Our House In The Mountains

Liv at 1 month

2010-06-02T00:15:00.004+10:00

How time flies! I finally got a chance to get down to see Renie & baby Liv this week & take some photos!

Still lots to edit but here are a few for Grandma Barb to see as I know she will be looking forward to meeting little Liv very soon. She is a little doll ( :

What a gorgeous baby you have made Pete & Renie ( : Well done!!
I have bought my longed for new camera, the Canon 5D mkII, I worked my little (or not so little these days!) butt off for 3 weeks & make some extra dollars. My friend Georgie from Georgie Watson Photography has kindly asked me if I want to help out (tag along!) on a wedding shoot this Friday so I really wanted my new camera to improve the quality of my photos as I can use these in my portfolio. I will have a photography website coming soon. I also have 2 other bookings for family portraits over the next month. I look forward to be able to give up ebaying in the near future so I can take up photography full time. Finding the time to set up a photography website while I run an ebay business & be a mother is tricky, so it won't happen over night but I will get there!
At the moment we are going through a bit of a hard trot, Kim has hurt his back, yet again, quite badly this time. He's been out of action for 4 days now, getting better though. His van blew the fuel injection pump. Ivy has had a bad chest cold & yeast infection, keeping her (& us) awake for many nights in a row. Finn has had conjunctivitis. Brody has been staying at his dads for a month after an incident that was unpleasant & is still not dealt with. We miss him. Chelsea turned 19!!! Our dryer stopped working, our fridge is on it's last legs & today our microwave died. Wondering what the universe is trying to tell us, other than to buy new appliances. I finally talked Kim into getting a dishwasher, so I guess we're looking for a package deal right about now ( :
There's probably more news but it's way past 1am & I must get some sleep.

Welcome to the world little Liv!!

2010-05-03T12:02:00.003+10:00

We have a new niece/cousin! Her name is Liv Aerin Marshall & she was born on May 1st at 5.45am & weighed in at a healthy 9lb & a very tall 55cm!

We went to manly Hospital yesterday to meet her, here are a few pics of Liv, aged 1.5 days. Isn't she gorgeous!!! Congratulations Renie & Pete, you made a beautiful baby ( :

Proud Daddy.

Content Mummy.

Aunty Toni enjoying a cuddle ( :

Ivy being very enthusiastic!

Finn a little in awe.

Happy parents!

6 weeks

2010-04-25T15:13:00.002+10:00

It's been about 6 weeks since my last post. Time flies. We have been busy, as opposed to the last 6 years, when we were just busy. But I must say that since moving into the house in October things are different. Still crazy, still often unmanageable, but better. Much better.

We have done all sorts of things, Kim went to Qld to pick up a new van, here he is arriving home after 2 nights away:

He bought a Delica 4WD diesel van, another bargain he couldn't resist & we sold the old ute for about the same price, so it was a good upgrade.

What have we done on the house? Well, we now sleep in it! We have completed another bedroom & moved into it, all 4 of us.

from an empty shell to lined:

v>

and then this:

That's Finn's little bed on the far side, Ivy's is on the other side just out of the photo (oh for a wide angle lens!).

Then once that was done we had Kim's Mum & stepdad Barb & George visit for a few days & they helped install out heat source for the winter:

That's Grandma washing dishes, apart from laundry that's about all she did for 4 days & she hardly sat down! Thanks Barb!! (my laundry was so neat & organised when she left!!).

Their dog Bonnie keeping guard!

Kim put in an extra pier to support the heavy wood stove after we decided on a concrete hearth (I was hoping on a big slab on sandstone but it got too complicated just finding it & getting it so concrete it was).

Kim & Pop George had some help making concrete for the hearth (it cut the work load in half I'm sure!)

Finn had been sick for more than 3 weeks before this, you can tell he's lost weight. He had Guardia but the Dr's wouldn't treat him for it as it didn't show in 4 tests we did. We were in hospital with him twice & they wanted to admit him but that's a bit too hard for a boy with autism. They paediatrician tried to put patches on his hands to numb them for a drip & he got kicked by a screaming distraught Finn. We ended up going home.

I eventually pushed for antibiotics after he had vomited for 25 days straight. It was a bit of a trial at the time & we were very worried for a while. I just regret not being stronger in my initial belief that it was a bacterial & not viral gastro. Learn to trust your instincts!!

He's becoming more & more handsome (I know I am biased, but he's still handsome!!!)

Spectator.

pouring the slab!!

Someone had to trip & fall into it while it was drying (Ivy).

Plastering the wall behind the stove.

Kim & George fitting a piece we had made to convert the flue from a back fitting flu to a top fitting flue! It was a little fiddly but saved us about $200.

nearly there!

all done ( :It's a Stanley, made in Ireland. they are still made today, ours is about 6-7 years old. They cost about $6000 these days, we got ours from a garage sale about 3 years ago for $800.

The first lighting!

Smoke from the chimney!
And to finalise, a couple of Ivy in our gorgeous lake we are so very lucky to have just a 10 minute drive away. We spent a lot of late afternoons here this very hot summer!!

We have so much going on, I will TRY & update again before another 6 weeks goes by!!

what's in a name

2010-03-17T18:28:00.003+11:00

We named Ivy "Ivy Paige".

