"It's a duck!"

As a single Mum of three kids, one with confirmed Aspergers and another suspected while the other well and truly a NT keeping to routines can at times be our saving grace! Each night we have a definite routine that we stick to to ensure that my two who loathe sleep and struggle to give in to the night time necessity of slumber can be as calm as possible to facilitate it's arrival.

When we return from school/ Work/ Childcare the kids can play while I prepare dinner. Then when dinner is called the toy areas are closed for the night. They are not to return and play once dinner starts. We eat dinner and watch one tv show a night which is Dance Academy on ABC3. Once that is over the tv is turned off. After dinner is the showers and then the boys run around in a nude and crazy state while I progressively go from understanding, reminding Mum of what they should be doing to a screaming banshee telling them what to do. They then complain about why I need to scream and A1 usually watches this scene rolling her eyes ;) (she's 6 by the way! ;) ) .

The boys then get into bed and A2 grabs as many books as possible for me to read and then we negotiate down to two or three only. Complaints stop eventually only because if they don't stop and he accepts not all are to be read then he is to have none read at all. Finally we settle down to read.

This one particular night A2 chose two Pamela Allen books which he had not heard before. One of them was Fancy That! .

If you haven't read this book with your toddler then we highly recommend it. So the story was progressing and A2 was right into it and finally we got to the page on which it was revealed what the chicken was "took took"ing about throughout the book. She was sitting on eggs which had hatched and had some brand new chicks.

So I read the page, then with joy and exclamation in my voice and radiating from my face I asked A2, "What are they?" . Imagine Nonni Hazelhurst and the highest amount of wonder and joy she could exclaim! That was me. A2 looked at the page, looked at me with an incredibly serious face and then back at the page and matter of factly stated, "They's Ducks!"

Suffice to say the joy and wonder turned to laughter as K and I laughed and laughed at his exclamation and tried to explain that they were in fact chicks, which were baby chickens while he barely tolerated our idiocy exclaiming that, NO as usual we were wrong, he was right and they were ducks. I mean they are yellow, PEOPLE! Sheesh! ;)

That night he did receive his wish to be read three books...the third being his A to Z dictionary of Animals ;) (he's not the only one who likes to be right ;) )

Big Achievement of the Day no#2

I sat down to write the menu plan for the next two weeks before going shopping and I was struck with cookers block..or more like cookers boringness! No inspiration nor interest hit me while sitting there and planning foods my children would actually eat for dinner the next two weeks. Then I was hit with an idea.

I called them into the room and I gave the task of choosing the meals they wanted to eat over to them. At first they hit me with the not fair daggers thrown forth from their eyes into mine...but soon they felt the power of their task and the ideas came flying.

~ Lasagne   ~ hamburgers  ~sausages   ~ pasta    ~roast dinners    ~ Chicken snitzels  ~fried rice   ~ noodles  ~ homemade pizzas

The list went on and on with the mundane staples of our small eating choices of the picky and young. But then I added a new twist to the list! I told them they needed to choose one meal each that they will help me to cook! YES, they are cooking the dinner one night in the next two weeks! Brilliant idea! They were beyond excited at the prospect!

First on the cooking duty roster was K. He had decided he would like to help and cook that nights Lasagne. So off we went to do the grocery shopping and an hour later and several notches of tolerance used we all walked back into the house!

K then entered the kitchen and got to work. First task he fulfilled was delegating the cutting of the onion to me! He hates the smell and can't stand to cry. He was head chef, I had no choice but to comply ;) . Next he began to cook the onion and garlic and mince meat. He was amazed when the meat began to brown and we had an interesting science lesson when he taught me about conductors and how it was a good thing we were using a plastic spatula! He loved the cooking bit right up until the part when the oil jumped up and splashed a tiny drop on him! He gave up for a while as he ran the teeny wheeny droplet of red on his skin beneath cold water and then, just as he had done the day before, he came back for another try with cooking the meat (try, try again..or jump back on the bike in the literal and metaphorical sense :) ) .

