child care

I wrote this last week & the photos didn't show properly so I didn't post it. Deciding to post it now & will try & find time to fix the pics soon.

From last Wednesday:

Finn & Ivy started at the Cottage yesterday. It didn't go as planned but it went OK. 

At about9.30am I sad to Finn, "you're going to have morning tea soon & after that Daddy & I will go". Of course we had talked a lot about what will happen but when the reality of it hit him he started to lose the plot. I could see him subtly getting more & more agitated until about 10 minutes later the flood gates opened. 

"I wanna go hoooome, I wanna go hoooome...." with buckets of tears for about 15 minutes.  

Eventually I asked him if he was scared about mummy & daddy leaving. 

"yesssss!!!!!" he replied. 

I told him we wouldn't leave until he was ready for us to leave. 

"I want you to stay all day!" he begged. I promised we would stay all day if that's what he needed. So Kim & I played tag team all day.  I think I was just as overwhelmed as the kids by the end of the day!  

 His aid had been chosen but when we met her we realised he wasn't going to connect with her, it's a chemistry thing. She was lovely but not his "type". Kim had a quick chat with Helen & suggested the fill in temp girl Donna. She's a "regular temp", fills in often, so after the 5 weeks of funding runs out she'll still be there often.  We'll have to deal with that when it happens, we just knew she was going to do it for him. So Helen swapped them over & Finn & Donna played & bonded. She was fabulous with him & he made a new friend. There is a bucket of toy tools there including some toy nail guns! So they built housed with wooden blocks for ages & ages, wonderful creations that attracted the attention of some other little boys.  Finn made no attempt to communicate with them but it's still early days. 

 He did have a brief chat with a little girl in the afternoon. Exciting! 

 Ivy was not very well & we didn't think she would be able to go on Monday night but woke up much better on Tuesday. At one point in the morning sh went to climb on the trampoline with Finn & I stopped her & explained that only one person can be on it at a time. Well she threw the biggest wobbly of her life. I think it was a bit of a overwhelmed response to the morning, it had been raining so everyone was inside until just before lunch making it quite noisy. She tried to kick & hit me & screamed like a banshee so I distanced myself for a minute or 2 but she was getting so worked up I went back to her quickly to have her vomit all over me. Oh the joys of motherhood. 

 She was fragile for the next 1.5 hours so after lunch I asked a happily playing Finn if he would be OK while daddy drove Ivy & me home. He was fine so we stretched it out to a bit more than 30 minutes of him being there on his own (with Donna). Kim said that when he went back he was so happy that he didn't want to leave. 

  Today we've been home all day, we woke up to snow this morning & we've had hail though the day. Strange when you have sunburn from the weekend! Finn has caught Ivy's cold, as have all of us actually. Brody is here & sick, Kim's sick, Finn has gone to sleep on the living room floor at 5.30pm. So not sure about the Cottage tomorrow so that's a shame. 

 I bought a new lens last week & received it yesterday. Just a 50mm 1.8, nothing VERY exciting but exciting enough & I'm loving it already! 

Here's one of my 1st pics with it, taken for my photography forum fortnightly task, the theme was "food":

that was  last night's dinner. We eat well. I won the previous task of "motion" with this photo:

 

Here''s Ivy (NOT taken with my new lens)

she LOVES running!! Such a happy, loving little thing. 

And this was snapped very quickly today with my new lens, what a difference that wide aperture makes! For $140 delivered from Hong Kong I'm thinking it's pretty good value! 

Continued change

Finn, like most children with Aspergers, takes things very literally. We recently had to invent a game called "truth or lie" to help him understand the meaning of lying, he just couldn't get that it sometimes doesn't mean lying down. "I wasn't lying mum, i was standing up!!".
Now we play "tell me the truth Finn, do you like ice cream?". "OK now tell me a lie, do you like ice cream?". He LOVES this game & is finally getting it.
His sense of humour is developing, he has discovered playing tricks. He loves playing tricks, the 1st one he invented on his own was to knock on Chelsea's bedroom door & then hide when she answered. He has never seen anyone do this to my knowledge. Much to Chelsea's delight (???) it has become a favourite game if she's in her room.
Yesterday he was making up tricks to play on Dad. He started telling me,  in front of Kim, what he was going to do. I said that he shouldn't say it in front of Dad because then he will know what you're going to do & he won't be tricked. His response? "OK, I'll go behind dad then"!  He's not stupid, he just takes everything literally!
His best trick yesterday...Kim was watering the garden & he said to me, "I'm going to go & turn off the hose while Dad's not looking!". He pulled it off perfectly.  Funny boy!! He is SO like Brody!
We are close to a diagnosis now I believe. Lynne, his psychologist, spent 1.5 hours watching him at my friend Steph's place about 2 weeks ago & she saw stuff that she hadn't seen while he was in our company. He has known Stef's boys jasper & Ziggy for 2 years but still struggles to play well with them most of the time.  Lynne watched him push Jasper to get him out of his way, refuse to apologise when he hurt him, run around the yard but not join in their games & she even commented to Steph about his unusual gait (I had told her about this but was told that he looked quite coordinated to her).

To me it is all so obvious but she won't give him a diagnosis unless she personally observes the behavior to prove it. Are there parents lying about their children's behavior to make them sound worse than they are? Apparently Tony Attwood says in his seminars, "clinicians need to learn to listen to parents". I couldn't agree more. Anyway, she's now using the word "spectrum" in our conversations, hasn't given me any firm answers but has sent me info in them mail on an upcoming picnic for families in the mountains with children on the autistic spectrum, so there's been a shift. She has admitted "he had us stumped for a while". I think (although haven't had this confirmed) that we are just waiting for her final report & diagnosis now.

Our other exciting news is that last week we received a call from the Children's Cottage (child care centre) telling us that they have had a family move suddenly so have 2 places available for Finn & Ivy!
Friday we had a planning meeting with 2 members of CADU (child & adolescent development unit), his early intervention teacher Nimmi, Helen, the coordinator of the Cottage, Kim & I. Plans were made on helping his make a smooth transition to the Cottage 2 days a week. He will have a personal aid for 5 hours a day for his first 5 weeks, the cottage will use the funding for this to bring in a temp worker but Finn's aid will be one of the permanent staff so they will be there all the time (great idea!). The focus of his aid will be helping him interact with other children & to develop ways he can cope with conflict without aggression.
We are very excited for him & for Ivy, they are really looking forward to going, they start tomorrow. Ivy is SO excited, she's been counting down the sleeps & telling everyone about it. It's ironic that now I have stopped working so much we finally get child care. I am going to spend one of the days helping Kim & one day doing a bit of work & housework.

Kim hurt his back quite badly about 10 days ago, so things have been very slow on the house. He's back into it today though. He's been going stir crazy, the first few days he could hardly stand. He did it moving a fridge, we got a "new" one at a garage sale last weekend as ours had a door seal going. He's in the middle of making the 1st window & it's looking great, nearly finished. he ordered all the window hardware last week, it should arrive tomorrow. $1000 later... They are sliding windows,  the track is the biggest expense (bronze I think). This cost also includes the track & rollers for 5 cavity sliding doors. Overall our windows are very, very cheap! The glass cost us $300, the timber about the same. That's for all the windows. The locks were about $2 each, new in their packets, found at a garage sale. We have bought 2 windows off ebay for the kitchen, & 1 at a garage sale for our bathroom. That was a $2000 window, brand new, we paid $150. I think we're doing OK!

I had a garage sale on Saturday, we sold odds & ends that were cluttering up the house, as well as a lot of summer clothing, we made $700 so we're pretty happy with that!
Off to playgroup now!