When she was a newborn my dad used the middle name to do a play on words that I hated. Every time he did it I squirmed. Ever since, her name was wrong for me. I was beginning to think about changing her middle name, before she even knew what a middle name was. Then one day someone asked her what her middle name was. Without hesitation she said "Ivy Rose". Just like that. I thought, "wow, OK , problem solved". Except she keeps changing it. the other day it was "Ivy Flower Petal" or another time it was "Ivy Rainbow Rose", it changes every week. For now she will be my "Ivy Sweetheart" until we settle the matter sometime in the future.

But Paige she is NOT.

If you've been wondering where we are or what we're up to I will try & update soon. Finn has been very sick for 3.5 weeks. Before that he was reacting to a new a dairy free/gluten free diet, 2 weeks of gluten withdrawals (similar to taking drugs off an addict) which shook us all up. Tourettes presenting itself. No surprises there, other than it's intensity. So we've had 6 weeks of hard work.

Kim hurt his back which put him out of action (& placed him in pain) for 3-4 weeks. He's OK now & plastering another bedroom so we can start sleeping in the house & not the caravan. It's getting cold at night. We'll need to get the wood heater installed asap after we finish the bedroom. We are also moving my office out to the caravan, looking forward to that.

Not much else has happened on the house (sorry mum). Trying to keep up with basic daily needs and often failing. Wishing life wasn't so hard. Ivy doesn't seem to have a problem with it, so I guess we're doing something right.

Photo taken on her 4th birthday at Wentworth Falls lake.

My baby is 4

2010-02-23T23:12:00.004+11:00

Age 4 is a bit of a milestone as far as I'm concerned. 4 is no longer a toddler. 4 is big kid status.

So I go through a bit of mourning when my babes turn 4.

When my last babe turned 4 (today) it is more profound & heart-wrenching than usual.

Ivy is more than 4. Ivy is 4 going on 400. She is older then the rest of her family members, or at least she would like to be.

She chose to spend some of her day at day-care. Even though it was a usual daycare day for both Finn & Ivy, Finn insisted on staying home. So Ivy went off to daycare with the carefully, thoughtfully prepared gluten free cupcakes I baked at 7am this morning. Finn has been gluten free for 3 weeks now. I'm sure none of the kids at daycare new or cared. Sigh.

Finn had a lovely day home with us while Ivy played with her friends at daycare.

We had a BIG party for her at home on Sunday.

I picked her up at 3pm today & we went to Wentworth Falls Lake for a play & BBQ dinner.

It was hot today so we thought we would swim but by the time we got to the lake the temperature had dropped & the fog was rolling in.

Finn has been on a roller coaster ride over the last 3 weeks, dragging us all along with him, as we put him on a gluten/dairy/soy/corn free diet. His withdrawals have been mammoth, major meltdowns & an onset of multiple Tourette Syndrome symptoms, very odd ones at that. OCD, SPD, APD, ADD also becoming obvious offshoots to his condition. Today he wasn't able to go to daycare but he was lovely company (most of the day anyway, only 2 meltdowns today!).

We had Brody with us for a while until he trotted off to his train to take him to one of his 3 weekly circus groups. Chelsea also joined us which was lovely.

Ivy had a lovely time today, running, chasing ducks & eating! She is very fiesty & moody lately but mostly straightforward in her needs. Let her play, play & play some more & she is happy! Add some friends & she is even happier, she's a social butterfly. Throw in some writing, drawing, reading & more writing & she is over the moon!

We are truly blessed by this little girl.

Ivy feeding the ducks, Finn playing with his remote control boat.

stormy weather

2010-01-28T23:20:00.004+11:00

Today we had a summer storm come over, & stop right over us for the afternoon.

We had a huge amount of thunder, lightening, rain & hail.

Ivy was off at day care, Brody was off at his 1st day of year 11 & Finn was home, having refused to go to day care, even though Kim & I really needed him to go so we could work, after losing a day care day to Australia Day.

When Finn decides, he decides.

The lightning hit about 35 meters from our house. It tore a tree to shreds. It was very impressive, although not at the time! I was working away on my laptop, secure in my knowledge that we had good quality surge protectors. I felt a strong tingle through my hand at the same time as I heard the incredible bang & Finn's scream behind me. I had him in my arms in a split second & we clung to each other like terrified limpets.

I saw smoke out the window & sent Kim out to check for fire, then thought , omg, is that safe? He assured me that lightening never strikes in the same place twice, well actually he assured me that that's what "they" say!!! Finn & I followed him out & took these photos of the shattered tree the lightening had hit:

I took this one not to show all our mess but to show how close it was to our house! You can see the raw split up tree in the background.

this taken from our deck.

10 meters from the kids cubby.

shreds of gum tree everywhere!

Finn with a shard of tree that was on the dirt road.

shards of tree everywhere!!

Finn playing in the rivers of water with his lightening offshoot.
We had so much more lightening, thunder, hail & torrential rain this afternoon, if was intense & quite draining! Finn was a basket case by the end of the day, ran around playing with Brody until he bashed his front teeth on a wrought iron chair. Then he was in pain until bedtime, even with a dose of Panadol. Hopefully we won't see black teeth in the next few weeks! He has such a high pain threshold, we know that if he's in pain & showing it it's bad ) :

mud fight

2010-01-10T20:57:00.002+11:00

Every now again I get to enjoy all 4 of my children hanging out at home with me.

I love those times so much.

