todays goal.....

Today's goal.... finish a post and PUBLISH IT!!!! Well amongst other things.

I have just finished my 3rd client for the day and have stolen some time before number 4 arrives. I never do 4 in a day, not with the kids home, that's just crazy. So apparently today I am crazy. Have I ever mentioned that I have a problem saying 'no' to people? Hmmm, well I have a problem saying 'no' to people. NO NO NO NO NO. There, easy hu? NO!

So my house is a mess (no big surprises there) and what I could really do with is the house work fairy, AKA my mother in law, coming over in a slightly manic mood. I don't really mean that I hope she is manic, my father in law does a good enough job of sending her in that dierction without me but if she is manic, she can head on over. I have organised a cleaner to come over at least once a fortnight but she jus tcalled to let me know whe got her dates mixed up and can't start this week. Bugger, thought it was too good to be true that I could find someone who came highly recommended and get her here the day I wanted within a week. Oh well, all the filth will still be here when she does start!

Now for a very brief update. Fletch is learning to talk via the Nintendo Wii method. He can now say 'nice spare' ' nice on' 'strike' and 'nice approach' all with a lovely American accent. Last week at his kinder's family day they had a travelling farm animal thingy and he told us that cow's moo, and pigs go oink but he prefers the snorting sound they make. He is just booming along with new words, I understand them and I am starting to see that other people do now too. We are still doing the NAET treatment at the naturopath(the food bleach treatment did amazing things), occasional homeopath visits and his early intervention kinder. We could probably scrounge up the money for some private speech or psychology work but to be honest, I'd struggle to fit it into my/our week. The only free hours we seem to have is between about 10pm and 4am and none of us really want to do any therapy other than sleep therapy at that hour.

Baybee got her first proper shoes last week and looks just spiffy in them. She, like the rest of us is struggling with the end of daylight savings and is as grumpy as hell at 5:30 at night and up and about at 4:30 in the morning. Urg.

Lockie is on school holidays and has a huge amount of homework (for him) and drives me nuts when I see how sloppy his work is if he actually does any work at all. I use to think I was a tough sort of mum but I am convinced these days he just walks all over me.

Any how, better get back to work. I have thrown a casserole in the slow cooker for dinner, gotta love the cooler weather after the horrendous Summer we have had around here.

Five minutes to spare....

Quick, while I have 5 minutes to spare, here's what's been happening.....

Mackenzie has been a grump most of the week. Think it's her teeth coming through.

We went to Magoo's graduation on Tuesday night and I have come to the conclusion that too many mums let 12 year old girls dress like 20 year old girls. Thank goodness you don't have that problem with boys. But more on that later. The ceremony itself was pretty good. It was great watching all the grade sixes get up on stage and accept their class photos and gifts. 1 student from each class did a performance. The highlight of the performances was a boy named Cory who sang the Jason Mraz hit 'I'm yours' and boy was he good. The crowd loved him and he loved that crowd right back. (note to self, remember Cory's last name to brag about knowing someone famous one day) Then they gave out the awards. This part probably went on a bit too long but was still interesting. Of course Magoo was never gonna win an award for being the most organised student or the most enthusiastic about homework. But he graduated, that's what mattered.

Now as for what some of the girls wore, my goodness, what were those parents thinking? One little girl and I do mean little, wore a skin tight, black mini dress with a plunging neckline and no back with high heels!!!!! Apparently she chose it and bought it out of her own money so her mother didn't think she could do anything about it. WHAT THE?! Using the same logic, she could have bought a g-string bikini, vodka cruisers and crack cocaine and her mother would have sat back and admired her maturity. Some parents need to grow some balls.


I didn't manage to get a photo of Magoo getting his gifts and photos but here he is sitting with his friends.

