Beet Goes On…

Our new home

CJ enjoying cooking in a spacious kitchen with every mod con

TJ relaxing with a game of pool on the table our landlord generously left here

Oh, and our new, reliable wheels thanks to my bestie who sold us her old car and is letting us pay it off

Now excuse me while I go soak my feet in the pool.

TJ’s acceptance letter for his high school enrolment has arrived.

There are notes coming home about year group photo orders for graduation.

There are booklets about high school orientation.

All of which means we are almost done with primary school.

I’m feeling a bit sad about that to be honest. It is the end of another life stage after all. And it is also another very real reminder that my babies are getting sooooooooooo grown up.

Lets not even start on the worry that high school evokes after the disaster that has been both of the girl’s experiences.

*focus on the positive, focus on the positive*

I’ll be hearing from the high school soon to set up an interview to discuss TJ’s language problems and social awkwardness so that they can individualize his transition program which starts next term. And I haven’t had to chase them for this.

Along with transition I am hoping *fingers crossed everyone* that he finally finds a friend or two that he can spend some time with outside of school. There are one or two kids from school that he sees at gem club, karate or scouts, and feels comfortable with – and that is a good start -  but we really need someone that he can invite around during school holidays to hang out, play the Wii, or whatever.

Mostly though, I’m just praying to whatever powers that rule these things that high school will be a much better place for him than it was for either of our girls… cos I honestly don’t think I have it in me to homeschool him too.  :\

With all my goings on and planning and sorting this week I didn’t get around to posting goals at the beginning of the week. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on any though. No losses to report this week, but plenty of changes about to happen.

The main thing I’ve been working is setting things in place to greatly increase my general daily activity. I’ve enrolled in a part time Visual Arts course, volunteered to help out at TJ’s school in the kitchen garden for an hour a fortnight when TJ’s class is in there, and joined the gym. Oh and I signed up to sell Avon.

Ding dong biatches!

All of these things are designed to get me out of the house more regularly, meeting to new people, getting to know my neighbourhood better, become a familiar face at TJ’s school,  and another step in my quest for world domination. First my block, then the education system, then the world! Mwaahaaahaaahaaaaaaa!!!

Ahem.

My new Avon area is my hufreakinmungus block that I live in, the TAFE is a mere 15 minute walk away, the gym has a pool, and the kitchen garden is well, garden!

Outdoors and fresh air and soil under the fingernail goodness!

The gym membership will also be a major factor in meeting my exercise goals. It has an indoor pool for year round use. I love to swim. I am just so much more comfortable in the water, and it doesn’t flair any pain in my problem areas.

In other news the anxious teen is coping much better this week being back on her meds, our budget reorganisation looks to have set us up for a much more comfortable month, and some incredibly generous friends have pitched in to help me get to Aussie Bloggers Conference next month! Woot!

Huge, HUGE thank yous to Linda, Kim, Andrew, Leigh, and Lindy for their kindness and generosity. Mwah!

I’ve also been participating in the AMB 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge. It’s been a lot of fun so far exploring lots of new blogs and I was truly gobsmacked to receive a massive number of comments on my Five Quick Tips to Soothe Anxiety Away post the other day.

And to finish up I’ll leave you with a few blog posts that I really enjoyed this week

5 Essential Lessons of True Love from The Legend of Cupid and Psyche

#020 The Valentine Phantom Is My Hero

Does Saying No Mean You Are Lazy?

The Two Sizes Too Small Dress

What did you get up to this week?

It’s been an interesting weekend here. The storms that came through on Friday night flooded our garage. We lost a few things that were in boxes waiting for us to replace bookcases and cupboards, but thankfully most of the important stuff was in plastic storage containers, while the rest will wash and dry later.

Luckily for the craptacular amateur photographer in me, we happened to have a vehicle this weekend as hub’s workmate had lent us his car for a couple of days so I was able to take a sticky beak around town at the swollen creeks and snap some pics.

Near the duck pond at Felltimber Community Centre

CJ loves her some duckies

Water covered paths at Sumison Gardens

Water nearly up to the bridge at Les Stone Park

Playground boats no longer on dryland

Carparks, BBQ’s and playgrounds underwater oh my!

From the footbridge at the back of Willow Park

Willow Park (TJ was shocked to see where he played Kanga cricket underwater! :O )

I think there is usually a fishing pier somewhere here behind TJ’s school

From the bridge on Elgin

And the other side

And me trying to be artsy with my shot!

