It is finally all wrapped and ready to go.

Kids are getting excited about the big day on Thursday. This year is great because they have all purchased some gifts for each other with the money that they have saved. Great!!

Putting an oval 14ft trampoline together with the three kids and the dog supervising was interesting. Needless to say, once they could jump on it, all work was abandoned. Will have to finish it off on boxing day I think.

FINALLY got to use the air conditioner..... yeah baby.... what a ripper

Missy had her hair done today and Alex is having hers done tonight. Really turning into a bit of a girly household. Poor Zak.... he escaped to his bedroom to watch Nemo!!

I am quite loking forward to the kids making a HUGE mess on Christmas morning and having 'stuff' everywhere. Its gunna be fun.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy christmas.

The shed is clean!!!! What a cleansing experience.

Latest news........ Air conditioner is being installed...... WOO HOO......... by this time tomorrow I will be able to heat and COOL the house. Of course now that the thing is in.... it is going to be cool for the next couple of days. Ahhh Murphy's Law is a funny thing.

Went for a driving lesson in the fire truck on the weekend..... its been a while since I have driven the truck, but it was good. Didn't forget where the gears were ;-)

Have been a little busy of late.... I have a daily appointment with a wee little foal called Shilo. She is a few weeks old and has been learning about being handled and wearing a head stall and walking on a lead. Imagine a little puppy on the leash for the first time, when they roll around on the floor and drag backwards etc.... now picture the same kind of behaviour, but with a small horse thats back comes up to your waist. It is quite amusing. She is coming along well and is coping ok with being handled. The mother of course thinks it is great.... a babysitter for an hour each day! She just chomps on her food and wanders around the paddock, not a care in the world.

Kids are all doing well and the little fella is talking a mile a minute (in his own way) and has developed a little bit of attitude. When I call him, he arrives in front of me and says "yer". Cheeky little bugger!!

Missy and her lizard are firm friends and it is not uncommon for me to get to give both her and Bert a good night kiss. He is a funny little dude... likes to have a cuddle while I am at the computer and likes to have a run down the hallway.

Teenager is doing ok, her and the boyfriend are joined at the mobile phone lol Always texting day and night. Even if they have spent the day together.... awwww its cute. (Dare not say that to her though)

One of these days I am going to get to bed at a decent hour.....tonight is not looking good, and I wont hold my breath for tomorrow lol

A clean shed is the reward from a day of chucking out all the stuff you accumulate over time with the 'might need that one day' mentality. Well after a day of cleansing and a trailer full of JUNK to prove it, I am now the proud owner of a clean organised shed.

Nothing like chucking out stuff (AKA Junk, Rubbish and missing lids) and sweeping and sorting out to make a therapist be unemployed. lol There is something quite theraputic about getting rid of dirt, dust, junk, stuff you havn't seen for years and stuff you can't beleive you kept.

Next time someone tells me that they think they need to see a shrink...... I will highly reccomend cleaning out the shed. Also, if all gose to plan.... it will eleviate insomnia, as not only will you be bloody knackered from moving all the stuff around, but getting sneaky and chucking out some of the kids stuff at the same time is to be considered a little tricky.

First the shed......

now who knows what else will be sorted, cleaned and de-junked??!!

What a slack blogger I have been!!! Three months is a long time in this household. Needless to say, some things also never change. Zak is loving the Finding Nemo movie and has frequently gone fishing in the fish tank in the lounge...... the little goldfish are still surviving amazingly.

Missy is finally looking forward to going to high school. She has ben very nervous about it, but I have started to get some of her things organised for next year and she is much more settled. There have been a few moments at school... needless to say a group of pre-hormonal girls can be rather bitchy lol

Finally the teenager has a boyfriend. I survived the hickey on the neck!! Phew I remember what I was like at 17. Have met the young fella in question and he seems like a nice young fella. He falls into the 'Been brought up right' category.

The highlight of the last couple of months has been I got an air conditioner ** Yippe Yahoo** now saving up to pay the electrician to install the sucker before it gets too hot. Looking forward to slothing on the couch in air conditioned comfort this summer. We are a house full of people who dont like the heat and after the second day we get a bit cranky (especially the mother lol). Therefore I think the air con is an investment for sanity !!

Getting all ready for the big 1st of December"Christmas Tree Day". Kids are starting to look forward to it as well.

Going to make an effort to write in the blog more often .........

We will see what happens there ;-)

What a week

What an interesting week I have had.

Injured my calf muscle so have been hobbling round for a while. All good now thank goodness.

B.I.S.T finally showed up on the 12th August. Not a huge amount of help. Nothing for me to read or reffer to at all. Also, of course, no follow up call, or any indication they had been at all really. Apart from lots of notes jotted down in a folder to be filed somewhere.

No matter!! As usual, if you want anything done.... do it yourself.

I found a great website autismhelp.info at the Gateway Support Services web site and found some great advise, strategies and all sorts of good stuff. I went to their printable area and printed off all the information they had regarding 'Middle Years' which is where Zak is. I was so impressed I rang and told them! They also sent me the next day an article about self injuring behaviour which was brilliant. Gave me lots of ideas and things to think about.