Fletch is coming along in leaps and bounds. I took him to daycare on Thursday and we had no tears at all. as we were leaving home he saw me pick up his bag and he said 'see kids' Then when we got there and I told him it was time for me to leave he said 'kiss' and reached up to give me one, then said 'see ya later' and 'bye bye bye bye bye' while he waved. Then he walked away from me. How good is that?

Yesterday my sister came over to have her hair done and to help me with the kids a bit. Fletch has never really given her much of a chance and the couple of times she has looked after him he has protested a fair bit when I've left but not yesterday. He did the same as he did at daycare and played the whole time I was gone. He even made her play cricket with him for about 20 minutes. It is amazing how much faster you can grocery shop without kids. I feel like he has really turned a corner. I am so excited about Early Intervention next year I can hardly wait. And earlier this week we also got approval for some funding to get a new computer and the Boardmaker program, another thing I can't wait to get my hands on.

So until next time, toodles!

It's all too hard

I'm a bit torn at the moment. Blogging is hard enough for me to commit the time to without having to remember special nick names for the husband and kids to avoid stalkers and nut jobs. So can someone tell me what they think on this issue?

On the Fletch front, things are going pretty well. We have been offered a spot in an early intervention program starting next term at a place run by Yooralla and we are ssssssoooooooo excited about it. It is a bit like 3 year old kinda but there will be a speech pathologist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, kinder teacher and 3 assistants all for 9 kids with additional needs and up to 6 kids from the community. At the moment they are no 'community' kids in Fletcher's session so me might have a lovely small group.

We have also been to see a developmental paed who is putting together an autism treatment plan so we get as much medicare funding as we can.

Fletch is coming out with new words every day or so but still shows no sign of stringing 2 together unless he learns them as a block of words like 'here you go' or 'no more'. I had noticed that he had starting to use a few of these phrases as 'stims'. He will repeat 'it's ok' , 'wassup?' and 'so so sorry' over and over some days for no real reason and always when I raise my voice to tell him off or stop him doing something he shouldn't be doing. The last couple of days I noticed that whenever I go to stop him doing something he will say 'nana' , 'apple' then 'juice'. I haven't figured out yet if it is a stim or if it is to try and divert my attention from what he is doing. Either way, he doesn't actually want the banana, apple or juice, which is driving me crazy because for a few months now we have settled into this nice little system where he tells me what he wants and I get it for him. Sounds good ha?

Some of his new words for the last week or so have been...
'cordigool'...cordial
'coppee'...coffee (for me of course)
'naughty'... funny how he learnt that one)
'Kenzie'... a bit closer to her name, she has been known as Baybee for the last 9 months
I am sure there are more but of course my memory is failing me right now.

Now this is a little video I made a couple of weeks ago when Fletch started singing Old McDonald had a farm. And if you can ignor the fact that he starts to strip, it is really cute. Also, take note of how clean my house looks in this clip, it is a rarety!

Right now I am multitasking in true 'mum' fashion. I type madly for a few seconds then scoop another spoonful of mashed vegies and chicken into Baybee's mouth. She thinks my glasses are pretty funny coz she never sees me in them. She also thinks it is funny to blow a huge 'raspberry' with a mouthful of food so I am going to be picking food from hair and computer sceen when I finish.

Fletch is still having a nap on the couch and Big Ed is snoring way on the other couch. So glad the kids all got his bit of DNA assigned to sleep.

I need a whinge

I need to have a major whinge. For any of my whinge to make any sense, I probably need to update everyone on some of the dramas we have experienced lately.