It wasn't all smooth sailing. K is easily distracted and several times I sent him to wash his hands and he didn't come back without my calling several hundred times. But in the end he managed to put the lasagnes together and also cooked oven chips, cut up a salad to go with it and served it all with a smile :D

To say that he was proud of himself and his achievement would be an understatement...I think he was even more proud of himself than I was of his achievement. What a very big weekend it was for my biggest boy K. Learning to ride solo on his bike and then cooking dinner for the family! HUGE!

Oh and the meal was absolutely delicious! :D

Big Achievement of the day no#1....

This weekend just gone by was a chance for us all to stay home and recoup after a few little sickness things struck us.

A1 was hit with tonsilitus (another day off today with it also) and K had a hit of car sickness just before he entered OT on friday afternoon.

So Saturday morning came rolled around and I declared the day a Pyjama day. I cancelled all plans for the day and we settled in for a day at home. By the afternoon the children had destroyed the house as only three children could and the oldest and youngest were hankering for fresh air. So out they went to the backyard, taking their bikes with them.

I sat in the bedroom, doing paperwork and happened to peer out the window to discover K on his bike, struggling to ride it as it really was too little for him. He had received a new bike two christmases ago from his grandparents but had been far too scared to try to ride it as it did not have training wheels. One thing that I learnt a long time ago with K is that when it comes to the big things in life he will not do them until he is really ready to. He has a tendency (as do many on the spectrum) to turn little things into giantantic scary as heck things, which once he has decided that that is the category they live in, are incredibly hard to reverse or convince him otherwise of. Riding a bike without training wheels was one of those things.

He wanted to desperately wanted to as all his friends did and he missed out of riding with them because he refused to ride with training wheels due to embarassment (another thing about my K is that he HATES being different! Not just normal hates but as in, "THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO GET HIM AND IT WILL BE DREADFUL AND EVERYONE WILL LOOK AT HIM AND THAT IS THE WORST THING THAT CAN EVER EVER HAPPEN AND WILL RESULT IN DEATH" kind of hate....the thought of standing out in a negative way results in massive meltdowns!. What he was really afraid of was the inevitable fallings off that were going to occur when he was learning to ride without training wheels. He was petrified of falling and getting hurt.

As I watched him out the window I decided to give it another try, to offer to teach him to ride his new bike, knowing the least that could go wrong through asking was him saying no and the most that could go wrong is that the thought of it would trigger a meltdown. I knocked on the window and called him up to the other side and made the offer. He looked at me for a moment and then replied, "Yeh, ok" .

I don't think I have ever jumped up as quickly as I did at that moment! We grabbed his bike and headed to the backyard.

I've learnt many things through parenting my boy and the biggest is not to bother sugar coating things. I will always be found out and the sugar coating will cause more trouble than the event itself that I tried to sugar coat. Honesty really is the best policy for him and so I told him the truth from the start. "K, you are going to fall off your bike. Infact I think you will fall off your bike about 534 times today before you are able to ride it all by yourself without training wheels! But you will fall on the grass and the grass is soft and you will be ok. I have fallen off my bike many times, infact one time when I was younger I had a really bad accident where I scraped off the skin on my knees and arms and cried a lot. But I still ride today don't I? (he nods and smiles) the point is to never give up. When you fall off just get up and go again and again until you can do it with confidence." .

Another thing I need to tell you is that everything that I say to him, ESPECIALLY WHEN ENCOURAGING HIM TO DO SOMETHING HE IS APPREHENSIVE OF is always laced with humour and I spend most of the time laughing. I find if I can keep the whole thing jolly then if he is in the right mood then he will also take things a little lighter and not as seriously (serious leads to failure feelings which lead to meltdowns and defeatess feelings and never trying again). I could sense that humour was going to work for him today as he was smiling as he mounted the bike.

