for free on line, or download them as a trial for one hour's worth of play, or pay a modest sum to buy them outright.
Anyway, I still had 30 minutes of play in Venice before I had to enter the code to carry on playing it, so I decided to use it up. Ram looked at what I was doing, and decided that he wanted to have a go, so he loaded up his free 60 minutes.
I wish he hadn't! Within a few minutes he was at the same level as I was! He was really very much better at it than I was, and even told me about some of the power-ups and techniques that I didn't know about!
I had told him that we could play until my free time ran out. When it did I was half way along level 11 and he had just started it. But I was on my last life and he hadn't lost any yet!
While we were getting ready for bed he said that he decided that he was going to carry on for the rest of his free time today to see how much further ahead of me he could get, before entering his code. He felt that was a fair completion as we would both have had the same time to play.
So he not only is he competitive, he has learned something else from Popcap games: how to be competitive and act fairly at the same time!
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