It is hot, very hot. I can’t think straight so just going to brain dump.

- Sunday we went swimming, got badly sunburnt. Thanks to prompt application of Feldene gel both my girls sunburn cleared up pretty quick. Mine however did not because I couldn’t get it on as often as needed. Hard to apply gel to your own back. Annie was a great help before and after school though.

- Monday I realised my back was sore from pulling Heidi out of the pool when she hurt herself on Sunday. Annie got sent home from school because at that stage her sunburn was still bothering her. So the girls spent the day watching DVDs while I lay on my stomach on the floor stretching my lower back muscles.

I attempted some cross stitch while lying on the floor but it was very difficult to do and I kept getting thread tangles on the back of my stitching.

- Tuesday, ouchy pain from back and sunburn. Most of the day spent on the floor once again. Running seriously low on clean dishes, cutlery and cups because I wasn’t able to stand for long enough to do dishwasher. Also having problems showering, water cool enough to not upset sunburnt shoulders is too cold for back which went into spasms.

Heidi has been wearing underpants to bed for almost 2 weeks now. The first week was great no wet beds but she has been wetting fairly consistently since then. I’m not willing to go back to pull ups without giving her a month to get used to the new set up though as she was dry at night in the pull ups for several months before we transitioned to underpants, I think she needs time to get used to the change.

- Wednesday much of the day spent lying on the floor yet again. Back feeling marginally better. Getting pretty tired because I can’t find a comfortable position to sleep in. Also pretty stinky because of the shower dilemma + hot weather, sponge baths just not cutting it.

Laundry is starting to stink to high heaven due to wet bedding, hot weather and my inability to lift anything to get it to washing line or in / out of the machine.

But I did manage to get some dishes through the dishwasher on Wednesday so that is good progress.

- Thursday feeling heaps heaps better. Got 3 loads of washing through before school, dirty dishes are all caught up.

Have not done grocery shopping, we are due to do our monthly shop and my back has meant delaying that, so we are out of milk and other essentials. Feeling better Thursday so I decide to go buy some milk and a garden hose or two so we have some bush fire preparedness happening.

Verdict – shopping bad idea, too much lifting, carrying, walking and so on.

My car went to the mechanics Tuesday last week to get broken windscreen replaced. He had trouble getting the right rear vision mirror for my car, so I was without a car until Friday morning. In the hot weather last week I was walking everywhere… well to be honest I canceled most things and did as little walking as possible. I got the car on Friday morning, still without a rear vision mirror and have been driving it like that ever since. The mechanic said he would call me when it was ready. I ended up calling him on Tuesday and he said the mirror was there, he had lost my phone number (again) and hadn’t been able to call me. I’d believe that more if I hadn’t seen him write the number along with all my and the cars details in his appointment book. :: roll eyes::

So I get to the mechanics straight after school drop off this morning only to find he has the mirror but for some reason can’t install it. Now I have a promise that the windscreen guy is going to come to my house and put it in for me. This I will believe when I see it happen.

Tonight there is a big meeting at Annie’s school about the proposed grade structure for next year which is as follows.

prep/one
prep/one
One/Two
two/three/four
three/four/five
five/six.

Annie is in prep this year and will be in grade one next year.

The school principal sent out a notice on Tuesday explaining the reasoning behind why this grade structure has been chosen, a combination of low student numbers in the upper grades and funding /budget issues with regards to staffing. So that makes much more sense now. Also left parents wondering why this notice wasn’t sent out in the first place, rather than just decreeing from on high such a radical change in existing grade structures. Ah well hindsight is always 20/20.

When i grow up i want to be a teachers aide helping kids with special needs.

When i was in primary school i wanted to be a teacher. At high school i was convinced to train for secondary teacher.

I got to university to do my bachelor of arts and realised i don’t like teenagers all that much. So i fell into medical receptionist work and from there medical centre management and other admin jobs.

Then i had children and realised i would like to persue my childhood dream again. But this time tailored to what suits me best. Use the skills my girls have taught me.

(sorry about typos and stuff I posted this from my mobile and only now I’ve got home to see it on the computer do I realise how terrible it is)

I’m not sure if my children are fiendishly evil or very very clever.