Yesterday was hot. I decided to empty the paddling pool, which was dirty, filled with gum leaves & 2 weeks worth of rain water, so we could refill it & get the little people cooled down. Emptying large amounts of water into dry red earth creates mud.

This is what followed.

careful of Mum's new car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where was Finn?? Hiding. Sensory overload, these type of activities are hard to cope with if you are autistic. After everyone calmed down, Chelsea & Kim went grocery shopping, Brody hopped in the shower & Ivy was watching a video, Finn went outside on his own & happily covered himself in mud for an hour ( :

Christmas 2009

2010-01-01T13:05:00.003+11:00

Well it's the new year & I haven't even done a Christmas post yet! Better get on with it!

We had a very busy month leading up to Christmas.

Kim worked his butt off getting part of our deck built so we could eat outside. Our decking is recycled ironbark, so it had to de-nailed, ran through the thicknesser & then nail holes pre-drilled, it is just too hard to nail through. All this over 3 of our hottest days this year, high 30s every day. Then the change came as he was finishing & the fog rolled in.

He looks completely pissed off here but he was actually just really, really tired!

He made a new table top for my 10+ year old outdoor table out of ironbark floorboards :

It was smoking with the heat of drilling an umbrella hole.

& whipping up a dolly's change table for Ivy xmas present.

Not to mention spending several evening in a row helping me & Brody put this together:

Finn's present that we picked up at a garage sale, only all the bits were mixed with 100s of others in a huge box full of Lego. Amazingly, we completed it with no missing bits. Then we pulled it apart for him to build (with help!).

We baked several times & made Christmas cookies & white Christmas in our lovely BIG kitchen ( :

I've had Ivy's vintage apron put away since she was a baby, I was delighted to pull it out & put it to use this year!

<
Christmas Eve, decorating cookies with Auntie Renie, she dunked her whole face into the bowl of 100s & 1000s, I think she knew Renie wouldn't get cross at her ( :

We got dressed up & went to the kindy Christmas party.

We bought a big Christmas tree

and decorated it

my lovely decoration from my photography forum friend Trish in the US ( :

Uncle Pete & Auntie Renie arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon, Renie 5 months pregnant with a little cousin for Finn & Ivy ( :

We hung out together

Hung up the stockings

and Ivy decided that she needed to call Santa to make sure he didn't forget them & knew the way to our new house! It was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen ( :

We put cookies out for Santa.

Finn was out of control with excitement by this stage hence the lack of photos of him, he evades the camera & doesn't sit still for 10 seconds. Not to mention the effect all the special food has on him, he becomes totally crazy!

Christmas Morning:

presents galore!!

Transformers for Finn (a new obsession)

a new 2 wheel bike for Ivy!

a big collection of Imaginext for Finn, he loves this stuff!!

A 4V lithium ion drill for Finn. What, too young for real tools?? He doesn't think so (& for $10 at a garage sale who cares).

Ivy with her dolly change table in her new princess dress.

emptying stockings with Chelsea

testing the drill in the house studs. He looks bored but he was over the moon, he doesn't show emotion readily!

We had crepes with blueberries, mango, yogurt & maple syrup, & of course champagne & orange juice for breakfast.

At lunch I asked Ivy to set the table, just to keep her busy & she loves to help. She put a big row of spoons one side of the table & forks on the other!

The kids were losing the plot by lunch time so this was the best photo I got, oh well, we all have the lovely memories. All in all it was a lovely Christmas period, my most relaxed in many, many years. The afternoon was spent just hanging about, chatting & relaxing. The kids played with their toys, & with Pete & Renie of course, they love them so much ( :

We gave Pete & Renie a port-a-cot & baby clothes for Christmas!

Brody wasn't with us this year, he went to Peat's Ridge music festival with Mario.

Chelsea was only here for a short time in the morning & then had the rest of her day with Daniel's family. So it was very quiet for us but really nice.

We have a very busy January ahead of us! We have some hefty bills to catch up on so we're selling all sorts of things on ebay, Kim has a couple of weeks work lined up, as well as a couple of weeks work in Sydney in February. We are then hoping to take a week's holiday. We haven't been away anywhere for SO, SO long & we get very itchy feet! We have a cheap holiday rental lined up at The Entrance, very close to the beach, so that will be novel! Finn & Ivy have spent next to no time at the beach, ever! We're not sure if much will happen on the house over the next month but that's OK, we're comfortable & happy.

I'm spending a lot of spare time on my photography & will soon be starting a new blog that will be purely for displaying my photos that are not house & family related. I have a couple of photo shoots lined up as freebies for friends but I'm planning on setting up my business website by the middle of the year & hoping to steer away from ebay & more in photography toward the latter half of this year, something that I'm very excited about ( :

Happy New Year everyone!!

2009 was a lot better than 2008, I'm sure 2010 will be even better again!!

PS please don't be shy to leave a comment, I always love hearing from my readers ( :

Ivy in Daddy's hat

2009-12-28T18:55:00.003+11:00

Cherry juice all over her face.

I have a Christmas post coming very soon!