(which I’m secretly quite pleased with)

PS – we are quite safe where we are, there is no danger of our house being flooded. The garage flooded simply because of the sheer volume of rain that we had in a few short hours. So far we’ve had 170mm this weekend. We count ourselves very fortunate at a time when others have lost so much in other parts of the country.

PPS – pics were taken either with my iPhone or my Fuji Finepix S1800 for those who want to know about such things. No DSLRs here yet

PPPS – I’ll be back to update my challenge stuff tomorrow along with next week’s goals.

The more I research and the more I find about the learning and developmental problems my kids face the more questions I have, and as they age there seem to be less answers.

All the emphasis seems to be on early intervention and while I do not and would never dispute the importance of early intervention, there needs to be more for older kids too.

Why? Well what I have seen and what I’m sure many other parents see is that these difficulties that first presented as toddlers and preschoolers present again during primary school and again during high school as the demands placed on our kids changes which our speech therapist said was a really common occurrence before apologising profusely for only being funded for early intervention and not being able to do much to help my school age children.

It makes sense to me that if a child of three does not know how to include themselves in the imaginative play of a small group in the sandpit, then they may not be confident trying to include themselves in a soccer game in primary school or in planning for a social outing in high school. As the activities that our children participate in change the social skills needed become more sophisticated too.

Even for language skill delays not involving pragmatics there are extra challenges as the demands made by each level of schooling change. A child who has problems selecting the right word for speaking in early childhood may find themselves having problems selecting the right word for story writing in primary school. One that had problems with patterns and sequencing early on, may have problems with spelling and sentence structure later. Problems with being able to organise thoughts and get them onto paper in primary school may see them having problems trying to write reports and essays in  high school as may early problems with attention and ability to focus lead to problems with being able to listen to instructions from the teacher and write down home work at the same time in high school.

And there seems to be few avenues of keeping on top of things unless you have bucket loads of money for private therapy. :S

Now surely my kids aren’t the only ones whose problems continue to interfere with them throughout their schooling life? I know that there are some things that we hope the early intervention did the trick and they will be okay now, or we become better at managing as they move more into our realm of being able to help, but what are parents of primary school or high school aged children with persistent learning problems meant to do when they are too old for early intervention and don’t fit into the school’s remedial programmes for help? Where do all these kids with their problems disappear too? I’m wondering about this because there seems to be very little available in terms on books or articles or stuff online to help their parents help them and the need for knowledge and knowing that we aren’t alone doesn’t end when our kids start school.

Very frustrating.

Specifically TJ’s first day at his new school.

Yeah, I know he was meant to officially start last week, but we had to travel back to Cowra for a few days so *shrugs* it couldn’t be helped.

He’s been quite nervous about starting a new school. Reckons that people spend days staring at the new person and he wouldn’t like to be stared at. He was also worried about which classroom he’d be in and who his teacher would be because we didn’t know yet.

I caught the bus in to school with him this morning (even though I wasn’t meant to) and we met his new teacher together. He seems quite nice and quite enthusiastic about his students.

TJ was fine right up until I went to leave and I was trying to explain discreetly to his teacher that he was a bit of a worrier when he walked out and started to get a little teary… but I’m sure he’s fine now.

I hope he has a good day, I hope he manages to find his buses home without any hassles too. He’ll have to catch one bus then swap to another bus at one of the high schools to get home. The little year 1 girl from next door reckons she’ll look after him. I’m sure he’ll be fine

Edit to update – He had a BALL at school yesterday! Made some friends, used the classroom laptops, went to the library, liked his teacher and went off happily this morning excited about the day to come. Could not have asked for a better first day

then it just wouldn’t be our life now would it? lol

After getting a phone call at lunch time yesterday to say that there was work starting at 7am this morning for hubs, we made a few quick calculations and snap decisions and decided that TJ and I would accompany PSLS  for his first week working in Vic and leave the teen queens with the grandparents.

In the space of a few short hours we did a little shopping, reorganised some things, took care of some mid week errands, gathered up all the paperwork we would need for housing applications, visited TJ’s school to speak to his teacher about what we were up to, bought PSLS some new work clothes for his new work, packed a couple of suitcases and were off.

We were running an hour or so later than we had hoped, but we were on our way.

Three hours into our trip, we were overtaking a semi-trailer when the battery charge light came on…

*insert dramatic music* bah, bah bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

By the time we got to Henty our car was running incredibly rough and after pulling up to check, stopped and would not go again.

Then the funniest thing happened…

While sitting in the car waiting for PSLS to return with a mechanic, the people in the house we were stranded in front of came out to check if we were okay, invited us in for a cuppa and to warm up by the fire, offered to make phone calls for us and were just generally inviting,  welcoming and helpful.

