Bit of a random title from me today but I wanted to share another Jude related anecdote from the past.
Little Jude and Elsa!
When Jude was little, he attended a nursery from the age of around eighteen months till just before he turned four. It was a wonderful place, Jude was incredibly happy and the staff did all they could to help Jude involve himself in all group activities. One of his favourite things to do was play in the garden. This garden was laid with artificial grass. Now, I can see why they chose to do this but it never really dawned on me at the time…
Why is artificial grass actually pretty good?
It’s hard-wearing, no need to cut it, the children can’t turn it into a bog through constant wearing down with bikes/cars/charging about. Artificial grass also looks nice, it’s soft and doesn’t take hours to dry out following a rain fall. In fact, it’s idea for a nursery grounding. Some people consider it more environmentally friendly than real grass…I found this interesting article on it so read it and decide for yourself. For me, I guess I love nature so much that I couldn’t possibly remove all of the real grass from my garden. But I do see why many choose to change at least a section of theirs, especially the area of the garden that the children play in the most.
Jude (just turned 5 in this photo) has always loved being outside
Anyway…during this moment in Jude’s life, he was really cautious on his feet. In fact, he still is but not quite at the same level. Back then, if he saw a line on the ground, or a slight dip in the pavement, he’d insist on holding your hand to step over it. Even when there was no “over” to manoeuvre but merely a different shade of tarmac! It was quite funny to see. At his nursery, they had a line of drainage that ran the whole width of the garden, basically defining the separation from patio to grass. Jude would never step over it. He’d trot down the patio quite happily but would always wait for a member of staff to help him over this line, it was quite a sight to behold! I remember his key worker joking that she could draw a chalk line around Jude in the garden and know he’d never run off. Bizarrely, it was probably true!
I had his eyes tested several times but as you can imagine this isn’t a particularly easy challenge to conquer. One (clearly very intuitive) optician had the genius idea of holding images of Jude’s favourite foods around the room and asking Jude to point to the one he mentioned. He always got them right so I’m not sure why he was so wary of differentiations in the ground.
Told you this would be random! It’s just something that came to me and I wanted to share it with you!
*This blog post was written in collaboration, however all words, thoughts and Jude-isms are my own.