New things

2009-12-19T16:10:00.001+11:00

A new deck & a new car.
Deck is recycled ironbark, very, very hard timber & a lovely red colour. Not oiled yet but it looked lovely after some rain.
Car is a Saab 900i, 139 000 km on the clock, spotless inside & out, $1000 at a garage sale. Beautiful to drive!!
I'm loving them both ( :

Christmas tree

2009-12-18T21:07:00.001+11:00

Christmas tree in the window, new deck shining in the rain, sky aglow with summer colour, life is good ( :

blue tongue lizard

2009-12-12T17:57:00.000+11:00

a lovely visitor this week.

ramblings

2009-12-12T16:15:00.003+11:00

we are still here ( :

enjoying our house tremendously!!

time flies, where does it go?!

I did these for the kids last week:

http://portablenorthpole.tv/watch/ce3b4be5141fa5447d14e2a5879343c0

So cute, they absolutely love them!

I'm going to try & do a few catch up blog posts in the next week or 2, they will be out of order of occurrence but I keep trying to find time to do a big long post & never find the time or have the inclination. So I figure little snippets are better than nothing!

We have had the electrician in to connect light switches & power points so we are no longer running everything off power boards on one circuit. We also got the over hooken up last week, so I am baking again ( :

We have the kitchen all organised, all temporary but fabulous, so spacious & light, I just LOVE it!!! Yesterday we had the plumber back to hook up the gas to the cooktop, we've been cooking on the BBQ & a single electric element, so we are thrilled to finally have gas to cook on. Kim put up a big stainless steel splashback (temporary) which looks great, all very clean & easy to maintain for the time being. I'm using the breadmaker again, using our new juicer for fresh juice, all the things that I found hard to do in a tiny kitchen.

Today is Brody's 16th birthday. I can't believe he's 16! He finished year 10 yesterday. He had friends over for the first time in months which was great! We hadn't met his new year 10 friends! He's doing well, just scraped through to get the scool certificate but at least he's done it. He is going back for HSC next year & will be doing photography! I'm excited, something I can help him with (I hope, or he could be teaching me things before long).

I bought myself this:

which I am loving! I took 3 purchases to get it right, the 1st arrived broken, the 2nd turned out to be a fraud in Thailand. There was also a wide angle I bought that arrived & the autofocus didn't work. That all happened in my first week in the house, when I was taking time off work & really wanted to do some photography. So I got a bit down in the dumps about all of that! The joys of buying on ebay! I got refunds for them all but it all took time.
Here are a couple of pics I took the day I got it:

I enjoyed taking photos for a few weeks when we first moved, even if I didn't have my new lens. You can see some of what I did here on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23822912@N05/sets/72157622840902326/

I had a great photo shoot with a 6 month old but I haven't had a chance to edit them yet, they are about the best I've done to date so i'm excited about getting those done! I am doing another freebie for a friend with 2 girls age 3 & 6 in a couple of weeks but I think I am getting close to start charging people, something I am excited about.

Kim has been busy with the house wiring, running all the cables for the electrician. He has also done 2 weeks of paid work, giving me a welcome break from being the money earner. At the moment he is building our deck, hoping to have it done for Christmas.

Below is Finn dancing on the plywood in excitment the first night it was there!

thank you Grandma

2009-12-08T19:22:00.000+11:00

Thank you Grandma for our first credit card. We will have fun going shopping!!!

Finally....news!!!

2009-08-25T23:52:00.004+10:00

I wrote this weeks ago. 2 installments, weeks apart.

Our news? We have moved in.

Finally.

Sleeping in the caravan, but the house is now home.

We still haven't had a chance to really enjoy it, we are still clearing the old house, 3.5 years of accumulation to sort out! I am hoping to take a month (at least!) off work in 2 weeks when we end our lease, so I am ebaying like mad both to clear things I don't want to move & to cover the mortgage payment for a bit. The old house has been nicknamed the dungeon, cold & dark, compared to our house, going back to it every day to work is no fun but I am driven like never before ( :

We are having a garage sale all weekend this weekend & then getting rid of anything in the house apart from my designer clothing. I am closing my ebay store on the 22nd & having a huge clothing sale on Friday evening the 23rd Oct & Sat. 24th. Then we have a few days to clean the house & then we will stop. Or I will. Kim has promised me a deck on the house for Christmas, & my workroom needs to be finished so I can start work sometime soon before or after. But at least he won't have to wash dishes or do laundry for a while, I'm sure he won't miss that!!

So there has been no celebrating or relaxing time to enjoy our hard work & acheivments, but internally we are jumping with joy. Still playing the waiting game but the light at the end of the tunnel is now shining brightly right into our eyes!

OLD POST, SAVED BUT NOT POSTED ABOUT A MONTH AGO:

It's been a while.

A long while.

I look back over time & wonder where it goes but just need to look at every day to know.

Our days are filled with so much yet so little. Some days we are lucky to just prepare 3 meals, tend to 2 preschoolers needs & maybe wash some dishes (or not).

Other days, like today, work gets done on the house & clothing gets sold, the kids go to school & daycare, dishes did get done & some clothes were taken off the clothes line. And meals were prepared. Stories were read, clothing changed, showers taken, phone calls made, bills paid, shopping done, arguing, negotiating, fighting, pleading, laughing, joking, talking, whining & crying all took place.

We are "getting there". Slowly. The last couple of months has seen great progress but also long delays. The kids caught swine flu. Finn was very sick for close to 3 weeks. 2 weeks off daycare & 12 days straight with a fever. Ivy wasn't too bad. I caught it too but it was nothing worse than a normal flu for me. It took at least 2 weeks to recover from the 3 weeks of sleepless nights with kids coughing all night. So that was a month pretty much written off.

