Smiley Saturday

Smiley Saturday on a Sunday but the smiles are about things that happened on Saturday.  Lightening is back from her big Caravan trip around the east coast of Australia but Smiley Saturdays have not started up again yet. But you should go visit her blog to read about her amazing trip:).

So why am I smiling about Saturday?

Because Annie had a Joey Scouts sleepover on Saturday night. I went with her and she stayed until 10.30pm. This was our first try at a sleepover and I wanted to do a half night first and then at the next sleepover she can stay for the full night. It went really really well. The children went for a hike first (we missed this bit for which my dud hip is very thankful), then it was off to the oval to shoot rockets, followed by a movie, another short walk to feed the ducks at dusk, fish and chips for dinner, making dream catchers out of paper plates, toasted marshmallows over a bonfire and another movie.

While Annie was enjoying all the fun activities on offer I was able to take my Fred into the parent room and get some much needed work done.

First I put together a book for Heidi about PrePrep which she is starting in February next year.

PrePrep is a fabulous program run by the early intervention centre that Heidi attends. It is a practice year for starting Prep at a mainstream primary school. It is run in a local primary school – not the same as Annie’s school unfortunately – there is 12 children in the class, the teacher is a fully qualified primary school teacher who has also trained to work in early intervention, 2 teacher aides one of them is the aide in Heidi’s early intervention class this year, also the OT and speech therapists come in for a couple of days a week.

The goal of PrePrep is not to teach academic skills but more to teach social and class room skills, what to do when the school bell rings, how to sit still during quiet class work time, what to do with your school bag, using the big toilets at school with lots of other children and so on.  The days are slightly shorter 9.30am-3pm instead of regular school day 9am-3.30pm and the children attend 4 days a week instead of 5 – allowing time for them to go to other private therapies or just have a rest.

Fabulous, fabulous program and I’m so thrilled that Heidi got in because with only 12 spots available the competition is fierce. The program is best suited for children like Heidi with High Functioning Autism who have responded well to traditional therapies such as early intervention, speech and OT. I’m so thrilled and really looking forward to next year.

Heidi however has been very worried about it. So I purchased a little palm sized photo album to make a picture book for Heidi about what will happen in PrePrep. Lucky for Heidi there are 3 other children attending next year who are in her early intervention class this year, so lots of familiar faces. I’m going to make the same book for these three children also, as thanks to their Mums for letting me photograph the kids for Heidi’s book

It was lots of fun putting the photo book together, I didn’t have time to get to the school and take photos myself so used Google Street View and the schools website to get pictures of the school and its environment. I also played in Microsoft Paint to change colour of the shirt and pants picture I got from Boardmaker – is there a way to change colour of Boardmaker images? I couldn’t figure it out myself.

I used the Victorian Cursive Font that is the font taught in our primary schools.

I also wrote a short social story for Heidi about school so that she knows she will be coming home at the end of the day. We have been taking her big sister Annie to and from school all this year but I’m not sure if Heidi would generalise Annie’s school hours to what Heidi would do. So playing it safe with a social story (I adapted the story I used at the beginning of this year to get Heidi used to the idea of Annie going to school).

Soon Heidi will go to PrePrep.

Heidi will go to PrePrep in the morning and come home in the afternoon.

Heidi might be busy when she is at PrePrep

Heidi might do some drawing.

Or Heidi might play with her PrePrep friends.

Or Heidi might do something else.

Heidi might be happy to play on her own and it is okay to play alone.

Heidi might enjoy PrePrep

Heidi will see Mummy, Daddy and Annie again in the afternoon when PrePrep is finished.

It is good to see Heidi when PrePrep is finished.

Here is a .pdf of the social story with pictures

Once I had finished those two big projects I was able to start a little Christmas Ornament Cross Stitch. So I’m smiling about Saturday for sure

Because I Said So!

Goodfountain was blogging recently about a topic I also have struggled with over the years.

I find myself often getting very upset because my girls have not done what I asked them to, when I asked them to do it. It drives me batty that I can request Annie get dressed for school, use visual prompts, step by step instructions and she still ends up reading a book instead of getting dressed.

