La is foxed and brings home some exciting news

Sometimes my life with La feels like a constant struggle to stay ahead of the game. I can feel utterly calm and in control, she comes in from a day at the Centre and within minutes I'm a gibbering wreck, screaming with confusion as I race around trying to restore domestic order.

It would be fantastic slapstick comedy to any observer as La moves around the house, distracting and diverting me so that she can get away with her cunning plans:

• If I forget to bolt the front door - she's on the drive in a flash, alarming passers by as she heads towards the wheels of a passing bus
• If I forget to lock the fridge - she's in there in a a nano-second grabbing fistfuls of tinned tuna, leftover dinner, mouthfuls of cheddar cheese, cold falafels, etc, etc
• If I forget to hide the paper or a magazine underneath a mattress - in the blink of an eye, it's trashed with ripped pages littering the floor of every room in the house
• If I don't hide the bread dough - she delves in and her fingers and face are adorned with the sticky stuff

However, after a couple of weeks where La has been determined to thwart all (in theory, for me, therapeutic) bread making attempts (and the results of) this week my two blogs have collided and I have made breadbags out of an old sundress which did belong to La. It's possible that with time, La will rip them open, such is her ferocious strength but for now she is puzzled by the knots in the ties and the loaves (and crumpets)are safe.

La on tv

A few weeks ago, a charity called Music in Hospitals paid a visit to La's centre and a film was made demonstrating their work.

The fact that La enjoyed this came as no surprise to us. I remember a GP telling me when she was a baby that La would certainly excel at some random things in life. At the time I thought she may have been fobbing me off, softening the devastating blow for a mother who had just been told her child had a severe learning disability, but very quickly we realised that La is in fact a musical genius. When I say genius it's possibly an exaggeration but you anticipate the final chord of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring after hearing it once? 

By promising 'music', you can get La to do most things and her tastes are wide. She responds wildly to a strong beat and any kind of discord with a repertoire of innovative dance moves and improvised singing. Bad playing by others is her idea of heaven - at the moment La is loving the non-talky bits in the current BBC4 series Punk Britannia, for example. Every summer she enjoys most of the televised Proms concerts.

Back to Music in Hospitals, as it turns out that La's contribution to the music session was such that we have been asked to grant permission for La to be shown in the final edit, to appear on The Community Channel.

If this is ever online, I may just post a link and reveal La's identity in what can only be all her glory. In the meantime, we await the (in the bag)  Bafta.