DadGeek’s Monthly Update – February 2018
Wow! Where did February even go? It felt like January was about 4 months long and then February whisks through before you can even register it’s properly here!
So what’s been going on this month?
Well, continuing the theme of ‘really hard and unfortunate things to deal with all in one go’ February did not disappoint. This month we attended the funeral of a close friend, Mrs DadGeek had a stay in hospital and Morgan has been having a hard time at school.
Pet News!
Pet news is positive this month as you’ll be glad to know Ivy’s leg is all sorted out and she’s back to her usual self. Whatever happened, we’re thinking it may be related to the somewhat dilapidated state of our back fence and that she may have caught herself on it. I’ll do my best to get rid of any nails poking out and random splinters. Quinn remains a pretty chilled out character and has formed a bond with our new (well, we got him in December) puppy, Choccy. Ivy wants nothing to do with him but her aggression towards Quinn is at least subsiding now.
Joey the Hamster seems to have gained a new energy after a period during which we thought she was going to drop off the twif. Apparently the lack of heat in the dining room may have sent her into hibernation mode. Definitely much chipper now and to my delight she’s using the coconut house we bought her!
Choccy still has twice the normal energy of a standard puppy but is rapidly increasing his body mass along with it so that we’re gradually seeing him turn into a fluffy, barking freight train. The time my wife recently spent in hospital forced us to work on our relationship a bit, so I’m now very slightly less standoffish about the whole ‘being a dog owner’ thing. It would appear that my role is to become a sort of begrudging Hagrid character, except all the creatures I’m caretaking are thoroughly mundane.
Special Ed Struggles
This month these are equally divided between the topics of ‘The Fight to Get an Appropriate Placement’ and ‘Morgan Hates School All The Time’.
Mrs DadGeek has been in and out of meetings with the SENCO and constantly on the phone trying to get hold of our EHCP co-ordinator. If you ever think finding the right school for your neurotypical child is a bit tricky, try engaging with the SEN process and you’ll be staring into madness. So far we’ve got a tribunal to look forward to as we’ve been turned down for the place that can really deliver what Morgan needs based on available places. Meanwhile we have to try to identify other schools that may also be suitable (you wouldn’t think that’d be our job. Apparently it is) and bring them to the attention of the LA who may then apply on our behalf. Add in a few breakdowns in communication and you’d got a really fun time on your hands.
All the while, Morgan is in his current school and as the syllabus becomes more structured, he becomes less and less willing to engage with the work. He can range from moments of heartbreaking sadness, exuberant joyousness and back down to rage outbursts all depending on how much sleep he’s managed to give himself. It’s exhausting for him but also for those that are trying to get the best out of him.
Half Term
We usually love half-term here at Casa Del DadGeek and there’s usually ample opportunity to get out and give the children something to stare at that’s not an iPad. Unfortunately, the wife was taken into hospital with pancreatitis (an unfortunate side-effect of having no gall bladder) so we ended up battening down the hatches and I sort of went into single-parent mode.
Luckily, due to the presence of good friends we still managed to get out a little bit even if it was just to get the kids and the dog to the park to run off their excess energy.
By the way, if you know any single parents of small children, especially multiple small children, buy them a huge bottle of alcohol or a massive bar of chocolate. They are doing a really tough job.
Snow!
Oh my word we had snow! Not just a tiny bit of snow, not just the sort you see on the news when they film the gritters going out, but epic-level 25cm deep snow! I’m a big kid when it comes to snow so we went down the local incline and the kids had a ton of fun getting freezing cold hurling themselves down it with gusto.
Reviews!
Despite some pretty rough goings-on we still did a few cool reviews this month! The first was our review of Giggle Wiggle, an awesome game of trying to get a caterpillar to hold mul;tiple marbles. If you’ve ever asked a child to hold a shopping bag, it’s like that. Later on we did our review of Avokiddo’s ‘We ARGH Pirates‘ app. Marshall was our main guinea pig for that and he thought it was so good he actually stopped playing all his other random games for a whole day!
Perhaps our most exciting review this month was when we were sent a whole case of Flush Force by Spin Master. The kids were over the moon and it’s actually an awesome range of tiny, gross little creatures that live in toilets. Check out our video below!
Let’s get Social!
February was a great month on social media. Our Instagram continues to build steadily and we’ve put a lot more of our own activity on there this month (I feel March will have a strong ‘pictures-of-boardgames’ feel to it) including a lot of us messing about in the snow! Our beloved Twitter community is going from strength to strength and this month we got to 3,500 followers! That seems a huge number considering that back in April we were at 0! Thanks to everyone helping us build up over there.
We’ve also continued to put a huge amount of effort into our Pinterest. This month we’ve created three new boards that contain some of our favourite stuff! Check out the links below. If you see anything you like, all the pins link through to where you can purchase the items!
My favourite right now is the PopGeek board because I LOVE pop vinyls and there’s a ton of them on there! Viewers and subscribers are up and we’re enjoying building our little community on there!
Facebook is still a challenging place to build a following but we’re just trying our best to create a well-deserved following that really get our content. Every follower on there is like a little gift and the longer we work at it the better results we see. I’m not sure that Facebook’s algorithms will ever let us truly explode on there but for now it’s still something we’re working at.
Coming Up!
In March we’ll be getting onto our review of the fun-yet-super-educational Smartick maths program and a bunch of new toys that came down the chimney with Santa including Spin Master’s Luvabella doll, Bloxels and a crazy Meccano robot called Micronoid! We would have had those done by now but the Flush Force really kept us busy.
We’ve also got the Norwich Gaming Festival coming up so would like to cover as much of that as possible.
March 26th is also the start of National Autism Awareness Week so we’ll be looking to get involved there and maybe try and raise a bit of money for the cause!
As the weather improves, this gang of children also like to go outside a bit more so we’ll be looking for opportunities to go adventuring and getting ready for the sunshine!
Thanks also for all your comments, likes, tweets and shares. They really help to feedback to us that we’re on the right track!
Love and hugs
The DadGeek Family