We’ve been working on it for quite a while, especially with Heidi who started out needing physical prompting to do things we requested. I find it so frustrating to always have to take many extra steps to get something done. It would be so much faster to just pack up the toys myself than break it down into individual steps and crawl around behind Heidi lifting her hand to the toy and helping her hand carry the toy to the box. Some days I just run out of time and do it myself, then I beat myself up for not encouraging the girls independence. If I get the girls to do it themselves then I start steaming with impatience at how long it takes.

Most days I tell myself firmly to take a chill pill, stop having these insane discussion in my head and just let it be, for so long as the children are happy and healthy I am blessed. What I should look at is how things have improved, Heidi no longer needs the physical prompts and Annie can clean up her bedroom by herself very well.

And try to remember how old they are, look up what the age appropriate response is, do typically developing 4 and 6 year olds always clean up after themselves? What is normal and what is an autism spectrum response.

I’m going to copy and paste my comment from Goodfountains blog of the things I found worked with Annie and Heidi.

1. logical consequences.
example “if you don’t pack away your lego when mummy vacuums the floor it will get sucked up in the vaccum cleaner”
“if you don’t put your dirty clothes in the laundry basket then they don’t get washed”

Because ASD kids are so logical this often works better than a negative consequence that is not logical like confiscating a favoured but unrelated toy.

2. step by step instructions
when we first started packing up toys with Heidi I would stand/kneel behind her (basically my body was mimicing the position of her body). I would place my hand over hers and guide her to reach for the toy, pick it up and put it in the box.
We’ve been able to slowly wind back the physical prompts and now it is verbal, ‘pick up the dolls and put them in the doll box’
We have PECS/Boardmaker images all over our house. Each room also has a laminated picture cleaning schedule from here – http://www.setbc.org/pictureset/SubCategory.aspx?id=58

Sure our house doesn’t look like a typical home with all these laminated images up but I was surprised at the number of mothers of typical kids that asked for a copy of various visuals we use…. especially the toilet ones.

3. Our paediatrician recently told me everything we say is a social story. Back when Heidi wasn’t talking and language was still really difficult everything we said modeled spoken communication. Now it is all social stories.

Example – If Annie is washing toys in her bedroom I shouldn’t get angry and yell (oh yes I did, I’m ashamed to admit), what I should do is be calm, use my social story voice and talk about how we only use water in areas with tiles because they are ‘wet areas’. Rooms without tiles are ‘dry areas’ and we keep things in those rooms that we don’t want to get wet – like our books. If we use water in our bedroom which is a ‘dry area’ our books get wet and ruined and that would be sad. Next time Annie could try washing her toys in the bathroom which has tiles and is a ‘wet area’ and then nothing gets ruined and her toys are clean and everyone is happy.

Easier said than done of course because if you are human then maintain calm 24/7 is impossible.

Note again – logical consequences in the social story.

4. Saying ‘No’ inspires meltdowns of epic proportions, particularly if the girls can’t follow my logic for the ‘no’. Instead I use ‘Later’ and give a better time and ask them to help me remember because sometimes mummy gets busy and forgets. Or I pull out a PECS card we have which is a yellow circle with ‘WAIT’ written inside it.

Distract / Divert / Delegate / Delay

I should note with point 1 – logical consequences – I always follow through. If they leave toys out then those toys get sucked up in the vacuum cleaner, while the children are watching (I might rescue expensive toys later when they are not watching, but I then hide said toy for several weeks so kids get the message). Clothing that is not put in laundry baskets does not get washed (this is true for my husband also), they either then have to wear it dirty and smelly which my girls hate (sadly husband not so much) or put it in the laundry basket and wait and extra day for that item of clothing to be clean.

I will say our recent visit with the paediatrician and the concept that everything is a social story has really shaken my world. Here I was viewing our life as an ongoing story when really it is more of an instruction manual… if that makes sense.

And for the sake of my sanity never ever ever say ‘because I said so’ for it leads into lengthy and painful discussion about ‘why did you say so?’ Much as I’d like my girls to just do something because I said so, there is simply not enough logic in that argument for them.

Struggling with Social Stories

I’ve got the first one about lunch times drafted out. This is for Annie.

