On Saturday the cold that Lucy had been fighting all week became so much worse, my experience of being the Mum to people with SLOS told me that it had now become an infection which happens a lot. I did what any worried parent would do and sought a medical opinion ( our resident expert nurse was at Morrison’s) , when I got through to the out of hours service I dutifully gave all of Lucy’s details , answered the inevitable question of ” Smith what sorry?” Which happens every single time . What I wasn’t expecting was for them to want to speak to Lucy , I explained that she isn’t communicative only to be shown up by Lucy who came up to me and said ” coffee please Mam Mam?” Of course they must have thought I was telling fibs and requested I put lucy on the phone. So I did , the conversation went as follows

Operator ” hi, is that Lucy?”

lucy ” werewolf”

Operator ” how are you feeling ?”

Lucy ” werewolf”

Operator ” mum says you are not feeling so good”

Lucy ” werewolf”

Operator ” lucy put mummy back on the phone”

Yes you guessed it ” werewolf”

But this is not unusual in this house, weird things are said and heard every single day.

For example at 6:30am today Jack was stark naked and shouting ” titty” as one does. Nobody found this remotely odd and he was promptly bundled into the shower. Talking of showers a recent Facebook memory reminded me that last year Jack’s arguments for not getting into the shower included ” I am happy smelling, I like buzzing ” and when they failed ” you get in the shower you smelly get” . Still on the shower theme I asked Ian last week if I had showered that day as I was too stressed and tired to remember, he didn’t bat an eyelid.

I once had a conversation with Jack about why it was inappropriate to throw his underpants at his friend Emily, this conversation showed up on my Facebook memories, I can’t begin to imagine what had preceded that little gem .

My memories also showed me a comment about the day I sprayed a new perfume which prompted Jack to bellow ” what the cowin hell is that smell?” . This then reminded me of the time that we were out and about and someone said ” what a lovely smell Jack, is it you ? Or is it Mammy’s perfume” . Jacks immediate response was ” it’s me! I’m wearing Mammy’s perfume”

And I wish I could forget the time Jack loudly exclaimed ” Muvva there is something wrong with my trousers” I asked him what the problem was with his trousers and I wished I hadn’t asked when he replied with ” they’re full of shit” – marvellous.

A while ago Ian explained to Jack that if the dog was annoying him he should just say ” go away Gwen” instead of telling her to piss off. He seemed happy with that , so Gwen starting jumping on him and Jack shouted ” go away hairy arse” . I think there may be a little more work needed there .

Many of the things that Jack and Lucy say are either as a result of taking things literally or because they have mispronounced something due to their speech difficulties. Recently Lucy was wailing that she wanted coffee, her helpful brother said ” Muvva she need coffee in her life”, Lucy then really started to cry and said ” no Jack, in a cup” . A few weeks back Jack was cross and in a temper he grabbed the toy chicken that came with Lucy’s Moana doll and started to squeeze it, a rather perturbed Lucy called to me ” Mam Mam quick! jack is choking his chicken” . But my recent favourite ? Jack singing along to the Monkees “then I saw her face and now her beaver” , I must admit to choking on my coffee at that one .

Another classic was Jack telling me that he wanted to go to Karl’s shop to show him his nose, I asked him what was wrong with his nose to be told ” nothing, it’s just lovely”

The saying of odd things is not just confined to Jack and Lucy though , Proudfoot asked me a few years ago why there was butter in his antibiotics, and a few weeks ago when I asked him why he was only wearing one shoe he responded with ” I can’t find the other one”. Well I did ask.

Recently I took Jack to a compulsory interview at the job centre, he has left school and entered the scary world of adult welfare benefits ( which could be a blog post all on its own – dear God!) anyway after a very shaky start where a petrified Jack screamed, shouted and dropped the c bomb like it was going out of fashion he calmed down. As we were leaving a told him how incredibly proud I was of him for being so brave. He responded by putting his arm around me ( some may call it a head lock) and said ” you and me support together Muvva ” . There was never a truer word spoken my darling boy.