The first circuit of the yard I held on to the front and the back of the bike. We talked about the maths of weight ratio when riding etc and he eventually got the hang of balancing the bike straight. Soon I had moved my hand to just holding the back of his seat and then it happened...he fell off. I partly caught him and I laughed the loudest laugh I ever had in my life, hands holding his armpits and holding him slightly off the grass while one leg was caught beneath the bike. My innards were tied in a knot of prayer just hoping that he would take the fall well. Those nano-seconds between fall and reaction seemed to last forever until finally.....he smiled and laughed and got back on the bike. PHEW! Every time he fell I laughed and counted the falls and reminded him that he would fall 543 times before he learnt to ride.

But thankfully he proved me wrong. K managed to fall off his bike eleven times in total and 1.5 hours after starting to learn to ride his bike he was riding it all by himself! Infact he was so confident that we walked to the concrete bike/ walking path close by and off he zoomed away from us! No training wheels! No Assistance to start of stop and NO FALLING OFF! :D

In one afternoon K had learnt to ride his bike! and the smile of success on his face was waging a war of size with the smile of pride on mine!

What a monumentous achievement! :D

Well Done K!

When was the last time you rode that elephant?...

Image from here ~ How very cool a story it has all of it's own :)

Driving to childcare this morning we happened to pass a horse and rider on the footpath. Not akin to seeing an alien in Kmart but still not a regular occurance so of course we talked about it.

"Hey guys did you see the horse rider on the footpath?," I asked.

"YEH!" Answered my daughter, A1. "I did. Did you see it A2?," she asked of her brother.

"Yep! I did see a dirl on a horse dis morning. But do you know what I did not see dis morning? I did not see the dirl riding the elephant along da side of da road! No, Dat (that) I did not see today. But dere (there) is elephants on dis road you know! They live in the same place as the horses over dere!". Exclaimed A2 (3.5 yrs old).

Conversation....haltess! With that A2 had both stunned and forced laughter upon us both.

Tame, riding elephants in rural Australia.....I'd love to see that! ;)

The ants go marching two by two.....

A strange thing happens each and every time I scrub and mop my floor....the very next day the ants arrive! Oh I find the blighters mighty bloody annoying!

Why do they have to come into my home? surely there is enough food out there is NATURE for them to sustain their gazillion strong army? My big boy says that they are looking for food and ours tastes so much better than theirs does and that is why.  (he's pretty clever I am thinking) .

Normally they would be met with Mr Mortein...but I cannot use that in the living areas as the turtles tank is there and it could travel through the air and into the water and then bye bye turtles! So what to do?? At first I tried the ole' talcum powder trick. Apparently they cannot walk through it, so I found where they were coming from and placed talcum powder infront of them. This was a temporary fix....it seemed they were pretty determined to come into my house and so found a way around it. In a fit of rage at other life issues I did have a game of whack an ant with my thong the other day. That was not only a wonderful stress reliever but also highly effective. But unfortunately not a preventative.

Lets fast forward to two days ago. So I arrive home from work to discover that my floor that I had in the morning with no ants on it now had a thick trail of ants marching to and fro to a bit of food the children had missed placing in the bin! I felt rage but it was shortlived as I was distracted with making dinner, doing the night time routine and also looking after my sick big boy. As I didn't finish with the kids until late I had completely forgotten about the ants and just headed straight to bed, determined to get some sleep so I could rise early and do some work and also incase I was woken several times that night by my wheezy boy.

The next morning I arose and remembered about the ants. Gingerly walking in the kitchen I went to the spot where they had been working madly the evening previous and I was shocked! There was not one single ant left in the house. NOT.A.ONE! and the top most layer of the crumb of food was completely removed! The ants had taken what they needed to sustain their colony and then retreated!

AMAZING!

It suddenly reminded me of the chewing gum that was on my garage floor. My big boy had dropped it there and not thought of the censequences! By the time I had discovered it it was crusted over with dirt and a pain in the toosh to remove. Infact I placed it in the too hard basket and life moved on (although I had also placed it on the 'to do' list reserved for sometime before the end of time but not urgent) . One afternoon when in a rush to go and pick up the kids I found a large group of ants on the chewy. I ranted and raved about the fact that there they were, all over my floor and the chewy and why now?