My name is Annie.

I go to school.

I have friends at school, like C, S, L, E and other children at my school.

Sometimes my friends like to play my favourite games.

Sometimes my friends dont want to play my favourite games.

This is because we all like to do different things.

Doing different things is okay.

When I play my friends favourite games they will see that I am trying to share, and be a kind person.

This will make me happy and my friends happy too.”

It started out fairly negative but I think is much better. Spent 2.5hours brain storming on Facebook with hubby.

Now for the next story. Will revisit and revise this one tomorrow.

Random

So close to a stitching finish, my second finish for 2009!

From October 2009

Girls and I had a busy yet fun day yesterday.

From Sept 30, 2009

Waiting to see the Paediatrician

From Sept 30, 2009

Playing in the Fitzroy Gardens

From Sept 30, 2009

From Sept 30, 2009

From Sept 30, 2009

I took 623 pictures over 2.5hours! Got 28 pictures I was really happy with out of the lot.

We hit the Op shop in the afternoon, got two cute summer dresses for $3 each. I also found a metal colander and a bag of decorative teaspoons, just need some fishing line and the girls and I will be able to make our very own wind chime. Also this adorable little shopping trolley for only $4.

From October 2009

I’m still having lots of nightmares and my eyelid feels like it is tap dancing on my eye ball, next week I’m seeing Annie’s counselor by myself and I think that will be really worthwhile.  Our paediatrician yesterday was really helpful also.

Heidi is anxious about starting school next year and the paediatrician has suggested getting the school uniform now and just putting it out for Heidi to look at.

Then arrange a visit to the classroom and the teacher when there are no students there.

Follow that up with afternoon tea in the classroom with the teacher, possibly wearing one piece of the uniform, perhaps invite one child who will be there next year.

Social stories will help also…. one really interesting thing the paediatrician said.  We’ve spent the last two years being aware that every word we said was teaching Heidi basic language skills. Now we have moved onto a new stage, every word that Ralph and I say is now a social story, we model social skills in all our interactions.  Our response should always be in terms of a social story.

Hard when I’m tired and stressed and less than calm.  Have found though that getting a chance to stitch again and do something for myself is really helping my level of calm.

Ralph is thinking that Heidi should stop watching Pokemon, she wants the Pokemon to come out of the TV and be real.  I think this may be an extension of her love of animals and baby animals in particular.  Pokemon are cute little animals. Plus it is good for Heidi to have something she loves and enjoys, taking it away may cause more harm.

It occurred to me this morning that in 18 months or less both my girls are going to be in full time school.  I shall probably have to start looking for part time work!

Before then however we are going to visit my parents for Christmas, just my girls and I, Ralph has to stay in Melbourne and work.  We are staying at my brothers place and he has a lovely dog, but Annie is scared of dogs.

So I need to write social stories about

- dogs are friendly

- school social stuff for Annie

- starting school for Heidi

- the whole Christmas preparation nightmare

Also I should probably get the tent out and put it up, that way the girls can get real familiar again with it and then I can take the tent to QLD with us and they have a safe familiar place to retreat to.

So much to think of and so little time… plus all that speech therapy homework, doing stuff the girls want to do and trying to keep the house clean. AUUUURGH.

Updates

We’ve been having a lovely school holidays and I’ve just got a few bits and pieces to update the blog.

1. Stitching

I’ve been lucky enough to get some respite care and used my time to catch up on my Jungle Kitty stitching

From Sept 2009

I’m not sure what is better, catching up on my stitching or seeing how much my girls love A who is the respite carer.

I’m doing the boring border stitching now. Hit a small snag, I’ve run out of pink for the paw prints. The picture on the kit showed all 4 large paw prints in pale pink but the chart showed the bottom 2 large paw prints in red (same as the red stripes on the cat). I did them in pink because I think it looks better, but that left me with not enough pink to do the little paw prints in the border. Oops. Thankfully I found more pink in my stash :phew:

2. Dentist visits

Both the girls and myself went to see the dentist on Monday afternoon. I used our dentist social story and things went very well.

