Stuff With Thing

I’ve uninstalled the ‘track me not’ plug in and that seems to have fixed my posting issue.

I can’t post at Purple Cross Stitch, very frustrating.

It keeps telling me:

“Error:
Your browser is hiding the referrer. Form submission on this site is not possible with browsers set to hide sites visited. Please consult your privacy software documentation to reset your privacy settings”

Tried to email Johanna the admin / owner of Purple but I get the same error message.

I think this has something to do with Hubby updating our Firefox browser - all the text sizes on the screen are tiny now. If I set text size to normal the blogs come up so tiny I’d need a magnifying glass to read them.

Will have to find out how to fix it. No hope of asking Ralph as he is exhausted - had to work overtime yet again yesterday. He has gone to work already and the girls and I are having a pj day today.

Yesterday we made corn and cheese muffins - very yummy, used creamed corn instead of corn kernals and double the cheese in the recipe. Also made bacon and herb scones, bacon and cheese bread and caramel and chocolate slice. Was baking day yesterday. Annie helped dry the dishes while I washed them and we mostly got cleaned up afterwards. Lots of fun was had.

Ralph worked 9.30am to 11.30pm yesterday. Add an hours travel time either way and he is wiped. Boss has said he can start at 1pm today but I’m not holding out any hope on the 7pm finish time.

Submitted my carer payment papers to Centrelink (social security) yesterday. Will see what comes of that. If it just helps a little with the speech therapy costs I will be happy.

After several hours on the phone yesterday we have an appointment with a paediatrician to do Heidi’s formal Autism evaluation. The Paed is happy to see and assess a 2.5yo and had a cancellation for 11th of July so no months of waiting. The joys of going private : Grin :

Still no stitching done. I’m looking forward to school holidays. Even though my girls are both too young for school their kinder/childcare/playgroup all stop for school holidays so we get a break. No going anywhere for 2 whole weeks (well other than doctors).

Last night Annie, Ralph (he got a night off W00t) and I were doing Annie’s usual bed time story. Annie and J went shopping. The purchased a pig. Then they went to the park.

At the park J hit Annie on the head with a big stick. So Annie called S who caught a taxi over and told J off. S took J home and put her in time out and then returned to the park.

Then S hit Annie on the head with a big stick!

We went through various people coming to her rescue and hitting her on the head with a big stick. Then we talked about how none of those people would ever ever hit her with anything, let alone on the head with a big stick. Turns out Nephew M recently hit Annie on the head with a big stick! AhHa!

Yesterday morning the girls and I had morning tea at the Church with one fo the Church Ladies and her granddaughter who is visiting. The lady spent most of the time trying to sell me Manna Bears. She went on and on about how it worked on the cellular level and built the cells together like DNA. Now I’m no medical expert but that sounds like bullshit to me. OTOH her butterfly cakes and gingerbread men were to die for so I was not terribly unhappy. ::grin::

Heidi has had a spurt in language of the last couple of days. Yesterday I was doing something and she came up to me and said “Good Job”. This morning she wanted her jacket off and stood there pulling the buttons saying “I want bunt” (bunt = buttons). If we give her an armfull of dirty clothes and say ‘laundry’ she will run to the laundry and throw the clothes in the basket.

And lastly I’m struggling with trying to tell Annie that just because she sees an advertisement for something on TV does not mean we are instantly going to buy it. If anyone can help me with that I’d be eternally grateful.

We visited the special education school and spent two hours with the preschool teacher there.

She said:

- Heidi is the right age for them

- we are in their catchment area

- Heidi would fit in with two of their already attending high functioning children.

- Heidi should be enrolled in a regular 3yo kinder next year (must get on to that today)

- Need to get a formal CARS (childhood autism rating scales) assesment done before we can start at the preschool.

Plus she went through a bunch of their PECS stuff and how they use it which is slightly different to our speech therapist.

I need to get working on all the PECS stuff because I think that is really going to ease our path.

Routine, routine, routine was hammered home. God I suck at routine, I really don’t do it well. I know this is not about me, it is what Heidi needs but for a few minutes I just like to scream about routine.

Got to write lists of routine so it is there for everyone to follow.

