Our weekend

.... was spent celebrating my sisters birthday.....

.... building lego

.... baking (and of course the obligatory bowl licking!!)

and just generally chilling out and enjoying each other. We've also met some great new neighbours who also have a little girl Charley's age so the girls have had a lovely time baking, playing, dressing up, stamping and juts getting up to all the fun, girly stuff that four year olds love getting into/upto!!

I've also spent a fair whack of time getting stuff done around the house and have filled up a wheelie bin and a half already plus there are a number of piles next to the front door ready for various deliveries to friends/neighbours/charities that I will get to in the rest of the week. The laundry is finished and is looking nice and shiny at the moment but I've decided I'll leave the 'after' photos until the end of the week when the whole place is nice and shiny!! Hope you've all had a great weekend too ;-)

The "before" pictures....

That I didn't want to post because I'm so ashamed and embarrassed that I have let my house fall down around my ears. At the same time I'm sick of reading the blogs of perfect women and mothers with perfect children and perfect lives. My life isn't. And that is the reality - these pictures are the reality of my house right now. I've got five days off and on Thursday I plan on posting the "after" photos to show you all. These go some way to a public-accountability of sorts and I'm sure will give me the extra motivation should I lack some during the next week or so!!

Recently I've had that unsettled feeling where I want things to change. I want to move to a newer/bigger house, wanted to sell my car & buy a bigger/newer car etc. Reflecting on 'why' and talking to my Nana I realised that these are 'wants' rather than 'needs' - our current accommodation and vehicle are more than adequate for our needs. I'm also reading a book about parenting heavily based on Buddhist philosophy and I'm currently working my way through the chapter on respect. It's interesting and thought provoking and while I sit here posting these pictures it is ever so clear to me that I'm expecting my children to respect what they have while I am clearly demonstrating the opposite. I'm hoping to implement change and hope to be modelling the behaviour that I want my children to develop in myself in the coming weeks/months.

Just an update...

... and a thank you to my wonderful friends for their kind words on my last post.

Well almost two weeks in and there are mixed reports. On the sleep front there has been a miraculous turn around and he is now sleeping between 8 and 10 hours a night and boy does it show. My little man, who for years has had dark purple shadows under his eyes, is waking up clear eyed and bright faced almost every morning! We are in a good routine now where he takes his meds at 7pm and then has a bath and reads to me and then normally he's asleep between 8 and 8:30. None of this midnight nonsense. For the first few nights I honestly didn't know what to do with myself. Interestingly enough, I didn't give him meds one night as we went out for dinner with my folks and I didn't want him nodding off at the dinner table. We were out from 6pm-9pm then got home and all went to bed - I checked on him at 01:30am and he was wide awake.

Not such good news on the mood stabilising drug front. He's had up days, down days, inbetween days. This was not the plan. There have been massive issues with behaviour at school and they have seen an aggressive, angry, mean side of thim that previously had been under control. Crisis talks with the school and our behaviour therapist and it's a wait and see approach. Fingers crossed the next week or so goes well!

As for me - well between work & kids there isn't much time for anything else. Would love to have some crafty things to share but there just isn't time lately - I'm living vicariously through buttontree lane, kuka and knitting sprout with their sewing/cooking/knitting achievements!

Fork in the road

The past few weeks have seen us come to a real fork in the road with therapy for Izaak. He has previously been assessed for a program called The Extra Lesson and to be perfectly honest I don't think I would have known about the program if it wasn't for a friend who is a practitioner and is just getting herself set up after having time off to have her own babies.
During the assessment Izaak was his usual combative, defiant, non-compliant self. It was tedious. Anyway, the assessment basically showed all the things that I knew about him as well as a few extras. He has too much cranial pressure. And he has auditory processing issues. The cranial pressure is being worked on by a local osteopath who has made some interesting observations about my little man. His hips are not aligned and as a result his neck is compensating. We are progressing well and will see him weekly for a while to see if we can get it sorted out. Back to The Extra Lesson though - they recommend an auditory program to help him with his auditory issues which I'm okay with - until I heard the cost is upwards of $1000.00. I don't want to sound like a stingy parent and I do have the funds to cover the cost of this treatment but I am extremely wary of shelling out that sort of cash on a program that doesn't have main stream science or the ASD community behind it. This is along the 'alternative' therapies stream and while I am willing to try almost anything to help my little boy, I'm not sure that it is really the best option given that kind of money would buy us almost 20 occupational therapy sessions.
So totally opposite to that philosophy - we went to see the paediatrician yesterday afternoon who couldn't believe that we had made it this far without medications. He has prescribed Izaak a mood stabilising drug and a sedative. Given that he has really poor sleep patterns I'm all for the later - he goes to bed between 7:30 - 8:30 and at 11:30-midnight is still wide awake. So tonight I gave him the first dose at 7:30 and by 8:20 he was sound asleep. Amazing.

Although it's working (well it's only night one so I'm cautious of saying that but after so many of unsettled nights, even one is 'working'!!) I'm struggling with the social stigma and judgements of people in regards to medicating my eight year old. Effectively I am giving my child psych drugs. I don't like how that fits, how it feels but I am coming around to the fact that I have to do what is best for him. As the paed and my family have all said - there is potential that is being hid away behind all the behavioural issues. Hopefully, the medication plan will lessen the behaviours so we can get more of the learning in. Tonight he read me two home readers that I thought were at the level he needed. He read both without missing a single word. I need to get over myself. If only it were that easy!