Saturday 16th January 2021
P is 7 Years 10 Months Old
R is 6 Years 9.5 Months Old
J is 2 Years 6 Months Old Today
It’s 5 weeks since my sister E passed away and I still can’t believe what happened. I don’t think I will ever forget seeing her in the morgue

I haven’t smoked in 10 years but when I came out of the morgue that night I had to have a cigarette. Myself and my sister shared a room when we were growing up and did everything together as kids and teenagers. She lived in a different part of the country for the last 20 years so I hadn’t seen her much. I had spoken to her on the phone 4 days before the accident. She had rang me back that evening and left a message for me on my phone asking me to ring her back as she wanted to talk to me about something. I didn’t hear the message until 2 days before the accident but I was very busy in work and busy at home so I didn’t phone her back

..how I wish now that I had done
My mam is doing ok. She is still very upset but is doing well physically. I have her staying with me now every weekend so that I can look after her. My sister A and niece V look after her during the week.
J is 2 years 6 months old today and he is doing great. Last night I was in the kitchen and P was playing with J in the sitting room and P came in to me and said ‘J can count to 10’ and I said I don’t think he can but went in to see what she meant and then I heard J counting from 1 to 10 over and over. He kept leaving out number 8

I know he learned it from watching 'Little Baby Bum' (LBB) . He loves it and watches the same episodes over and over. He also knows loads of different colours and shapes. He even knows what a pentagon shape is and he shouts 'Pentagon' when he sees it on LBB. Very clever for his age

Ireland is in Level 5 Covid-19 lockdown at the moment and the schools are closed since they closed for Christmas break on 23rd December. Homeschooling started again on Monday. Please God the schools will be able to open again soon.
P really misses L who is her best friend in school. I worry about R not being in school because he really needs the routine and the expertise of the teachers. During the last school closure from March to September he really regressed a lot socially and academically. His writing which had been going fine became terrible, so much so that his teacher suggested he get extra help with writing from an OT at the school. He had been getting extra help every day since the end of October and his writing was starting to improve but now I can see that he is already starting to regress again. I try my best to teach him writing skills but Im not a qualified OT and I find it very difficult to get R to listen to me when I am trying to teach him.