Anyway, Samuel is six. He arrived in the world three weeks early, delivered by emergency C section, and spent the first 19 days of his life in the Neo Natal Unit at Kings College Hospital suffering from very low blood sugar levels. But he thrived and was soon on the 91st growth centile for both weight and height, and he's now almost as tall as his older brother.
The main problem we had with Sam was his lack of speech. We still have no idea what it was that stopped him from speaking his first words until the age of 3 ½; the paediatrician said Verbal Dyspraxia, but the Speech Therapist disagreed. Once he'd said his first words, there was no stopping him; he acquired language in the space of the summer holidays, astounding nursery staff and health professionals in the process.
And once he started school, he began to astound me. I always worried about Sam because a) he's my child b) we spent a long time being told by health professionals that slow speech development could point to learning difficulties and c) he spends most of his time away with the fairies. So I wasn't really expecting great things from him. But waddya know? The boy's a smarty pants.
His teacher, Miss Courtis, summed him up very nicely when she told us at parents' evening: "We have to send Samuel round to the year two corridor to get his reading books. And then we have to send someone to fetch him because he's forgotten why he's round there."
Happy Birthday Samuel.