I went first and Annie (who wants to be a dentist) was very curious about the whole process which caused some problems as she kept getting in so close she bumped into things a few times :: ouch ::. No cavities for me Annie had a go next and she was very good, this is the first time she has let the dentist use the hook thing to clean her teeth.

Annie lost a front top baby tooth last year when the swing at PreSchool hit her in the face. The adult tooth has not grown in to replace it so we are going to take her for an xray to see what is going on. Also going to be seeing and awfulorthodontist about Annie’s cross bite. If we get in now while Annie is so young we can hopefully avoid braces. ::fingers crossed::

Heidi was unusually difficult and would not even get in the dentist chair. I think the sound of the equipment whirring while my teeth were being cleaned caused her much pain and distress. In the past Heidi has been far better about going to the dentist than Annie. Thankfully the dentist distracted Heidi by getting her to hold a mirror, Heidi got very fascinated by the process and was giggling away as the dentist tickled her teeth

3. Noise Problem

Heidi’s noise sensitivity is getting problematic again. Heidi can’t stand the noise our toilet makes when it flushes, so she wont flush it at all. Now she wont even go near the toilet while the cistern is filling, which causes some accidents.

Not sure how to get around that.

4. Barbie and the Three Musketeers

We had a Barbie and Three Musketeers party yesterday for Annie and her school friends. That was lots of fun

Both my girls dressed up as Musketeers
Annie:

From Sept 2009

Heidi:

From Sept 2009

We even got treated to a Three Musketeers Concert after the movie

From Sept 2009

Great fun.

In the afternoon once everyone had left my girls decided to scrub the kitchen floor with toothbrushes like Barbie did in the movie. But they didn’t want to get their Musketeer dresses dirty so they took them off and scrubbed the floor in their underpants and pearl necklaces

This morning Heidi came out all dressed up for her speech therapy visit, in full Musketeer costume

From Sept 2009

I love those pants she has on, a friend gave 2 pairs them to Heidi and she wears them constantly, one is in the wash while the other pair is on her.

Unfortunately we only have one pair of those black musketeer boots so Annie and Heidi are having to alternate days wearing them.

When friends come over – social story attempt.

We had a friend from PreSchool over yesterday for a playdate and I realised that Heidi had no idea what to do with her friend when he was outside the environment she was familiar seeing him in.

Heidi has been doing so well with her social skills that I’m ashamed to admit that it hadn’t even occurred to me that she would struggle in this situation.

So I wrote a social story

When friends come over

Sometimes other children come over to visit.

We might play together.

My friend and I could look through the playdate book and choose something to do together that we both enjoy.

We might take turns playing different games that we enjoy.

It is fun to play games my friend and I both enjoy.

I was going to list in the social story the different things that Heidi and her friends could do on the playdate but then it occurred to me that a book with pictures of different things they could do would be more flexible as I could swap pictures around depending on the child visiting and what their interests were.

Also I could include pictures that suggested ways to play with the toys.

Eg picture of dress ups and underneath pictures of princess or a ninja or a pirate.

When a child is visiting I could bring out the playdate book for both children to choose from together what they would like to play. This would be less intrusive, I think than going through the social story with Heidi while the child is there.

I struggled with how to say to Heidi that she shouldn’t only play things she enjoys but also take into account her friends interests and play games they enjoy as well. But I don’t want to give Heidi the idea that it is okay to do things she does not enjoy with people you want to be friends with, because that would lead to a slippery slope.

Heidi’s speech therapist suggested the turn taking as an option, the visitor can choose to play something they enjoy first, then Heidi can play something she enjoys. I can use the time timer as a visual reminder that the activity wont last forever.

** I must remember to include at the end of the playdate book a question mark picture with ‘we might do something else’ under it for an option that either child might think of that is not included in the book **

edit to add – I’ve put the story and playdate book pictures online in .pdf format.

Thoughts after hearing Carol Gray talk

I have just come home from day 2 of the Melbourne Carol Gray seminar. It was amazing.

Carol Gray is the person who invented Social Stories and Day 1 of her workshop was about how to write social stories and the new protocols. It was just amazing.

