Stuff With Thing

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.

This week Lightening has suggested using as our Smiley Saturday theme the idea that we need to care for ourselves more. Taking care of myself seems like a good reason to smile.

One big way I’m taking care of myself more is not doing Kinder duty as often. This week the Aide started at Heidis kinder which means Heidi and the other two special needs children in her class have someone on hand with experience who can help them.

My health is still problematic but I’ve started to get test results back and we’ve been able to rule out a few things that were worrying me. Plus I’m working out how to balance my diet to keep the latest flareup under control. Whilst the Crohns flare up has not really improved it has not gotten worse either and I’m working out how to manage with it as it is, sort of stability within the instability. The head cold and asthma have mostly gone away for which I’m very relieved.

I was flicking through TV stations 20 minutes ago and realised that the latest Barbie movie is on channel 7 today (started 10 minutes ago) AWESOME! I now have a guaranteed hour of children glued to tv so I can get some precious me time. Then once they get wriggly I should have enough energy to take us out to the park and run off those wiggles.

Reading over my journal for this time last year when we had our week from hell, in a period of 7days the following happened:

Ralph had just started a new job.
I was applying for that camp managers job.
Mr H passed away.
SIL L went to hospital.
One of the playgroup mums had a baby.
Got Heidi’s diagnosis.
Tante Anita passed away.
2 funerals to go to.
Lots of time spent at FILs house.

Life is super busy now but it is so much better than it was 12 months ago. That is something to reflect on and to maybe think that in 12 months time it will be just a little bit better again.

Edited to add another reason to smile is Stitch Pinks latest giveaway. Head on over and leave a comment to enter, you could win the kit to make this -

Annie has 3 kinder sessions a week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Two weeks ago after Thursdays Kinder session Annie regaled me with tales of kisses.  She and a young lad named “C” had taken a liking to each other and decided this new friendship must be sealed with a kiss, and several more kisses followed from there.

Tuesday last week Annie and young C were overjoyed to be reunited after a long weekend apart and they went about holding hands.

Wednesday our young couple exchanged posies of flowers, made cards and paintings for each other.  It could be even be said that they behaved in a sickeningly romantic fashion.

Thursday came around and young C decided he wanted to play with the boys.  Annie sat on the climbing frame and sang songs about her great sadness, her wish to play with C and be friends once more.  Young C the foolish lad did not heed his fair maidens song and continued to roughhouse with the lads.

Tuesday came around again and Annie was despondent.  C had abandoned her.  What is worse, he pushed her in the stomach and called her a ‘poo poo head’.

Wednesday saw both Annie and young C take a day off kinder.

Then Thursday, once more our young couple are reunited, overjoyed to see each other.  hands are held, cards exchanged but it would seem our fair maiden has learnt.  No longer does she sit on the climbing frame and sing for young C when he proves fickle and wanders away with his mates. Our fair maiden turns her back and finds another boy to amuse her.  Young C did not like this, no indeed he did not and promptly returned to his Annie.

Oh and look and WIP report.  All I have to do is a tiny bit of back stitch and the calendar will be finished!

Things are slowly getting better, calming down.

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.

:: falls over laughing ::

chatterbox much.

Remember all those towels and blankets Annie got for the Cat Protection Society instead of birthday gifts?

We dropped them off yesterday. Annie got to pat a kitty cat and she got a badge which she is very proud of. Grandy the Gorilla who is visiting from Kinder came with us, wearing a cloth nappy because Annie was worried he’d have an accident.

Despite much temptation we did not come home with a cat.

Now I must go and de-stink the kitchen. Hubby got given a large hunk of fresh salmon at work (I do wish people in Australia tipped with money) and her brought it home and cooked it last night. Unfortunately he used garlic and onion and burnt them both plus he melted a couple of my non-stick cooking utensils. The stench kept me awake for much of the night, I just can’t sleep through bad smells for some reason. He got up early and cleaned down the stove and the benches and rinsed the dishes. I’ve made fresh coffee (ground the beans and all), popped pop corn and baked bread but those lovely smells just can’t compete. Is only 8C outside and I’ve had the windows open since 1am but once the girls got up I had to close the windows and put the heating on.

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.

Lots of little things to smile about.

1. Picking Heidi up from Kinder I said to her “I missed you” and she said “I missed you too”. Her responsive language is just leaping along.

2. Annie’s birthday was heaps of fun and we spread the celebrations out over a few days which made it even more fun.

3. I got some stitching done. Which has helped ease the pain of my job a little.

I’ve been working hard to ignore this

and this

so I can do something I enjoy for a little while. And I’m smiling because of the wonderful support from my blogging friends about not enjoying my job.