The teacher did say that Heidi appears high functioning and that she may just fall outside the autism spectrum. But even if she does, establishing routine and using the PECS cards will help with Heidi’s communicating issues and anxiety about change/separation.

What I really need now is a solid block of time where I can put everything together. Might try and do a bit while the Wiggles distract the rug rats.

Putting Annie to bed tonight and we did our usual bedtime story.

Me “Once upon a time Annie and J went shopping”

Annie “and they got a fan and a heater. Then they got you a notebook mummy and a train set for S”

Me “A train set wow”

Annie “No two trains sets”

holds up two fingers

“and two story books”

holds up two more fingers

“count them mummy that is one, two, three, four presents for S”

Me “Four presents she is lucky”

Annie “and then J and Annie got some dancing glasses that change colour to go with punky dance clothes. And then they went home and had a nap and a big drink of milk and played with their toys. The End”.

We talked some more about sleeping over with J and S and Annie has specifically requested that S say the Lords Prayer with her.

This after taking my face in her hands during the Lords Prayer. Shaking a finger at me for forgetting to say “trespass against us” and making me start again.

Hope you are up to it S ( :: evil grin :: ) We say the Thee’s and Thou’s version (if the trespass didn’t give that away).

I’m really struggling today. This morning was meant to be my break, a little time for me to have no responsibilities while the girls were at childcare. Sadly real life intervened to make sure that didn’t happen. Not just the Chris Benoit stuff but other things at home.

I got in about an hour of scrapbooking so at least I got a little break which is better than nothing. This afternoon Annie and I did some more scrapbooking. I’m really impressed with Annie’s work, she does much better with a blank page as her canvas rather than a printed page. But still she shows a natural talent for putting colours and stuff together.

Annie’s work from today.

My work from today.

Heidi had lots of fun colouring in while Annie and I were scrapbooking. All was going well until I got so caught up in cutting stuff out that I didn’t notice her colouring in the wall. Still she was having fun and the wall can be cleaned later… much later.

FIL is coming over to dinner in about 10 minutes. Ralph left for work about 20 minutes ago. This dinner with FIL better go well because I don’t have a last straw left to break.

As seen in Hadenmaidens Blog:

You Are a Boxer Puppy

Energetic, playful and good with kids. You’ve also got a wild spirit that can’t be trained or tamed.

Had another good day today.

I had a little sleep in this morning to make up for Heidi staying awake until 5am. Ralph was so very very excited because while I slept a bit he and Annie finally got to watch My Neighbour Totoro together.

Met up with S and we went hunting for a new set top box/DV recorder for her.

While we were out I came across a Canon Powershot 550 at a price too good to refuse. So I ended up getting it. It has the same set up on the back as our old Canon digital camera so was very easy to set up and start using. Only drawback to my mind is that it takes AA batteries but we have rechargables so can work around that.

It is 7 mega pixel and 4 x optical zoom. Perfect size to keep in my bag. Great for taking pictures of the girls which is all I really want it for.

Visited Officeworks and got the ingredients to set up a PECS folder for Heidi. Now I just have to assemble it. Wooo.

We had a very late breakfast at Bunnings (sausage in bread) and an even later lunch at Hungry Jacks (Burger King). The girls got lots of one on one time with S.

Came home called Mum to check how she was doing. Got to chat to dad for a change. He offered to pay for the digital camera as he and mum get such pleasure from the pictures we send them. I accepted the offer as Ralph has not been getting a lot of hours recently and I was a little worried about how we’d pay the credit card off.

A happy day. Good company, good food, lots of quality time with the quality people in my life

I have spent the last 3 hours going through my CDs and DVDs that I stored photos on to work out dates pictures were taken.

This afternoon I finished the last three pages in Heidi’s Album (pages, 17, 18 and 19).

I’ve put the album up on Picasa to show off. Seems silly taking pictures of pictures but I do like to show my work off Some of the pics didn’t turn out so well. Really miss my digital camera. The mobile phone camera is better than having nothing though.

Since I got that last lot of pictures printed to scrapbook I’ve learnt that the file name of the photo is printed on the back of the picture. Now I use a bulk file rename program to add the date to the begining of all my digital pictures. That way when they get printed the date is on there.

Saves me spending hours later on working out when a picture was taken.