They built themselves a home made swing by throwing a skipping rope over the washing line and then tying either end to the arms of an outdoor chair.

Very clever, very evil.

Males can look away now, this is secret womens business.

Have you ever tried to find a comfortable way to wear a bra when extremely sunburnt?

I don’t think it is possible.

Going without bra – at least when in public – is also not possible.

Best solution I think is to just not get sunburnt in the first place, but now I have and I’ve got to live with the consequences.

In the meantime I’ve had fun shopping for better sunscreen, new swimwear that has a high UV protection rating and hats to wear in the water.

I wanted to blog about the Voice and Movement Drama Classes Annie has been doing.  A friend sent me an email about Voice and Movement last year and I kept it in my file of all things relating to Autism and didn’t think about it again until Annie’s diagnosis.  At that stage I was going through my file trying to work out what we were going to do for Annie and these drama classes struck me as a perfect therapy.

They are FANTASTIC.

We have just finished our 10 individual (one on one) sessions that each child must complete before they move on to the group sessions. The cost of the individual sessions is $75 each which is still less than our private speech therapy sessions.  The group sessions are $25 each which is much more bearable

During the individual sessions Annie has been given a work book that the teacher writes down what they have covered that week. This is handy for parents to reference at later points, particularly if you can use it in real life situations. It also helps to communicate with teachers and other professionals involved with your child.

The first few sessions concentrated on Greetings, how to say hello to someone, the body language you should use, length of greeting, and what to do after the greeting.

Then they covered playing games, how to be a good loser, how to be a good winner.  Also how to play someone elses game – ie not being in charge. Giving instructions for your own game that are not too complex and making sure others who join in are having fun.

The classroom has two interlocked circles marked out on the floor with masking tape.  At first I didn’t know what it was for – turns out they use these circles to indicate the distance you should stand from various sorts of people that you are talking to.  If you are outside a circle then likely you wont get the other persons attention. If you get too close the person will be uncomfortable and not listen to you because they are bothered by the proximity.

Volume of your voice, how to speak quietly to a person sitting next to you, how to yell for a teacher if you are in trouble. What voice do you use when you need to say “Stop it. I don’t like it.” when kids at school tease you.

Charades where the teacher and student take turns making facial expressions while the other guesses what emotion they are expressing. Mirrors in each classroom can be used for the student to mimic the teachers expression if they are having trouble.

What sort of comments will ‘build up’ a person and what comments ‘bully’ and the sort of situations you would use ‘build up’ comments. Like if a friend lost a game, how instead of saying ‘your a loser’ you could say ‘you will have better luck next time’.

Annie’s school teacher has asked me to copy out some of the notes into A3 size wall posters for her classroom, particularly one which is a hand with 5 steps for dealing with teasing in the school yard. Each step is written on a finger so children can easily reference their own hand to learn and remember the steps.

1. walk away/ignore

2. tell the person that what they are saying hurts you (for if a person was aiming for friendly teasing and missed the mark)

3. Say loudly ’stop it I don’t like it’.

4. Say you are going to tell a teacher

5. Tell the teacher.

Hopefully most teasing would be resolved by step 1 or 2 but it is a good logical process.

I’m so thrilled we made the investment in Voice and Movement, Heidi is booked in to start next year after she turns 5yo (kids can’t start until they are 5yo). Annie will be moving onto group sessions now we have finished the individual sessions.

Sure going to Mont Albert every Saturday morning is a bit of a drag and the cookies are darned expensive but I think this one hour a week is far more important than all the full time schooling Annie has been doing.

If you have a child with social skills problems then I can not recommend this service highly enough.

Please note the people at Voice and Movement do not know I was planning to review them on my blog, they have not provided me with any sort of reimbursement (monetary or otherwise) for this review. I simply wanted to let other people know my thoughts on Voice and Movement as I found it so hard to find feedback on various therapies we have looked into.