I wrote the above about 3 weeks ago & saved it as a draft. Good intentions.

Since then... we've had a father's day weekend spent sleeping in the caravan. Finn screamed in prostest for a long while at having to sleep anywhere but his usual place, but then came around to the idea & really enjoyed not having to leave our favourite place once the sun went down. We had such a nice time we stayed another night!

A few pics:

Finn with a father's day present:

Yes, we have cut his hair. His own choice, he decided everyone would stop calling him a girl if we cut it off. I was delaighted, I hated the daily moring battle of detangling

while he screamed at me in anger for hurting him, however gentle I tried to be . It's a bit of a girly bob cut, so everyone still thinks he's a girl, but he hasn't realised that

& I haven't had the energy to do it again, so a bob it is for now. I think it's pretty cute actually, but I'm his mum.

He's been incredibly difficult of late, more so than in the past. He has days when he's behaviour is very autistic, it's more obvious now than it's ever been. His hearing is still bad & he complained of an earache this week. Got to get rid of that fluid.

There is so much we could be doing for him if we had the time. Soon....

Father's day morning:

This one I enlarged & framed for a father's day gift:

Aren't they beautiful ( :

OK, now go to http://stores.shop.ebay.com.au/Clothes-On-line & buy something ( :

There are 500+ items to chose from, you CAN find something you like & you will be getting some bargains, helping me get rid of some GREAT gear as well as giving me some badly needed time off work. You will also be giving my children some down time with their mummy, something they haven't had much of for most of their lives.

I know a lot of readers of my blog like nice clothing, for themselves or their kids. So take a peek, everything is on sale & their are lots of bargains ( :

PS you could also save me the ebay fees by emailing me if you want anything ( ;

Another diagnosis

2009-07-03T19:53:00.003+10:00

Yesterday Brody was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. No surpriseat all, it was actually a relief, in a way. Hopefully he will now get some help at school & some more understanding from people in his life.

He had a major meltdown this morning, his first big one for quite a while. It was as if he had been given permission.

For me, it is a diagnosis that fills me with mixed emotion. Hope for his future, now that he will be eligle for various programmes. Relief, as I said, that we have a confirmation of what we already knew but other's wouldn't acknowledge. Sadness that it hadn't been recognised a long time ago, even when he was 6 or 7, as it was so obvious if you know anything about Aspergers.

How different his childhood could have been if he had been understood.

And anger at a society that expects everyone to be "normal", to behave the same as each other & to blame & shame those that aren't. This diagnosis is now is "excuse" to not have to be like everyone else & to still demand some respect for who he is, not only in his small circles but in mainstream society. I hope.

I love him so much & I'm so, so proud of him.

Feeling Fine

2009-06-04T23:12:00.001+10:00

Thanks everyone for the lovely emails ( :
I think I'm going to make a habit of having a really big whinge when I'm feeling low. I get this lovely imput of positive, supportive vibes that I am SO not used to, it's a a quick fix to my bad moods ( :
I am not used to asking for help or telling anyone who'll listen how tough things are, my experience has taught me that that's putting myself in a position for great disappointment. But the emails I've received in the last few days are teaching me that I'm wrong, I do have people in my life who care. Thank you all for that.
How awesome is Ivy in this photo!!?? She makes my heart soar. I'm going to try & be as happy as she is ( :
I have so much to be thankful for!

new look

2009-06-02T23:31:00.002+10:00

Firstly, thanks everyone for all your lovely comments lately.
It's lovely to hear from people & to know that there are people out there who care. It's a lonely life we are living at the moment so it really makes a difference when people take the time to send us a message.

OK, so I've been totally sick of the way my blog looks for months now. So I decided to add a little oomph. Not too much, being a non-glitzy person, but something to just brighten things up a bit. Add some colour, change the banner to something big & impressive maybe.
So I find a free easy to install background & now my text doesn't fit in right. So do I go back to being boring, or spend more valuable time trying to figure out how to fix it or.... how about I just ask for help?!
Can anyone reading tell me what to do? i'd appreciate it ( :
I'm so sick of boring.

We are getting better. Finn was good today. Very tired though.
Ivy slept in until 8am!!!!! (She almost never sleeps beyond 6). She must be sick.
I'm feeling run down & bored. I so sick of working. I've been in this place before but not for a while. I want to take photos of something other than clothing. I want to clean up my impossibly messy house. I want to spend a whole day doing nothing but play with my kids without feeling stressed out about what I should be doing. Actually even half a day would be nice. I want a holiday. I want to move house. I want a new life that's different to this one. The tunnel seems so long this week, I seem to have lost sight of the light at the other end.

The kids on the other hand, never seem to have trouble with that, even when they're sick!

Feeling poorly

2009-05-31T20:38:00.003+10:00

It's been raining for days. I've lost count how many.
We now have an indoor loo (that's toilet for you non Australian readers). It's in the house. With a door & a light. Fancy.
We have all been sick. ivy has a nasty cough that wakes her (& us) many times a night. Finn has had an ear infection that's had us very worried with a loss of hearing. The hearing loss started to present about 2 weeks before the infection. we eventually took him to the dr. last Monday "just in case" as his hearing was so bad & we were freaking out a bit. No sign of anything. Two days later he woke at 5am crying in pain. Coincidence or incompetant Dr? We had changed doctors so this was out 1st visit with a new one. To return or not to return?
His ear pain has gone with no medication, we are not keen to introduce antibiotics ever, due to the connection with autism & gut issues which have always been very obvious with Finn. His hearing seems to be improving over the last couple of days too, thank goodness. His behaviour is extremely challenging though.
Kim & I also are fighting the same cold they both have.

