Water!

I’ve mentioned it before but Jude has always loved and always been drawn to water.

I don’t know exactly what it is, perhaps it’s the blurry sounds or the light reflecting movement or how it feels against your body but being around water is Jude’s happy place. At school as a littley they used to do so many water related sensory activities with him as it always brought the best out of him. I don’t think anything has changed. He will still happily play with water, even from the tap in the kitchen sink, for hours.

A few months ago, his love of bathing returned and he would sit in a very shallow bath and flick the water with his hands, watching it move across his body. He still casts toys/items rather than moving them aside as you or I may do (cast means throwing them with his right hand, for example, across and away to his left side) and this is very much the movement he makes with bath water. I think it resonates with how he watches television. He loves to see things move across his eye line – he doesn’t sit on the couch and watch television as Elsa or Emmeline may do, he crouches in front of it and plays with his blocks, allowing the colour from the screen just touch his eyeliner. The water is the same. Whilst he flicks it across his body, he never directly looks at what he’s doing. He kind of looks through it so the motion of the water passes by his eyes.

He always loved having baths as a toddler and invented a game where he would lie very still with just his nose above the water line! It must have felt amazingly relaxing for him, the echoing sounds and that comforting, close feeling you experience when immersed in water. Unfortunately, one day when playing his game, Jude passed out under the water. I have no idea why it happened. One moment he was lying there content and the next his lips were turning blue and I was freaking out as he hadn’t come up after his usual amount of time. I called an ambulance who thankfully arrived within fifteen minutes. By this time, I had pulled Jude out of the water and he’d come back round but my god, it was terrifying. We went in the ambulance to hospital for a check up (he thought it was hilarious lying on the stretcher whilst driving) and all was fine. He had a few febrile convulsions as a baby/toddler so they put it down to this. Thankfully, he hasn’t had any since that water experience!

Anyway, I digress. I want to celebrate all of Jude’s loves one at a time, starting with this one. So here’s to water…

Elsa will love me for this one! Jude in Granny and Grandad’s garden, aged about four and a half and happy in the sunshine.

And this one. Poor little Elsa…I had to sit her far away as Jude was playing so rough in the water!

Swimming on holiday in France. To compensate on going out each day, I’d treat Jude to a session in the pool! We’d go back for another swim before bedtime too.