But it was today Day 2 which just blew me away and I’m going to have a brain dump of my thoughts while I’m still thinking them. Alot of this made more sense while I was walking and thinking but I didn’t have my laptop with me then.

Annie’s Counselor rang this morning at 9am just as the seminar was about to start. I went outside and took the call because I really needed to talk to her. The counselor was concerned that we are making some incorrect assumptions about Annie’s behaviour and because we are making the wrong assumption as to the root cause of Annie’s problem because we then react with the wrong response, thus making the situation worse. It was a really interesting discussion and made me realise that we really need to get a psych assessment done asap to have an idea where we are actually working from so that we make the correct response.

I went back into the seminar to find out it was about assumptions and paradigms. Entirely too much of a freaky coincidence for me to not take notice!

It made me think of how we have been approaching Annie’s behavioural issues. Remembering she is 6yo girl who just this year started school.

When I look for autism spectrum causes for her behaviour I can see them. But when I look for typical causes for Annie’s behaviour I can see those also. Which is related to paradigms, what lens am I viewing Annie through?

What if I try not to look at Annie’s behaviour through a particular lens. What if instead of asking ‘what causes this behaviour’ I instead ask ‘why is this happening’ which could lead to what causes it.

What about another point of view I’ve been considering. Could Annie’s more challenging behaviours be caused by a couple of years of (unintentional) neglect? With such a huge focus on Heidi and therapies there was of necessity less focus on Annie. Also Annie was miles ahead of Heidi in many self care areas so we would leave her to complete these tasks by herself. I can see how this could lead to self esteem problems – mum and dad spend more time with Heidi because they like her more. Not to mention my own health problems which at times cause me to a little self absorbed and Ralphs horribly long work hours.

Also because Annie was so very good at completing tasks independently we started to ask her to do more things on her own and pushed her well beyond her abilities. Then when she fails to successfully complete the task she has her own personal sense of failure and often an overwhelmed parent going ‘oh Annie’ in a disappointed tone. Note the parent here is not really upset with Annie, more the tone is reflecting the frustration and disappointment in ourselves but when you are a little kid you don’t know that so Annie then takes on herself our disappointment. This leads to self esteem issues but also anxiety about ‘what happens next time’ ‘will I let Mummy and Daddy down again’ etc.

Loss was another big topic today and there were many near tears moments for me remembering the recent loss of my FIL.

Thinking about loss from Annie’s point of view.

Her Granddad she adored has gone away. When Annie was 1 week old she slept over at Omi and Granddads house and practically lived there for much of her first year of life. Granddad came over for dinner every Tuesday night after Omi passed away and we often saw him at other points during the week. Because of Ralphs work hours when we drove to family functions we often went with Granddad because Daddy was at work. And now Granddad is gone. And Mummy and Daddy are busy with Heidi because she has physically attached herself to them in her grief / confusion over Granddads death.

Shortly after Granddad passes away it is the end of school year and Annie finishes 4 year old PreSchool. She says goodbye to her friends she has spent time with all year and goes on summer holidays and does not see those friends again. We go back to PreSchool again briefly in January for the grand opening of the new playground. This place that she loves is now different, it changed and is moving on – without her. I don’t know about anyone else but I always feel a pang of sadness when a place I love changes in my absence. None of Annie’s PreSchool friends are going onto School with her and apart from her cousin M we don’t see any of them anymore. It hurts me to loose just one friend, how much more would it hurt to loose many at once.

Then in February Annie starts school, a huge change, longer days, lots of new people and things to learn. She is going into this new environment having recently suffered to pretty significant losses. No wonder she has been struggling.

Much of the problems when looked at in a different light could be a desperate attempt to control her environment, keep things the way Annie wants them to be. If you control the environment then you make sure that nothing happens that causes you anxiety. If you are in control then you are the boss which helps the self esteem. Mummy and Daddy pay more attention when I’m naughty, sure it is negative attention but any attention is better than none.

And of course the most obvious damn solution – ask Annie! D’oh. Which we are doing in the counseling sessions because Annie has really opened up during them.

Now it may be that Annie is a ‘normal’ kid, it may be that she has some autism spectrum traits but is not actually on the spectrum, it may be that she has Aspergers and Yes she is in fact on the spectrum. Who knows.