Today Brody minded the little people while Kim & I went to the movies together for the 1st time in over 5 years. I was pregnant with Finn last time we went.
We were going to see Mary & Max. http://www.maryandmax.com/
The story of a 40 yr old NYC man with Aspergers who had a penfriend in an 8yo Australian girl. Brody saw it & insisted we see it.
The add in he paper was wrong. Not showing today. All the effort of getting organised to go out. I had even put a skirt on! The anticipation of sitting at the movies for 2 hours holding hands with my gorgeous man who I hardly ever see. Too much disappointment, I cried.
I had a rant & asked for a free double pass. They took my details & said they'll see what they could do. I'll be waiting.
Not a good day.
No photos lately. Too busy, poor weather & not enough time each day to even think about it.

The House

2009-05-20T01:01:00.006+10:00

This is what our house looks like these days.

Both doors you can see are temporary. Kim will be making all the doors to match the windows. We had the big ironbark corner posts delivered this week so we are looking forward to getting them installed, it will make a big difference to finish those corners off!

The birds visit throughout the day. We love them!

The photos above were taken at 7am one morning last week, the ones below at about 4pm.

the open window above is my workroom. I will be ebaying with a view in the near future!

We're still enjoying those Bilpin apples!

I had to include this one of Ivy! She is growing up SO fast at the moment & turning into the most gorgeous lovable little thing. She is loving day care so much that she now goes 3 days as she is sad every day she can't go. Yesterday morning she asked me what day it is. At 3 she knows which days are which & when I sad "Tuesday" her eyes lit up & she yelled "Yipppeeeeee!!!". it was a Cottage day! She is so sociable, she has made lovely little friends & already want to have friends over to play all the time. She can't walk past flowers without wanting to pick some & then she has to pick one for herself, one for Emma, one for Charlotte (her twin friends) , one for Heidi, & on it goes. They then have to go into water to stay nice until she goes to the Cottage to hand them around. She loves all tings pretty, pink, floral, sparkly, shiny & bright. She gets so excited & enthusiastic about seeing or having anything pretty & is often exclaiming, "ohhh, it's sooooo beautifullll!!!!". She hates seeing me upset & is always trying to make me happy. She really is a sweetheart, I am so lucky to have her!

Finn looking out his bedroom window. Yes, he is wearing a dress. I'm not one to say no unless it's important. He's exploring gender issues at the moment. If he wants to wear a dress so be it. He wasn't comfortable wearing it from home to the car to go to the block, so he undressed & then re-dressed when we got there. He gets called a girl a lot. It doesn't seem to bother him a lot, but it is bothering him more as he forms an understanding of the difference. Some days I'd love to cut his hair off, it takes too much of my time to brush & he's had lice which is a headache (excuse the pun). It's a constant threat, "sit still or I'll get the scissors". He yells "NO" every time. "Well sit still then" etc, etc. He's adamant he want to keep it. It's hardly surprising. I wonder about ADD these days as it is so common in AS kids. His concentration is still fabulous if he is interested in something but gets worse with the mundane things like getting dressed, picking up toys or listening to instructions. We will often be talking to him & end up saying "OK?" & his response is "Huh?". There is also auditory processing disorder to consider, I have the symptoms of this so it's likely it will be a bigger issue for him. He is fascinating. Such a complex little soul. Last night at 3am Kim & I lay in bed with him between us discussing the meaning of the term "in the meantime". He's exlporing language & takes on new phrases & big words every week. this week he starting using "assume". I assume this is ....etc. He's not even 5 yet! We are letting him have time on the computer these days, he is absolutely fascinated with them. He plays games on the ABC Playground site as well as Nickelodeon (Dora & Wubsy). He is amazing at teaching himself how to navigate around & is very interested in how to fix computer problems (yayyy, my own computer technician!!). He is completely obsessive though & his computer time usually ends in tears when we tear him off it. He is also slowly learning to read through his computer time, books & a new interest in letters. He can write his name & wants to write more & is finally drawing in a very basic way. He's also exploring the idea of friendship. It's all a bit foreign to him so he has to ask lots of questions (I measn LOTS) & play around with concepts to get them. At the moment if Kim or I do something that makes him particularly happy he tells us that we ar ehis "best" friend. Kim was told the other day that he was Finn's best friend & Mummy wasn't his friend at all! I didn't take it personally.

Fastening the last of the cladding.

Early morning in our kitchen. I love this room. It gets sun all day.

The cupboards & benches are a mish mash of garage sale finds & donations.

It will do for now. It's bigger than we have in our current house!

We have had our frame inspection, a few minor changes have been made & we are now ready to get into the bathroom. The electrician will be called soon. Things are finally getting exciting, it's all coming together. We are just focusing on whatever is needed to get us moved to the caravan. So much work still to do! I'm hardly ever there, every spare moment is spent ebaying to keep the expenses paid. I'm trying to find some sort of balance between work, kids, housework & a little me time. That is minimal at the moment, my photography has been almost put on hold temporarily as I get too caught up in it & neglect the work & kids.

