Kids in great form this morning.  Lots of laugher and giggles.  And tonight they have their first sleep-over!  We are heading up into NY State to Windham to spend the weekend with Lorna and family - including little Bruce and Fred.

Just watched Romney's acceptance speech.  How depressing!  What a load of shite and lies!

Spent the afternoon with Joey drifting down the Delaware River from Frenchtown on a couple of tubes.  Great fun, very relaxing and Joey at his funny, affectionate best.  Then rocking to 'Freebird' in the car on the way home.

One of the neighbours who came to dinner Tuesday has two autistic kids.  The other had two dyslexic kids.  What is it with this epidemic of children with difficulties?  Jenn, the first neighbour, has done quite a lot of research and seen specialists.  They have discovered, without going into too much detail, that some kids are unable to process properly all the toxic chemicals and heavy metals that are now in all of our children's bodies.  Most kids can get rid of these naturally but a substantial amount cannot and they are being effected by them.  She has put her kids on special diets with various supplements to build up their immune systems and has seen real progress.  By coincidence, Joey went to see the same doctor in Stockton that they use.  He did lots of blood, urine and hair tests.  We are due to go back on 10 September to discuss the results.  That should be interesting.

Interesting footnote.  Both mothers mentioned have joined their kids on the special diets (gluten-free) etc.  The fathers have not!  I wonder which way I will go if it comes to this.

Walked to get the paper and it was actually cool this morning!

I am annoyed at myself - the argument with Joey last night could have been avoided by me.  I took the position that a deal was a deal and 15 minutes was 15 minutes.  What I should have done was look at how much was left of what he was watching and been sensible.  If there was a lot, I could have said, OK, you can't watch it all but I'll give you 2 minutes more or whatever.  If there was going to be a slight over-run, I should have allowed it so that he could have finished what he was doing.  It IS important that Joey understand that a deal is a deal but getting into a fight over a minute or two of YouTube is silly and counter-productive.  Did I mentioned that I really, really hate bloody video games such as Mine Craft (it was what he was watching last night and it is scarily addictive for him).

The anxiety showed itself at bedtime today.  Joey had had a goo evening, coming back from the movies with Anne and Izzy at about 2000.  Whilst Anne was upstairs with Izzy, I made a deal with Joey that he could watch 15 minutes of Youtube if he then went upstairs with no problems and was good at getting into bed.  I gave him warnings and then told him that the 15 mins was up.  Tantrum due to the fact that towards the end the screen had frozen a  few times.  Faces, scowls, etc etc.  sadly I lost my temper a little as well.  Not a satisfactory end to the evening.