Needless to say, I have made a Zak manual and will be distributing it to school and family for us all to have a read of and maybe learn a few new tricks to help the little dude.

As usual I was feelin all the love for the little fella when we had a pear shaped Autistic few days. Not sleeping, refusing to eat, wont get dressed, wont get undressed, tanties, lots of NO, NO, No (which is always frustrating), wont get in the car, wont get out of the car, spitting out his Epilepsy medication (that stuff is soooo sticky) and then more tanties. The worst part was, he only was not happy with me, dunno what I did to throw him off his tracks. With everyone else he was lovely. Well..... ya just gotta love that!!

Great thing happened though..... Missy (12yr old Bi-Polar) has been a shining star!! Perfect, helping me when I was getting over it all. Playing with grumble bum when he was not happy with me. Putting the kettle on at regular intervals and lots of random hugs were given. I am a lucky woman.

The two younger kids went to their dads for the weekend and I slept away most of Saturday. A bit of time out for me to get my mummy mo-jo back.

Ahhhh...... its Monday and all is great with the universe.

too busy, didn't call back, didn't seem to care

I have the urge to have a winge and vent. Normally, I just go about my business, solving my issues as they arise. I have a good network of close friends who I can turn to for advise and help if needed, but sometimes, even our never ending bag of magic tricks comes up empty.

This has been one of those times.

My Autistic son Zak has in recent months started to bang his head and wrists, bite himself and cause himself harm when he is distressed, having a tantie, is frustrated and frightened.

Initially, I physically restrained him from doing it and talked to him about hurting himself. But, over a period of time it worsened. A lovely lady came to school to assess him for different sensory programs, routine structures etc and recomended that we just ignore the behaviour because, basically he wont do himself any harm. Although I had reservations, I thought ok then... I suppose he is not going to hurt himself too badly after all because you would assume that he would stop if the pain was too bad.

In theory, its a grand idea. Sounds logical, reasonable and I thought ok. We will have a go at that. Until he came home from school with a big egg on his head from bashing it against the wooden decking. He gave himself concussion. A couple of days later I got a call from school to tell me he wasnt well, they thought he had a sore mouth or tooth, something in that general area. As he is quite non-verbal it is often a guessing game as to what is going on with him.

After I bought him home, he was definately unhappy and in pain. I looked at his teeth and felt them all and none were loose or appeared to be broken. There was one molar on the bottom that had a sharp edge though. I rang a dentist to get him seen to straight away. Best they could do would be 3 hours away. While trying to confort him Pam (my friend) and I rubbed his back and tried hugging him etc.

He was crying and griding his teeth and rocking. Within 30 minutes he had ripped the whole molar out of his mouth!!! I rang the dentist back and told them of the latest news and I still had to take him in to get an x-ray on his mouth in case he left something behind.

It was so hard to believe that he could pull a molar out of his mouth from not loose to completely ripped out in such a short amout of time. Imagine the pain!!! That must have hurt. Within a week he had pulled out another one on the other side. The dentist said they shouldnt come out for at least another year.

I contacted Dept. Human Services on 5th June 2008 and spoke to the disability intake worker to get some advice. Not only about the self harming, but his pain tolerance levels. They did an urgent refferal to B.I.S.T (Behavioural Intervention Services Team). Apparently this should only take a few days before someone contacts me and comes out to see what we can do. I knew this was a bit above my head. After ringing back a few more times and met with the same silence and no return calls, I became a little disheartened. I have always managed to just go with the flow and the first time I ask for some help from someone..... too busy, didnt call back, didnt seem to care.

Finally on 10th JULY someone from BIST rang me. Only to tell me sorry, we have been busy and are understaffed and someone will be out to see you or contact you in a couple of weeks. The worker from Dept. Human Services rang back and asked if all was going well now. She was not very impressed when I told her that they have only rang to let me know they were busy and had not forgotten my URGENT refferal. She called me back yesterday 29th JULY and asked how it all went, and I had the same answer for her..... too busy, didnt call back, didnt seem to care. She was great and put in a formal complaint to the client services manager..... still didnt get me the help I needed even though she did all the right things.

Suprisingly the BIST fellow called me a couple of hours after she had phoned. You won't believe it........ they have been terribly busy, understaffed and had not forgotten about us!!! (thats not how it feels) and someone will ring me today and we can work on the problem. Yep you guessed it......... too busy, didnt call back, didnt seem to care.

I think next time I want to ask for help I will definately try to solve it on my own with the help of friends and not reply on the experts..... too busy, didnt call back, didnt seem to care.....

Ok I have vented and winged enough......

Tomorrow is going to be a GREAT day

Something New

Here is my first time writing a blog. With a teenager giving me advice, even though she has never done one before, it has all worked out ok.

My afternoon was quite run of the mill..... teenager brought home 4 friends after school. Of course 2 stayed for dinner!! So lots of giggling and carry on tonight.

Number 2 and her busy social schedule, of course played with a friend after school. We have a system, where if she stays home for an entire day with no visitors or no visiting, a star gets put on the calendar. (We dont get a great deal of those)

Little fella, coped quite well with the whole extras in the house, and of course they all think he is sooo cute. Another day of creating blue tac signs including the fine print!

Another day, another load of washing ;-)