Last night I handed over all the fundraising stuff for kinder which eases a great burden of responsibility off my shoulders.
I heard today that Heidis kinder sessions are being increased by 30 minutes each. An extra half hour without one child. Bliss.
Plus I found out I can get a small refund from Centrelink for both the girls kinder sessions which I didn’t think I would be entitled to. Woo. Got to fill out a ton of paperwork but even a small refund is better than nothing.
Annie fell asleep talking last night - like she does most nights, just suddenly stops mid sentence and she is out. As per usual she woke up talking, actually yelling “2 plus 3 is 5″ at 4.45am, the joy It woke Heidi up also.
Today was Annie’s second swimming lesson, she has a problem with swallowing pool water and choking because she can’t keep her mouth closed because… wait for it… she wont stop talking.
Thank you to everyone for the lovely comments on my last entry.
I’m taking a little break from the internets. Combination of already exhausted, Crohns flare up and now a head cold has pretty much knocked me sideways.
This afternoon I attempted to clean the kitchen. The girls went outside and Annie got into the garage. She dragged out the shovel, rake and broom and cleaned the backyard. All unprompted as ‘a special surprise for you Mummy’.
Raked up the autumn leaves, swept up the sand, used the shovel to attack weeds (which was so funny because it is bigger than her). Then she put the rake, shovel and broom away again. Did an impressively good job. Annie even collected all their outdoor toys into tubs and put them in the garage. Then she cleaned out the inside of the now empty sandpit, got a little container and filled it with the weeds she had dug up and positioned her ‘vase’ in the centre of the sandpit.
She’s only 5! Must be a genetic thing from her Omi who was amazing like that also.
At 3pm I realised I’d forgotten to feed the girls lunch so they had a yogurt and jelly/jello picnic outside while I continued to clean the kitchen.
4pm I put some water on to boil to make pasta for dinner. A bit later I put the pasta on and started mopping the kitchen floor. The water boiled over so I took the lid off the saucepan. Good half hour later I thought I’d better check why the timer hadn’t beeped to say pasta was ready. I forgot to set it.
Also, the kitchen reeked of gas, when the water boiled over it put the flame out but the gas continued to pump through. My first instinct was to relight the stove which I thankfully didn’t follow through on.
Sent the girls out the front door, raced around opening windows - is a very chilly autumn day and the house was closed up with the heating on so no ventilation. Windows open, gas switched off, fans on and we got in the car and left.
Went to SIL L’s place where I promptly spent 10 minutes throwing up. Stayed for an hour then came home to a very cold but thankfully gas free home.
So to sum up my afternoon.
Annie rocks at cleaning.
Mummy is not allowed to play with gas or fire for the next few weeks. All cooking is to be done in the microwave or slow cooker.
Geez I’m an idiot, that could have gone so badly and I was right there in the room and didn’t even notice.
Smiley Saturday time again. If you want to join in then click on the Smiley Saturday link above and head over to Lightenings to enter your Smiley Saturday link.
Taking the easy option this Saturday with some funny pictures.
Heidi had Kinder yesterday afternoon, they finally have an Aide for her so I no longer need to stay for Kinder sessions. Was really good yesterday because the Aide was there for the first time, Heidi’s teacher from the early intervention centre came to visit and the Kinder teacher had enough helpers that she was able to spend some time talking with us. Got some really good dialogs happening between the four of us which can only be of benefit to Heidi later.
We’ve been working on altering the girls bedtime routine.
For about 9 months now it has been
Get into PJs and nappy.
Drink of milk in bed with sippy cup while Mum/Dad reads the story.
Lights off.
Lords Prayer.
Goodnight Sweethearts and go to sleep (well we hope go to sleep).
Now that there is no longer any sippy cup I want to shift the girls drink of milk out of their bed.
So the new routine we are trying is
Drink milk in loungroom while sitting with Mum/Dad and reading a story (or two).
Finish milk and go to bedroom - stopping on way to use toilet and then brush teeth.
Get into PJs and Nappy.
Lights off and Lords Prayer.
Goodnight Sweethearts and go to sleep.
Its sort of working, so far we’ve modified the routine to move story and drink to the lounge room but I’m skipping toilet and teethbrush until the girls are settled into the new story / milk routine.
All this working on the girls bedtime routine made me pay more attention to mine.
I find it very difficult to go to bed without doing the following things first.
Put all dirty cups / plates beside the kitchen sink.