What I do know for sure is that the more traditional parenting approach we’ve been using with Annie is not working/helping.

Annie has not been happy for much of this year and that needs to change because 6 year olds should not have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

And totally unrelated. I’ve often said about Heidi and her therapies. I’m the expert in Heidi and the therapists are the expert in Autism so we pool our knowledge and work together as a team. I had this blinding insight today – that team didn’t include Heidi!!! What a fucking idiot am I. Heidi is the expert in Heidi, I am the expert in being Heidi’s parent and sometimes translator and the therapists are the experts in autism and we pool our knowledge and work together as a team.

You know what I wouldn’t have come to that conclusion if I hadn’t tried to apply it to Annie because I will be the first to admit that I have no idea what is going on in her head. I used to a couple of years ago but now she has shut herself away and I just draw a big blank. That makes me sad.

Thoughts on School

Seems strange that there was once a time that I blogged daily, sometimes even twice a day. Where has that time gone? LOL

Been getting lots of report on Heidi’s progress recently.

The good:

Great playing with the children at Pre-School, lots of age appropriate interaction happening and Heidi is starting to use names.

Imaginative play – Heidi found a chick in the playground the other day, she cradled it in her hands and carefully carried it inside and put it safely in her bag to carry home AND told me about it when I came to pick her up at the end of the session – why so awesome? Because there was no chick, it was pretend!

Yesterday Heidi asked me how my day was after we’d finished discussing how her day was. “What you do this day? You wash dishes?” Awww

Heidi is showing very strong interest in reading and writing, she has great focus and can sit at the table and complete a task without needing an adult to sit by and prompt her. We’ve been working on ‘Same and Different’ activities books and she does wondrously well at them – I will admit to playing to Heidi’s strengths here, her visual perception skills are amazing, I want her to feel confident working at school type tasks so I give her things to do she is good at.

Heidi is dressing herself which is a great independent skill, although she does need frequent prompting and help with tricky bits like buttons and shoes. If left to her own devices Heidi will wear the same princess costumes constantly but she is remembering important things like jackets on cold days

The not good:

Heidi’s play is still very scripted and she rarely plays outside her set scripts.

Change, not dealing well with unexpected change / transitions. I parked in a different street the other day when dropping her at Kinder. Heidi was most unimpressed with me. Although I was pleased that her upset over this change in routine did not last more than 10 minutes. But it does make problems if we are looking at starting school where there are lots of changes.

Heidi is not good at waiting, especially not good at waiting for others to take their turns, so she will jump in with answers for other children or do their task for them.

There is also the sensory overwhelm problem which happens still. Friday Heidi screamed for almost 3 hours after a busy day with some changes and seeing people in places she didn’t expect. Yesterday Daddy came to speech therapy with us which was different from normal. Heidi went all bouncy and psycho but calmed right down when Daddy went away and the routine was back to normal. How this will work with school days I’m not sure. We are already working on that by scheduling things for Heidi so she has a school length day out of the house – but with room to cancel things if Heidi does get overwhelmed.

Her motor skills are below average and we are working on fine motor at the moment. Also the toe walking continues to be an issue.

The year ahead, planning

I went to transition planning night at the early intervention centre last night. Trying to work out what Heidi will do next year as it is highly unlikely she will do 4 year old PreSchool again. Pre-prep is the desired spot for next year, but there are max 12 places and so far they’ve got 15 families from our intervention centre interested and 5 outside expressions of interest. Number of places available drops if children with higher support needs are placed in the program as they take more staff time.

Back up plan A – Heidi to go to mainstream school 4 days a week and somewhere else 1 day a week – not sure where that somewhere else is.

Back up plan B – Heidi to go to mainstream school 5 days a week but finish at 1.30pm when lunch starts.

Annie’s school is very flexible and able to accommodate Heidi’s and our needs. I love Ms Stella our School Principal because she is so approachable, understands that plans might change at the last minute and she is just a all round bloody awesome person really.

________________________________________________________________

So lots of stuff happening. Will save Annie for another entry.