5. I locked myself out of the house on Thursday and went to visit my SIL to get a spare key. She offered to babysit for me so that I got an hour to myself. Wonderful, a mistake turned into something very special. Sure I used the time to wash dishes and cleaning the living room but I could do it all with my music on at top volume.

6. Grandy the Gorilla is visiting us - he usually lives at Annie’s kinder. Last night Annie had many nightmares, all about the cookie monster. Grandy, DRD #5, Charlie the Doll and Annie’s WWE pillowcase helped protect her from the cookie monster.

Kinder duty at Heidi’s 3yo class yesterday - was photo day. Lots of fun. Annie befriended another autistic child in the group and spent her time running around with them holding hands and getting the occasional hug. Amazing, it is the most positive interaction I’ve seen from this child … actually it is the most interaction I’ve seen this child have with another person. Don’t know what it is about Annie but she does seem to just know the right approach to take.

Kinder duty today at Annie’s 4yo class, Hubby had the day off so we all went to Kinder. Heidi was screaming by the time we got home, put her in bed with a drink of milk and special blankie and she was asleep within minutes. Way too much stimulation in 4yo class for her.

Kinder duty tomorrow at Annie’s 4yo class again. SIL L is going to take Heidi home with her. Is Annie’s birthday tomorrow. We are making up gift bags to hand out at Kinder - each child will get a notebook, pencil, balloon, bubble mix and sticker sheet - all inside a brown paper lunch bag decorated by Annie. Got everything at the Reject Shop and works out just under $2 for each bag, notebooks were the killer, couldn’t get them under $1 each.

I’m so proud of Annie she asked if it was okay to use her pocket money to buy gifts to hand out to the 4 children in Heidi’s early intervention class tomorrow morning. Awww. We found these cool sensory toys for $2 each and they can go inside a brown paper lunch bag also. Checked with the teacher and she said none of the children in the group should be traumatised by brown paper bags or the toy we chose. Hard to tell when getting stuff for children with sensory issues but Annie wanted to celebrate by giving gifts to everyone.

Heidi keeps walking up to us, holding her blanket out and saying “cuddle me”. What she wants is to be wrapped up in her blanket (sort of like a burkah, with just the eye hole). If you make the mistake of picking Heidi up for a cuddle she says “put down me”. Such cute language mixups.

Annie made everyone mini pizzas for lunch today - I got all the ingredients out on the table in little containers and Annie put the pizzas together. Daddys job was to put them in the oven and get them out. Which would have helped if A) I remember to turn the oven on. B) when I finally did turn it on set it to the correct temperature.

Time to go make pear upside down cake with Annie for desert after her birthday dinner of pancakes. Health eating day for us

Hopefully this blog entry makes sense - I keep re-reading it and seeing words I’ve typed totally wrong. Like when I wrote ‘class’ up above, I actually wrote ‘call’ both times. And other silly mistakes like that. Well it was random thoughts so maybe my head is getting in on the act with random word substitution.

Oh and one final random thought. Tuesday night last night which means our weekly dinner with my father-in-law. He spent much of the time ranting about how our esteemed prime minister Kevin Rudd is going to be the next Hitler. This because Mr Rudds picture is in the newspaper every day. Ummm he is the leader of our country I’d be surprised if he didn’t get mentioned in the papers frequently. Ahh the joys of the generation gap and the political divide meeting over dinner once a week.

Heidi cried and screamed for a couple of hours yesterday morning, I’ve developed a real knack for blocking the noise now. Every so often she’d peek out of her blanket at me to see if I was paying attention.

If the screaming ceased for a bit I’d go over give her a cuddle and suggest reading a story or playing with playdough - trying to reward the good. We’d play / read for maybe 10 minutes before she’d start up again.

After a couple of hours she fell asleep -

I left her cocooned in her blankie on the kitchen floor because

A) if I remove blankie she would wake up.

B) she wet her bed that night and the bedroom and mattress were airing out.

C) when she wet her bed that blankie got soaked and at least I knew I would be able to clean the kitchen floor fairly easily later.

So yep my daughter was sound asleep on the kitchen floor in a soaking wet pee covered very stinky blankie.

And we were happy about that.

3 hours later she woke up with a high fever and vomiting. Not sure if that was induced by the meltdown or the meltdown was caused by feeling unwell.

She threw up on both her special blankies so there was the whole drama of washing them again.

Speaking of which I finished Heidi’s feelings book homework for Kinder last Friday. Am very proud of the end result.

We did “Happy” and “Sad”. I drew your basic happy face on the happy page and sad face on the sad page. Heidi is familiar with those and often asks me to draw them so that was a good start.

