Tandy

I had to go back to work when Kieron was just 4 months old as financially it would have been impossible to survive on basic maternity pay. I found a childminder who had been recommended to me but after a few weeks she decided to give up childminding and recommended a lady called Tandy.

I went to meet her and was impressed at how she related to Kieron so decided to try her. She lived just round the corner from us and had no problem with Kieron being dropped off at 7.30 most mornings.

Tandy was an absolute star....she happily gave Kieron my expressed breast milk, pureed food for him, giving him the same meals as she gave her own young children. Took him on the same outings, played with him as much as with her own children and treated him as a member of her family. Tandy and I became close friends and socialised together, laughed together and confided in each other.

As Kieron got older, Tandy took Kieron on the school run as her youngest two had started going and introduced Kieron to the school that would eventually become his school.

Kieron loved going to Tandys....he became firm friends with her children and on occasion her daughters would babysit for me too. Tandy had a huge garden with climbing frames and paddling pool and enough room for Kieron to run around and tire himself out.

Tandy eventually moved house and by then, I'd changed jobs and Kieron was going to his after school club, but if I was stuck she was always ready to help out. It was Tandy who looked after Kieron on the day of my dad's funeral and it was Tandy who took Kieron on his first open top bus trip.

Tandy ended up moving to Canada and now lives in America, bu recently her oldest daughter added me on facebook.

Yesterday her daughter posted 3 photos of Kieron that I had not seen before and the huge grin on Kieron's face and the sparkle in his eyes as he's snuggled up on the settee with the other children is a fitting testimony to the love and care he received.

Thank you Tandy xxxxxx

Bugs and other creepy crawlies

Kieron likes bugs....woodlice, ants, ladybirds, butterflies, dragonflies.....the list goes on and on.

When I was little, there were two paving stones in my parents garden path that were broken and as the path was the original Victorian one, they were also loose. I loved to lift these stones and pick up the wood lice underneath. When Kieron was 3, I inherited the house and I showed Kieron the stones, carefully lifting them up so that he could see for himself the wealth of woodlice and beetles underneath.

This soon progressed to making bug houses: piercing holes in jam jars, putting in grass and leaves to make beds and provide food, adding drops of water so the bugs wouldn't get thirsty. The bugs were allowed to stay in the jar in Kieron and Callum's room overnight and were then released back into the garden.

When we re-landscaped the garden, I fought to retain the Victorian path. One reason was its charm, the other reason was the woodlice. Unfortunately, I was over-ruled, mainly because the path was a trip hazard and two little boys kept falling over the broken slabs.

So, new path, new garden. Time to find a new supply of woodlice. In the interim, ants became the objects of Kieron's fascination and they too had houses made from jars. What Kieron didn't consider was that ants are tiny and easily escaped through the air holes in the lids and a frantic search would ensue looking for Alfie or whichever ant had vanished.

Kieron also chases me and his sister round the garden with worms, threatening to throw them at us before being side tracked by being shown the butterflies swarming around the buddleia and the dragon fly that kept returning to the clematis.

We had ant races ( which took some time as they kept slipping down cracks between the new paving stones), slug hunts and sang to ladybirds, telling them to go home. We rescued bees that flew into the house and even tried to stroke the slumbering ones.

I bought Kieron a bug magnifier so that he could investigate them more easily, before letting them go to live another day and a microscope so that he could be a biologist with the dead bugs.

Kieron was fascinated when we were on holiday and there was a dragonfly in the swimming pool, trying to rescue his sister from it as she was "a girl" and scared of it.

Kieron rescued a slow worm which he then put in the shade at school, because he knew it would die if left out in the sun on a hot day, but then got into a fight with one of his class mates who put the slow worm back in the sun. That was an interesting visit to his head teacher after school. Trying to explain to the teacher that I fully supported Kieron as although it was 'only' a worm, it had rights and was being tortured by this other boy.

Spiders were taken into school after being discovered in hedges on the walk to school,  tucked inside Kieron's sleeves and shown to the girls in his class who shrieked in mock fear, leading to me telling him off whilst trying not to smile at the sheer wonderfulness that makes up Kieron.

So why was a little boy who has so much love for even the tiniest living creature and so determined to prevent them from being harmed, taken from those who love him so much?