This weekend I’m heading off to see Carol Gray who is in Melbourne to do a 2 day seminar on social stories and play. Words can not express how excited I am about this and really looking forward to learning more on a topic that I am so very interested in.

Friday Fun Day

Thank you everyone for your comments and support yesterday. 24 hours of concentrated effort to change my communication patterns with Annie have resulted in a much more pleasant Annie and Mummy this morning – also helps that it is Saturday and we don’t have to race off anywhere. But I’m thinking through what I say before it comes out of my mouth and not being so quick to criticise.

Stitching

I’m gridding up the fabric for Heidi’s Jungle Kitty. I found the grid to be really helpful when I was doing the Advent calendar, especially as I can’t stitch consistently every day and big breaks between stitching make me more prone to counting errors. Took me about 2 hours to do this last night as I was obsessively double checking my counting – am doing 10×10 grid.

From February 2009

Fitness

No exercise to speak of yesterday as it was stinking hot and I spent most of the day trying to catch up on masses of paperwork.

I did walk to and from Annie’s school for the Teddy Bears picnic, about 10 minutes walking in 36C temps. Ick.

I’m telling myself one day off occasionally is okay, just don’t make a habit of it and don’t feel guilty about it and beat myself up because that is not helpful either.

Food

I got a wonderful wonderful gift yesterday from rothe’che at the Unaboard

From February 2009

My slow cooker / crockpot cracked when I put some water in it to soak and the crockpot wasn’t fully cooled after cooking. Did not realise how much I’d come to rely on my crockpot until I didn’t have it.

We had tortilla wraps with salad for lunch yesterday. Dinner was…. actually we didn’t have a proper dinner, it was too hot, the girls ate some pfeffernusse and fruit.

Annie

Annie had a Teddy Bears picnic at school, to celebrate the mid way point of Term 1 and learning the letter ‘T’ for Teddy during the week.

From February 2009

She chose to take both her teddies that she sleeps with – Georgie the Giraffe (the first toy I purchased for Annie while I was pregnant with her) and Sarebear (a special gift from a special friend). Ralph found a mini-disc player at work that had been thrown out and he decided to give it to Annie so she can listen to music while walking to school – he also found a cute little beaded purse that the mini disc player fits into perfectly. Amazing what people throw out at his work.

I went up to the school for 1.5 hours during the middle of the day and helped out at the Teddy Bears picnic. It was heaps of fun and I’m really looking forward to my parent helper days. Annie’s teacher was still away, she left during the day on Thursday as her Dad had been admitted to hospital.

Annie remembered her lunch box and drink bottle and they came home with her at the end of the day, for the first time in a while. BUT she forgot her jacket and her communication folder. Gah! Every single day she forgets to bring home something, usually at the school I go through with her to make sure everything is there before we leave but Daddy got her yesterday.

You might be able to spot in the picture above that there is a picture tag on Annie’s bag, that lists all the things she needs to remember to bring home. I’m going to have to train both Daddy and Annie to check that list at the end of each school day and make sure everything is in the bag.

After school Annie played on the Wii Fit for an hour, boxing and jogging. She seemed much calmer after the boxing than she did after the yoga, interesting.

Heidi

Heidi had a lovely day playing with her Daddy, going to swimming, getting new Bilby boots to reduce her toe walking and cutting up lots of pieces of paper into confetti on my lounge room floor. Good thing Daddy fixed the vacuum cleaner

I did two new social stories for Heidi.

Staying with the Class at Swimming – Ralph is photoshoping some better images for the group pictures.

Sometimes Mummy Gets Out of the Car – I need to get pictures take of me standing outside the car and me sitting in the car.

I finally got around to laminating the bag tags for Heidi’s sensory bag  and school bag. Hole punched them, used some pretty pink ribbon and tied them to her bag zippers.

Also fixed up the picture schedule for Heidi as Annie has taken over the magnetic fridge calendar for herself, which is fair enough they do very different things now and need to have separate schedules.  The one for Heidi includes a picture of home at the end of each day so she knows we always come home.  I can blu-tac other pictures to the blank squares or over the top of existing pictures if something changes (ie school holidays).

Our kitchen door is very busy now with all our notes and the girls schedules – stuff up the top is for Mum and Dad, down the bottom for the girls.