On Monday afternoon Baybee was just as normal, swinging from the jolly jumper and having a ball playing with a friends daughter. Around 5pm she started to get a bit grumpy. She wouldn't take a feed and didn't enjoy the bath so the guy who lives at my house decided to put her to bed. She fell asleep on his shoulder before he could get there so we figured she really was tired. At about 2:30am I heard her have a little grizzle so I went into her room and put her dummy back in (I am seriously working on an invention to stop an infant's dummy falling out during the night, some may want to call it sticky tape or even glue but I will be launching the stopthatdummyfallingoutthingy in the near future)

For some reason I went back in a 3am, saw her awake and figured I'd save myself a few hours of hassle and just feed her, she had, after all she had skipped her last feed and if you look at this picture of her you will see that she couldn't possibly afford to skip a meal

Of course, she took it happily. I noticed her derriere was a little under the nose so finished the feed and headed to the family room nappy without waking up Fletch. With the benefit of hindsight, while I undressed her even though she had her eyes wide open, she was limp, cold and grey. At the time I just thought she was very quiet at that time of day. When I undid the nappy I found it was full of blood and I mean really full. I ran and got the guy who lives at my place and we called 000. The ambos (2 sets came) arrived really quickly considering the rain and were as calm as cucumbers. We went to Monash Medical Centre, not the closest hospital but better than the 2 closer ones. (I knew they had a paediatric ICU) and were seen by the paediatrician straight away with 2 specialist nurses and the paediatric surgeon within 10 minutes. They tried everything they could to stabilise her for an hour and a half before they had no option but to go up to surgery. At that point they didn't really know what the problem was because the symptoms didn't quite add up to one particular diagnosis.

We held it together until they told us if we hadn't got her here when we did or if we hadn't decided to change her (which I never normally do during the night) we would have just 'found' her in the morning. We knew what that meant. Something has to be said for a 'mother's intuition.' So they took her off to surgery and we just had to wait. I was prepared for several hours of waiting but it was actually only about 2. They were still the longest 2 hours of my life. I made phone calls to let people know what was happening. I even made a deal with God that if he let her live I would lose the weight I have been promising to. We ate breakfast in a effort to distract ourselves from the time that was passing so slowly. The guy who lives at my place eventually went off to get more coffee when one of the surgeons stuck his head around the corner and said her name. He looked exhausted and made small talk about the fact that he too had a 'Baybee' (not her real name of course) at home but his was a 'he'. Clearly going by this small talk I figured things had gone well but you never really know till they say the actual words, everything went well. It had been something called interceception, where the bowel telescopes back into itself. They had taken half of her large bowel, a bit of her small bowel and her appendix which was tangled up in the mix and say long term they don't expect any problems she, should adjust well thanks to her age.

We felt like we had just won the lottery, we actually had. Considering what she has just been through Baybee is doing amazingly. She didn't complain that she didn't get to eat for nearly 3 days and her only real gripe was when she has fallen asleep and the others in the room have made noises. She started back on a little formula yesterday afternoon, most likely after she heard the surgeon say she could start back on food after a bowel motion. She did one 15 minutes later! And when she still hadn't been fed 5 hours after that she did another just for good measure. After a handful of formula feeds she has now been allowed back on to the real stuff and is tucked snuggly in bed next to me in the hospital. Recovering nicely. What a scare.

That all sounds a but too serious for my blog.

Now as for the whinging bit I mentioned earlier.

This experience and the hospital stay that has come with it has brought to my attention the parenting skills (or lack there of) of the parents around me in this ward. Next to Baybee is a beautiful little boy, 6 months old, not sure what he's in for but I know he is waiting for surgery next week, his parents don't stay here at all over night and when they do come in they, go straight to the Starlight room and play Nintendo Wii. The nurses give him more love and cuddles than they do. Then there is this beautiful little boy adjacent, had his appendix out yesterday with a few complications, very confused and sore. His mum stood on his bed (yes that's what I said) so she could answer the phone on the other side of his bed. What the? Then his dad arrived at his court designated time (after mediation from the doctors) and mum had to leave as they have some sort of court order out on each other! ( the mum started crying and she got me started again) Then a 13 year old girl got wheeled in a couple of hours ago, took one look at the 2 cots in this room and asked if those babies were staying the night as she is a very sensitive sleeper!

I fair dinkum wanted to slap her.

So tell me, how in the hell have these people been able to procreate?

Obviously Darwin's theory was wrong.