I had a major computer crash about 4 weeks ago, I nearly lost thousands of photos. I had 48 hours of waiting to see if the fix-it guy could restore them, which he did. I lost about 15 pics out of I'm not saying how many because it's too embarrassing. It cost $300 for repairs, $200 for the external hard drive I should have bought a long time ago & a weeks lost income. Plus about 2 years off my life & a few handfuls of hair (I lose hair when very stressed, which is often). I badly need a new computer! Maybe I'll do something extremely rare & buy a lottery ticket this week!

Mother's Day

2009-05-12T20:38:00.002+10:00

I had a lovely Mother's day this year.

I was treated to a sleep in til 9.30, was given chocolates & flowers & tea in bed. Chelsea arriving at 10am. We had a lovely brunch of smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, croissants, champagne & orange juice.

We then took a drive to lovely Bilpin to pick some apples. The weather wasn't great but we managed to get an hour between rain to have some fun,

eat apples,

explore,

try & avoid mum's camera,

juggle apples,

juggle & eat apples atthe same time,

wander aroud ,

find HUGE apples,

enjoy our big sister,

look beautiful in the orchard,

run!

climb on the equipment,

play catch with apples ,

smile for the camera (OMG!),

pose for the camera (thanks Ivy!),

order people around,

be happy,

and enjoy having the whole family together.

We then had hot chocolates at a cafe & returned home where Brody cooked lasagne for dinner, while I soaked in the bath in candlelight. It was a lovely day, I felt very spoilt & blessed to be a mum to these 4 gorgeous kids!

Stay tuned for a house update!

Photos for Loulou

2009-04-01T01:27:00.002+11:00

I took these photos (amongst many others) for my gorgeous friend loulou about 2 weeks ago. I have many more to edit but I am struggling to find the time! Starsan is 3 & was about to become a big brother. He now is, to a little brother named Crue. Photos of the little one will be taken later this week. looking forward to that!

Finally a post!

2009-04-01T00:50:00.004+11:00

Life is crazy! How busy can one family be?
Yesterday I kept having to stop giggling hysterically, my day was so, so ridiculous. I won't go into it, let's just say it felt like a sitcom. Only it's real. Hmmmm, scary.

We have some good things happening.

I finally finished the photos for my friend Eleanor. I hope this slideshow works OK.

Still working on a few for her sister Sarah though. Nearly done. I spoil myself by allowing 10 minutes to edit a couple over my afternoon cup of tea. I take too many & have to learn when to click on the delete button. I value them all to deeply. I don't have enough decent photos of my own babies I guess!
I must get them finished, I have family photos for my friend Britt to edit, then the pregnancy shots of Loulou & her gorgeous boy Starsan to do & then I will be photographing new baby Crue this week.

How to find time to fit everything in? It's such a catch 22. There is so much to do so we can improve our lifestyle & health, yet to improve our lifestyle & health we must learn to stop, do things for ourselves & relax. I'd love to just potter around taking photos & have time to edit them ( :

We have had good progress on the house. Almost all the windows are done & Kim has started cladding. It feels great to be doing something as final as this, each day we stand back & admire how it looks & rejoice in another area that has reached completion. It's extremely satisfying & it recharges our batteries a little.

And I am yet to mention "the annex"! Kim has built a structure onto the side of our caravan to serve as a small living area while we stay in the caravan until the house is finished. it is built entirely out of scrounged/donated materials apart from the screws! The walls are made from industrial panels that are used to make cold rooms. When we tell people we are moving into our caravan on the verge of winter they look horrified. they don't realise that we don't like being cold & don't intend to be! Our annex is like an icebox, except it won't be chilled, it will be heated!

Here it is in stage of being built over 3 days:

Our new home (:

Yesterday was chilly & raining so we put a heater on & had fish & chips in it & Kim was sweating! I loved it (never too warm for me).

And this is what our house is looking like these days:

The whole Eastern side of the house has since been clad too, I just don't have photos yet. I'm hardly ever there at the moment, in fact I hardly leave my computer at all!

Ebay is mad at the moment, I'm powering along with my listing, getting all my kids winter clothing up as it's peak buying time. I have hundreds of items so it's a long haul but it's all going well. I also do a lot of summer wear sales to the US at this time of year, this year is great with our dollar being weak, good buying for Americans who love all my European labels! I have hundreds of books to list, mountains of good quality toys & then the ladies winter wear, some amazing stuff just sitting here. I really need a good employee!

Our other news is that Chelsea has moved out! Last Saturday she & Daniel moved into Daniel's stepdad's granny flat in Bullaburra, about 15 min. drive from Katoomba.

Here they are on their moving in day:

with the keys of their first pad

yes Chelsea has her eyes closed but it's the only other one I took.

It's a bit of a shock when your first child moves out of home. Lucky I'm busy, i don't have much time to think about it. I have to get over my sadness that Chelsea never got her own room in our own house. We rented her entire childhood.

We talked a lot over the years about how great it was going to be for her to have her own room that she could paint any colour, to not have to worry about holes in the walls for hanging pictures or when we might have to move.

Now we are on the verge of being able to give her just that but I ran out of time.

I worked my butt off for too many years, didn't have enough time to spend just hanging out with her & now know I started too late to give her what I wanted for her. Brody is 2.5 years younger, he will enjoy the move into our new house & Finn & Ivy will grow up remembering very little else. I guess that's one of the problems with having children at 23.