Each day as I stepped over them and arghed them as I entered or exited the house I would think, I will have to deal with them soon before they come into the house as well (so another words I didn't get around to dealing with them at all!) .

Then one day...perhaps a week later? I have no idea but anyways...one day they had all disapearred! And on closer inspection I discovered that 95% of the chewy had disapearred too! :D . I stood and stared at that spot on the garage floor and I said a little thankyou to their hard work. They achieved something that nor my big boy or myself could! They had saved me a job and I felt in awe of them and also grateful.

Perhaps I can now see the purpose of the ant......just perhaps they are pretty darn cool indeed.

However they must be warned that travelling into my daughters room and onto her bed will not recieve my gratitude...only my thong on their heads!

Do you have an ant problem too? Have you ever noticed anything cool about the creepy crawlies that try to share your habitat with you?

Leaving him hanging...

K had a day off school on Wednesday due to not being well while his little sister(A1) went as usual. After a day of resting and playing at home it was time to leave and pick her up.

We waited near the gate and finally she arrived, but so too did the Ks friends. He has Aspergers and he has tried so very hard to make friends and as a result he is very popular. He has a group of about 10 boys who he is friends with and who seek him out at school. I think it might be helped by Big boys sarcastic and humourous nature....he can make you laugh over nothing and he is very cool most of the time ;) . But having Aspergers means that sometimes he misses things, or so it seems.

One of his longest friends came up with his cool helmet on and cruising on his skateboard to say hi to K. BB\\K got out of the car and went on the grass to talk to him and about another 5 boys that had come over to say hi and find out why he wasn't at school that day. As H got near K on his skateboard he put his hand out and said, "Hey K, high five!" with his hand outstretched. K looked at him and then continued talking to one of the other boys, no outstretched hand, no high five. H looked a little taken aback and sad and then moved on from it watching K. I have known these boys for a while and H in particular and I called out from my side of the car, "Hey K, you left H hanging there!", K looked at me and I specified, "he asked for a high five and you totally dissed him!" and then laughed a little. For to tell K that he hasn't done something and not make it like a joke is meltdown provoking!

K looked at me and him and replied, "No I didn't! I didn't want him to fall off his skateboard". We both looked at him and he turned to him, frustrated at his lack of memory and said, "Remember! last time I gave you a high five when you were riding your skateboard and I gave you one you then fell off your skateboard and scraped your knee right about here (pointing to his own leg/ knee)" . H smiled a huge smile and said, "Oh Yeh, I remember!" and with that all order was restored to the world and I was put back in my place!

Sometimes my Aspie boy is not missing the social cues around him, sometimes it is us NT's who are missing the things that we should probably remember and see that he does. :)

Do you dribble?..... (inspired by Deep Fried Fruit)

Today is Mama and Little Man day...but today the bigger little man is at home too as he is not well. A chest infection, a little medicine and asthma medication and he is doing pretty good. Just quietly playing with lego and going between playing cooperatively with his little brother and fighting like cats and dogs.

I have a lot of things I need to get done today. I have to vacuum the house, mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, do a few loads of washing, pay some bills, do some planning for tomorrow...the list goes on. Yet here I sit, blogging ;) .

One of my best blogging pals in da world Leanne from Deep Fried Fruit asked if we dribble? and I have to confess that absotootely I do! Infact I am dribbling right now!

I even sometimes wake at 5 intead of 5.30am so I can dribble as I wake and before I get up and leave the house for the day.

Oh the embarrassment, although I felt so much better finding out that my dribble is the dribble of choice of my bestie too. I don't feel so alone.

Instead of vacuuming or hanging out the washing I have sat for the last hour dribbling...from 10-11am they play 'Seventh Heaven' on the telly and I have to confess that I love to sit and watch it. *blush*

It is the telly that I watch when I want some light entertainment, when I can watch rather than having to and it is (or I should say was) my secret indulgance that noone knew about :).

So what about you? do you watch dribble on t.v? what is your dribble of choice?