Then I cut out faces from some junk mail of ‘happy’ people. Had to go out and purchase a Womens Day magazine to get pictures of ’sad’ people to cut out - realised later my local doctors surgery probably would have been happy to donate one of their circa 1980s Womens Day magazines from the waiting room.

Once I had my happy and sad pictures I got out the sticky tape and put two pictures out at a time. I’d say to Heidi

“Heidi choose Happy face”

and if she got the correct one she’d get to stick it in the book as a reward. We randomly alternated between her choosing happy and sad faces and she got most of them correct the first time. I was very pleased. When she did make a mistake I’d just say “Try again”.

Then I printed out from the computer the PECS images for ‘happy’ and ’sad’, I also printed out a PECS image of ‘hug’ and ‘broken’. Couldn’t find one for a washing machine that looked like ours so google images to the rescue and we had ‘washing machine’, also googled ‘watermelon’. Then I printed pictures of Heidi “sad” and Heidi “happy”.

Except after all that I realised that the kid grinning like crazy in the happy picture is Annie - somedays my girls look far too alike, especially in black and white. But Heidi at least was in the picture so it was okay.

Then Heidi and I sat down and we talked about the pictures - first the two photographs I’d printed out.
“Is Heidi happy or sad?” didn’t work. So try again Mummy. “Heidi happy or Heidi sad” - which did work and she correctly identified happy and sad Heidi - and started to cry about sad Heidi picture. :rolleyes:

Then it was onto the PECS images.

‘Happy’ and ‘Sad’ got correctly identified and stuck on their pages.

It was a bit harder with the concepts. I talked about each picture and we were making no progress.

We had to identify if these were happy or sad

‘watermelon’
‘hug’
‘broken’
‘washing machine’

The breakthrough came when I got to ‘washing machine’ - “blankie in washing machine, Heidi happy or Heidi sad” says I.

“Heidi sad” - tears and wails and Heidi makes a quick bolt to the laundry (while carrying blankie) to check if blankie was in the washing and I try very hard not to fall over laughing.

Then I gave her a big hug and said “hugs happy” and Heidi agreed “hugs happy” so we went back and stuck ‘hug’ on the happy page and ‘washing machine’ on the sad page and I cheated and did the other two myself while telling her why. “Heidi like watermelon, watermelon ‘happy’”. “Heidi broke puzzle, make Heidi ’sad’”.

Handed it in to the teacher a little worried because we’d not done exactly as asked and only two of the four feelings. But she seemed very happy and showed it to other parents as an example of how they could do their childs book. Woo!

Up at 1am with the girls.

Worked at the sausage sizzle for 8 hours. I was the runner so worked all different jobs and spent vast amounts of time spruiking (ie yelling out our prices) so voice almost gone. Sausage sizzle did good, very happy.

To round day out I made a quick trip to Safeway to get stuff to put with left over sausages in the slow cooker/crock pot.

Safeway went self service today!

Here is me, dead on my feet, brain left the building hours ago and I’m confronted with self service machines.

Did my best, scan bar code, here ‘beep’, put item in bag.

But the one item that scuttled my dreams of first time self service success - onions.. .. . of course it was the onions. Bane of my existence those onions.

Self service supermarket.

:: shakes head ::

Highly traumatised, I tells ya, Highly traumatised.

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.

The Kinder Sausage Sizzle is on tomorrow, we hope to sell 900 BBQ’d sausages in bread ($1.50each), or BBQ sausage in bread with onion ($2 each), can soft drink $1 extra.

So today I peeled, sliced and cooked up 16kg of onions. Did you know after the first 6 onions you stop crying? Amazingly it was nowhere near as painful as I expected.

We hope to raise enough money for the kinder to get the final 3 items on the teachers wishlist. We raised enough in Term 1 to get the first 2 items. And that is why I am smiling, because all our hardwork is (hopefully) paying off.

Oh and if anyone has suggestions to get the onion stink out of my hands I’d really appreciate it

Smiley Saturday time again. If you want to join in then head over to Lightenings.

I’m smiling because of my amazing Annie.

For her Kinder birthday she asked all her friends to bring old blankets and towels for the cat protection society instead of gifts.

I’m smiling because of all the wonderful children in her Kinder class who donated lots of old towels and blankets to help out the cold kitties this winter.

I’m smiling because my gorgeous girl was so generous and happy to not receive gifts and help the cats instead.

It was Annie’s birthday on Thursday which is the day Heidi attends her early intervention centre. Annie asked if we could give each of the children in Heidis group a small gift in celebration of Annie’s birthday. When I told her I was short on money Annie offered to use her own pocket money to buy a gift for these other children. Even after she’d been warned there would not be enough left for a donut as well Annie still wanted to get a present for the other children - to celebrate her birthday. Such a generous, giving, girl.