The LittleThings That Make You Smile

The LittleThings That Make You Smile

Lindsay Gale
28th June 2010

Having Nick, our host child, is really just extending the borders of our family to another great kid. When we tell friends what we’re doing, that Nick is coming over they think that’s amazing but it’s just a bigger sense of family, and we’ve learnt a lot from each other. Getting to know Nick’s family has been great too – sharing a part of another family’s journey – swapping stories of Nick, enjoying his sense of humour, funny faces, and love of sport. He lives in the present moment, which is really good for me – helps me slow down. He communicates without words and we’re all learning that too. He takes hundreds of photos on my i-phone – some of them are fantastic - sort of sweeping and surreal. I’ll get some of them blown up – they’re really interesting.

On the whole, we don’t do anything different when Nick comes over – just the normal weekend things. We might have started out treating him like a visitor, but now it’s much more relaxed. Lots of wrestling, games of sock throwing in the house, or basketball outside, playing X-box, watching sport, walking the dog. And if we annoy each other, we let each other know that too.

Yesterday my husband, Phil, I and Nick took our dog Sheba for a walk around Lillydale Lake. We wanted to get all the way around, but weren’t sure how Nick would go – not being a one for long walks.  It was a grey day, so I’d brought the umbrella in case, and even though it wasn’t raining, Nick put it up and was strolling along underneath it. So he dropped behind us, and we were ambling along, not wanting to get too far ahead of him. Suddenly he appeared alongside – he’d snuck up behind us and was laughing gleefully as he passed us by. So this became a game of sneaking past each other that got us around the lake with lots of laughter. It makes me smile, remembering Nick playing this game – cheeky grin on his face, umbrella held high, bent forward in the middle, racing us around the lake.

Notefrom Nick’s Mum, Diane
Nick will be going to Lindsay & Phil’s this weekend.  It is going really well and he fits in with their family perfectly, he loves going.  Thanks for matching them with Nick they are wonderful people.