Lets get this out of the way first – it is hot here, very hot. Some once in a something years heatwave or so people tell me.  I dunno, its just hot, not unbearably hot thankgod because we are doing a lot of walking.  See our car is at the mechanics, what was supposed to be a quick windscreen replacement is turning into the 3 day saga of the dodgy rear vision mirror. ::sigh::

This afternoon I have the big interview with Annie’s teacher and school principal about an integration aide for Annie probably for 2011 because major screw ups mean we’ve pretty much missed the cut off for 2010 funding

My mum used to make mashed potatoes using a hand held electric mixer.  I’d never seen anyone use a potato masher until I met my husbands family. Now I mash by hand also.  Saves on electricity.

Mum also used to mash eggs with butter not mayonnaise.  I much prefer the salty more savoury taste of eggs mashed with butter.  My school friends used to comment that my Mums egg salad sandwiches tasted different from their mums. Now I know why.

I’ve been vaccuming our kitchen floor and loungeroom carpet almost daily of late.  Husband and I have transitioned to only using real ground coffee – I figured if I could only have two cups a day then they were going to be good.  But making coffee first thing in the morning with coffee grounds is messy, hand eye coordination is at its worst.  Yeah it could be prepped the night before but that doesn’t always happen.  And emptying out the expresso machine thingy to refill also messy.  There are coffee grounds everywhere and the bench where we make our coffee has streaks down the doors and sides from spilt coffee and milk.  So frustrating.  One day when we have money I’m going to buy a Nespresso Capsule coffee system.

My family had ice cream and jelly for dinner last night.  It was too hot for anything else.  Lucky for me Cottees make jelly with no artificial colours or preservatives.

I went shopping for icy pole tubes today.  Our car is at the mechanics so I couldn’t get the already frozen icy poles, had to get something that would survive the hot walk home.

All of the products on the shelves had artificial colours in them.  What most disappointed me was Berri Quelch which is advertised as being 99% real fruit also had artificial colours.

So once I was home and rehydrated from walking in the heat I fired off an email to Berri

I was really disappointed to discover the Berri Quelch products contain artificial colours.  Please consider only using natural colours that don’t harm our children.

This customer is one that will not be purchasing Berri products again until the artificial colours are removed.

I was shopping with my sister in law yesterday and she commented on how hard it is to find a summer dress with sleeves for herself.

A bit later I was walking through the same shopping centre carpark and overheard a couple of women who were leaving, one was saying to the other that she couldn’t find a dress with sleeves for summer at this particular shopping centre and the other lady suggested shopping online.

My mother rang from QLD concerned about some dresses she was planning to buy for Annie and Heidi, ‘I can’t find anything with sleeves’.

Now I know there is a simple solution – wear a t-shirt underneath, but sometimes it is just too hot in summer to wear two layers of clothing. Even the t-shirts I can get for my girls only have half or quarter length sleeves.  If I want a full length sleeve I have to get them shirts from the boys section.

It has been 3 years now since I wrote to several department stores and our local paper complaining about the lack of sun smart clothing available for girls.

Skin cancer is the most common cause of cancer in Australia.

It makes me sad that summer clothing keeps getting skimpier and smaller in seeming opposition to the recommendation to wear sun safe clothing.

I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Kelley as I’m struggling to keep up with my reader without NaBloPoMo adding to the madness.

I’m trying to make Christmas ornaments for my girls teachers.

I started off with this little ornament made using Sullivans Counted Cross Stitch Ornament kit. I used the 14 count Aida provided and the not very good thread/yarn. But it turned out okay.

Then I thought I’d have a go using the same pattern but on Evenweave – my first attempt at Evenweave and I love it!

I used DMC threads 208, 210, 726, 727, 892, 894, 904, 906 and of course my good friend 310.

I enjoyed stitching on the Evenweave so much that I took 2 days instead of over a week that the original kit had taken me. Then I got excited and did my first ornament finish on the Evenweave pattern, I found some quilting fabric from the quilt I never started and used it to back the ornament. Ripped open a new pillow and pulled the stuffing from that to fill the ornament.

I think the second turned out better than the first and possibly a third attempt will be even better than the other two. If I did a third I can practice that final finishing stitch that closes the gap after I fill it.

Later today I thought I’d try out something to follow up on this tweet / facebook status update. I had this concept that I could make hand shaped ornaments using felt and I would stitch on one side ‘thank you for the helping hand’.

Sadly in execution it looked more like an amputated hand, sorry about the terrible picture, I took it late at night.