When I mentioned where I was from though, the lady of the house blanched and whispered a name, a name I was quite familiar with. Turns out that this chick’s uncle is the father of some of the elder children of my crazy bro’s (now ex) girlfriend’s kids. What a small freaking world! They think L is a nutter too and, like us, are not allowed anything to do with the children. Sigh. Turned out we had quite a bit in common with these folks and was a very pleasant 45 minutes spent warming ourselves with their hospitality by their fireplace.

One hour, many pats of the puppies, and one cuppa later, $130 poorer, with new bushels in our alternator, we were on our way. Our faith in human kindness restored, our wonder at the smallness of the world sparked, our bellies and fingers warmed, and a renewed sense of optimism about our plans.

We were a good two hours late getting to our accommodation by this time, but the really nice manager was absolutely fantastic about being hauled out of bed at midnight to book us in and give us our key laughing off my apologies and offering to split our bill for the week into two payments to help free up some cash for us until we got paid again.

So, hubs is as work, TJ and I are catching a few extra zzz’s before heading out to spend a solid few days harassing real estate agents into showing us more houses, and organising his school transfer and everything is good.

It’s amazing the difference that the kindness of a few individuals can make to a situation when you are stressed.

Now if  a house would just fall into our laps we’d be all set!

to be as absent minded and clutzy as I am…

Take Friday for example.

I go to school to watch TJ get an award at assembly for being such a great classroom community member.

I meet up with one of the chicks who will be taking over my role as clothing pool coordinator and show her my domain.

I promptly lock the school’s copy of the clothing pool room key AND TJ’s merit award in the clothing pool room  and am unsure where my own key is.

Thankfully my key surfaced today.

But still, my kind of skills are teh awesome!

Do your kids have a favourite toy or comfort blanket?

Something that had to be carted everywhere, was a drama to wash or repair and that they just wouldn’t sleep without?

Meet Teddies.

Teddies is a Winne the Pooh and Tigger light-weight doona (comforter) that we bought TJ when he was still a wee babe.

As a toddler he just loved it. It was so warm and soft and snugly. He started calling it Teddies because it had Winnie the Pooh on it who he also called Teddies (cos all bears were teddies) and the name stuck.

Now Teddies got dragged everywhere with him. All over the house and yard, in the sandpit, playing tug war with the dog etc though we had to swap it for it’s pillowcase to take to preschool for nap times as it was a bit big and bulky for his bag. It took some convincing to leave Teddies on  his bed and only take the pilowcase, but in time it worked. The pillowcase would also trek around the  yard, the shops, to Nan’s……. anywhere we went really. All that is left now is a ragged piece that I framed but he still has that doona.

Teddies is frequently the only thing on TJ’s bed. Doesn’t matter if it’s summer or winter, he’ll be curled up in a ball with Teddies wrapped up around his chest, shoulders and head (during winter we just chuck extra blankets of top of him). When he was littler on days that I had washed Teddies TJ would frequently disappear. Once we’d convinced him to stop pulling Teddies off the line and let him dry, I’d always find him sitting on a stool under the clothesline with the thumb from one hand in his mouth and the other hand pressing Teddies to the side of his face.

Teddies is always the first thing TJ packs into his suitcase to take on trips even if it means not having enough room for clothes. Teddies is also a bugger for inducing thumb sucking in a boy who has otherwise outgrown it. He only does it these days when sitting somewhere with Teddies up near his face.

Unfortunately Teddies is now getting so old and worn that he no longer provides much warmth.

And I’m getting afraid to wash him for fear he’ll fall apart.

But TJ still won’t give him up.

I’m not sure what we are going to do when he finally falls completely apart.

TJ’s loose teeth that is, not my own.

He cannot tolerate loose teeth in his mouth. If they have the slightest wobble they HAVE TO come out AS. SOON. AS. POSSIBLE!

Why?

Because they annoy him.

Yesterday morning he discovered that one of his molars was loose. Stupid me didn’t think it was wobbly enough to come out for a few days yet.

Last night he was so determined to stop it annoying him that he pulled it out snapping part of the offending tooth off at the gum line.

This is the first time he’s broken one of his teeth off in his attempts to remove them.

He has freaked my mother out before though pulling a tooth out while at her house. Bled like a stuck pig that time.

He’s also done it at school before too bloodying up one of his books.

Thankfully the rest of them have been at home where the only person he’s been able to freak out is me.

Because I feel like less of a bad parent when the only person he freaks out is me dontchya know!

This is the first loose molar with all the rest still to go.

Sigh.

Can’t I just have TJ put to sleep and all his baby teeth removed at once?