RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY

That's life at the moment. Dealing with the rain.
Work on the house is so, so slow. It rains every day & I think it's rained almost every day this year. We are still on the floor joists. Nearly finished, but a couple of good days of work. I think Kim has just about got his head around working in the rain.

Finn's behaviour has improved since seeing a kinesiologist, Antonia Swift here in Katoomba. He is testing strongly for Arsenic so she has him on Selenium drops as it detoxifies. We had him on it for a week before we forgot the drops in Sydney. We then went about 10 days without & he's back on them again now. The difference is amazing, his screaming has decreased by well over 50%. He is also more affectionate, ie he actually asks to be picked up & I've even get a hug or 2, although brief. He also seems more flexible on how things are done. Today he started to scream about Ivy starting the 2nd half of her sandwich before finishing the 1st but when I asked him to just let her decide how she wanted to eat her sandwich he actually let it go. Usually he would create a huge fuss & get very upset.

It's a huge relief to have him acting somewhat normally occasionally. Kim just called me from the block where he is with Finn. We're having a truck load of timber delivered & the ownder of the recycled timber yard bought his 4 yar old son with him & they were playing!!! This warranted a phone call to tell me. He was even speaking to the boy. Finn still has an obsession with boats & we picked up a small plastic boat being thrown out the other day (meant to be a small sand pit) & they were in it together playing. Very, very unusual for Finn. In fact it was a first. Wonderful!!!

We have started going to a new playgroup here in Katoomba that is set up for kids with "special needs". There are 2 facilitators, one stays with the kids in one room that is filled with gorgeous toys, the other sits & chats & makes tea for the mums in an ajoining room. The kids can go back & forth. There are only 4-5 kids/mums so it is calm & quiet & Finn is really enjoying it. The faciltator who stays in with the kids brings her own "normal" 3 year old son Clancy & there are 2 other 3 year old boys too, one who is non-verbal & the other very shy. It is run by the Connect Children's Support Services who have done an assessment of Finn & at this point feel that even though he has a lot of typical Asperger traits he makes eye contact too often to have it. I'm still not convinces & need to talk to more parents before I make the decision to have him medically assessed or not. He makes very little eye contact & his Aspie traits are so overwhelming, if he doesn't have Aspergers & is just a strange child, well, he's pretty strange!

We have had Brody to see Dr Varipatis in Manly last week & he has asked for lots of tests to be done, hair analysis, blood & urine tests. They go as far afield as the US for testing so we won't have results until after easter. It costs a small fortune so I hope we get some results. The dr suggested we will be able to use the results as a guide to what may be affecting Finn too as we can't afford to have him tested quite yet.

I don't think I've written much about Bordy before, basically he is totally exhasted most of the time & is emotionally extremely fragile. He is hating school, refuses to do homework & hardly helps at home, apart from helping with the kids but even that is getting more resistance these days. I know that may sound like typical teenage behaviour but it's really extreme, he really does have a problem & I'm getting desparate to figure out what's wrong with him.

I'm not coping with things very well at the moment. It all seems so, so hard. So much to do, so much to think about. I dream of a boring, simple life!