Make sure all sharp knives, scissors etc are out of reach of the children, just incase they wake up during the night and go wandering without waking me.
Check all windows are closed, blinds/curtains shut and doors locked.
Remove anything that is blocking exits in case of a fire - prams in the hallways, laundry baskets beside door ways.
Make sure things that should be switched off are - microwave, oven, kettle, lights etc.
Until I started thinking about it I never realised how much I fuss about the safety of the home before bed each night.
I know unlocked doors drive me batty, when hubby arrives home at night after work I have to get up and double check the door, if I don’t then I just lie in bed and stress about it until eventually I get up and check the door
Am I the only crazy person out there who makes sure fire exits are clear before going to sleep? What are your bedtime habits?
This week we are saying Farewell to Heidi’s much loved sippy cups.
She will now be drinking her milk from these:
They are disposable cups with lids and straws - last for a few weeks and they hopefully will get her ready for the next transition to regular cups.
A small step forward and I still need to do a social story to tell her about it.
UPDATED -
We went out to the shops for lunch today and I made the decision not to buy myself lunch preferring to put that money towards a weekend away from the girls later in the year. Then we walked past EzyDVD and I thought I’d get a DVD to distract them this afternoon and provide myself with some peace and quiet. Funny how I can justify spend $30 on a DVD for them but not lunch for me.
Just wondering does anyone else purchase childrens DVDs based on their running time?
One Dora the Explorer DVD I looked at was $19 for 51 minutes of viewing.
Another Hi5 DVD was $17 for 95 minutes of viewing
and then I found this Wiggles Box Set for $30 with 325 minutes of viewing! That’ll give me hours of peace and quiet. and it will reinforce the joy out of drinking from a Wiggles cup for Heidi, or at least I hope it will.
Plus it comes with its own lunch box which Heidi has claimed and a little colouring book that Annie is already colouring in.
Hope yesterdays entry has not scared everyone off.
Things have been progressing well with Speech Therapy.
Heidi lost her words for a little while about two weeks ago and went back to mainly communicating in growls and meows. So we went back to her PECS folder and using her pictures to communicate. That only lasted about half a day before Heidi decided she was ready to talk again.
I’m not sure if she was challenging us to see if we’d call her on the not talking or if she was just exhausted from all the changes and needed a break. Either way it worked.
One of the slightly more advanced steps of PECS is that the child selects which picture they want and then puts it onto their “I Want” strip.
Here is a picture of the outside of Heidis PECS folder with a sample of some of the pictures inside it - these were the ones we used for Annies Birthday Party social story. Down the bottom is the “I want” strip. Heidi selects which picture she wants from within the folder and sticks it onto the velcro on the “I want” strip and then brings the strip to me (or whomever she is requesting from).
(as I type this Annie is sitting beside me pointing at her name and Heidis name on the screen, it is both cute and distracting )
Here is a short video of Heidi choosing a picture and putting it on her “I want” strip, although she got distracted and wandered off before verbalising her request (which happens often, she is easily distracted).
Eventually we reached the goal of Heidi being able to request “I want…” without needing the PECS folder at all. I realised how ingrained it was when last night Heidi was having a nightmare and she woke up screaming “I want, I want, I want”. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she sure did want something. These days a good 50% of her direct conversation with us (as opposed to talking to herself) starts with ‘I want’.
So she is able to ask for what she wants and for the most part “I want” is a request for a particular item ie Nouns. Thus we have moved on from teaching Nouns to teaching Verbs.
Some of the verb work we have been doing with Heidi recently is
Build - We use blocks to build a tower and say “build up”. Then we knock the tower over and say “knock over”
Hold - This is Heidis current fav. game. We hold something and then drop it and say “dropped”. I’ve been mucking around with this a little - We kneel on the mattress in our lounge room, I pick up Heidi and say to her “mummy hold Heidi”, then I drop her onto the mattress and say “mummy dropped Heidi”. Lots of fun and giggles and Heidi seems to be getting the idea. Mind you I’m not dropping her far and it is onto a soft mattress so she gets lots of bouncing fun in.
Jumped - is the other verb we should be working on but with all the chaos in our house of late it has been neglected. So Jumped will have to wait.
It woke Heidi up also.
Lots of fun and giggles and Heidi seems to be getting the idea. Mind you I’m not dropping her far and it is onto a soft mattress so she gets lots of bouncing fun in.