From February 2009

Alrighty off to face the rest of my Saturday.

Hello

Such a momentous time in our lives and I’m not documenting it. Funny how I’ve got more time to blog when nothing of interest is happening

Annie’s second day of school went really well.  Heidi missed her more that day, she would be playing and just start singing a song about her sister and what Annie would do if she was there.  Then Annie did come home and they fought and fought and fought.

From February 2009

Heidi hunting for ants while Annie was at school.

Heidi had her PreSchool interview on Tuesday morning which went really well.  We’ve prepared her with a Social Story that was provided by her early intervention centre.  But walking there and at points during the interview Heidi would ask “you take care of me?” which was heartbreaking. I don’t know how to reassure her that I will not just disappear.

Spoke the Heidi’s teacher about some of my concerns
- separation anxiety
- allergies
- Heidi not eating breakfast

Wednesday’s are a day off for the next month and we had an unfortunate discovery of headlice ICK. I went mental and spent the entire day cleaning and doing nit treatments on everyone in the house. No way to I want those little beasts hanging around. Rang the school and they said so long as Annie had been treated she could come back the next day. Phew. I combed her hair out with the nit comb again just before bed and didn’t find a thing after 30 minutes of searching so very relieved.

Thursday, day 3 of school for Annie and first day of Preschool for Heidi. PreSchool starts at 8.30am so it was a real rush to get out the door on time. Hubby has this week off work and he has been very helpful but yesterday he just WOULD NOT wake up and I was getting incredibly frustrated. Couple that with me trying to make the lunches AND feed Heidi breakfast and I was a very cranky Mummy indeed.

We got out the door on time despite it all, the walk to PreSchool was difficult and I’m worried that my goal to walk everywhere I can this year is going to be compromised because of the stress of walking with both girls and their bags. Annie was complaining that her bag was too heavy and dragging her feet and being generally unco-operative. Heidi walked very well with her sensory backpack on but I had to carry her PreSchool bag that has her lunch, change of clothes etc. The thing with Heidi is she walks very well, for Heidi, she more dances on the spot than walks so forward motion with her can be an interesting series of turns, flutters, pirouettes and occasional tumble. All very exhausting for both of us. Maybe if we keep practicing walking will be easier.

So a very bad start to the morning on Thursday. We get to PreSchool and I’m planning to stay but wait just outside the classroom so that Heidi does not get used to me hanging around but I’m close incase she needs me. Thing was in all the stress and drama of the morning and the walking I hadn’t noticed that Heidi had not once asked “you take care of me?”

We get into the PreSchool room, Annie discovers another boy from her school is there with his younger brother, so they have instant bonding Heidi runs off to the dress ups and waves ‘bye bye Mummy’ and that was it, no tears, no drama. She played the whole session, the teacher said Heidi even talked to the other children. I’m just stunned and relieved, so very very relieved.

Think the separation anxiety was all about lack of routine over the school holidays. So next school holidays I will have to try for a much more ridged structure to our days.

I do have one PreSchool related confession to make. Each child has a special hook to hang their bag one and a picture beside their hook so they know which one is theirs. Heidi’s hook has a bunny picture…… I’m really really sorry S, please don’t ‘bang bang’ the bunny because that would make Heidi very sad.

From February 2009

We walked Annie to school after dropping off Heidi and Annie ran into her classroom without looking back. Then I went off to do her homework – we had to stick a photo of her doing something she is successful at and write about it, no working printer at home so I had to go out to Kodak and get a copy off our thumb drive.

Annie chose this picture “Annie is successful at taking care of her sister”

From January 2009

Today is day 4 of school, we are trying out Heidi with tinned spaghetti for breakfast, maybe she will eat that. I suspect she is just not a food in the morning person.

And now I’ve spent my lunch making time updating my blog so I really should get my skates on and make those lunches. Hubby has woken up by himself this morning, thanks to a very annoying alarm clock I found in the girls dress up box

One day soon I hope to catch up on my blog reading and commenting. Life here is just very hectic right now with the beginning of the school year and hubby home on holidays – we are catching up on lots of chores that I need his help to complete.