Luckily Chelsea has always been a happy soul, quite immune to problems or stress around her. She lives in her happy bubble & not much gets to her. I think she had a great childhood filled with many happy adventures.

Now I get to use my parenting experience to give my younger children an even better childhood. I am aware of so much more now, what really matters & what simply doesn't. I will argue with Finn about how much computer time he gets because I know too much is not OK. But I won't argue when he tries to distract me from bedtime with a desire to tumble on the bed for just a few minutes more, I'll let him show me just 1 (or 5) more cartwheels & tell him how wonderful they were. I can pick my battles knowingly & for that I am grateful.

Ants

2009-03-03T20:49:00.003+11:00

There are ants everywhere.
On my desk.
On the kitchen counter.
On the kids picnic table where they have breakfast in the morning.
On the dresser in the entrance way. Everyone is reporting the same problem, it's "that" time of year.

I just read through my last couple of posts & realised that I hadn't mentioned that Finn has been diagnosed. HFA. Remember that. high functioning autism.
Very HFA in my book.
He will be assessed again when he is 6, the result of that will be AS I'm sure (do you remember? OK, one chance, Asperger's).

He has made a FRIEND!!!!! His name is Dash (short for something), he is at daycare on the same days as Finn & Ivy & they play. Building things mostly. Not a lot of talking. Suits Finn & it seems to suit Dash too. Dash came to Ivy's birthday party along with a handful of other new friends (Ivy loves him too).

Yes, Ivy has had a birthday, she is now 3 (going on 13)! She was the perfect birthday princess & wallowed in the attention & fun. I am so proud of her, she is a true delight. Uncle Pete & AuntieRenie bought her a new dress ( I new experience as people don't usually buy us clothing, hmmm, I wonder why???). She was so excited & loved it (so did mum). Her little friends gave her some lovely things too & she was very, very happy. They all played so beautifully for the whole afternoon, if was lovely to watch.

Brody made her cake yet again this year.

Daddy helping with the candles!

On another note. we have decided to make the completion of my office in the house a priority so we can move to the block. We'll sleep in the caravan for quite some time to come of course, but as long as I can move the business we will be fine. We are over having to spend our days apart at different places & jump from place to place trying to be everywhere at the right time (routine & Asperger's go hand in hand & we are finding that hard). I get next to no time at the block which is where I want to be. I need more outdoor time! My office here gets no sun & next to no light & it gets me down. Kim wants to be able to do a couple of hours work at night but by the time we get the kids to bed it's hard for him to justify getting in the car to drive over, it's often 9pm by the time we've had our dinner. Plus of course we'll save the rent.

So we have a couple of months of very hard work ahead of us to make that happen. I will need to keep the dollars coming in to cover the mortgage at the smae time as packing, sorting, discarding, ebaying, storing & garage sale-ing, & of course, shop, cook, clean & be a mum. Kim has a huge amount of work to do too of course, he has 1 more window to put in, then the door frames (we need to find more ironbark, having trouble with that at the moment), thenexterior cladding so we can have the frame inspection done(by council). Then my workroom lining (gyprock) & doors, the bathroom (lining, flooring & a temporary shower. We will put up a garden shed as a laundry.

I'm so excited, it's very daunting I must admit as the job is huge to get us there but it will be fantastic to wake up every morning& hear the birds & just to be there!

More news is that Chelsea is planning to move out with Daniel, they will be moving to Daniel's stepdad's granny flat in Bullaburra. I'm sad but it was coming. She is nearly 18 after all! She only has 6 more months of school to go, she's doing HSC this year.

Brody is back at school, going to Springwood High in year 10. He's doing well! I think he actually likes it! He missed 90% of year 9 & I had to jump through hoops ot get him into year 10 (he wasn't prepared to go into year 9 again which is what the headmaster wanted). Funny, he is in the top maths class already, he started in the middle of 5 classes & get placed in the top at the end of week 1. Smart boy! I tried to get him to do some catching up through the holidays but he wasn't interested, obviously didn't need to! he is doing "food technology" (cooking) as a subject which he loves!

I will get some photos of the house up soon!

Routines

2009-01-23T00:11:00.009+11:00

We are back to our weekly routine of work, daycare, playgroup, early intervention & the occasional late afternoon/evening having dinner at the block. Our days are way too full, our nights are way too short. Kim & I both suffer from insomnia, more than ever before. We are both always tired & juggle the tasks of getting up with the kids at 6.30 every morning (or earlier), taking care of the night wakers & staying up to catch up on dishes or my ebay work. I discovered Valerian capsules from the health food store last week, they work! I got 7 hours sleep with only short interruptions but was then sleepy the whole of the next day. So I'll be saving those for desperate times!

We have just had 9 days of rain & are expecting another 3 or 4. Kim's working on more windows & going well.

I am ebaying like mad & also trying to edit photos from my 1st photo shoot of a friend's baby & 3 other children, which grew to include my friend's sister, her partner & their 4 month old. it was good fun & I'm pretty happy with the results, although I'm not happy with the sharpness (or lack of) of a lot of them.

I'm just doing freebies for friends to get some practice, hopefully in a year or so I'll be good enough that people might want to pay me for it ( :

Here a few:

I have lots of photos of the house too of course but this is where my focus has been on the last could of weeks! The house is coming along nicely, Kim's doing the back bedroom windows now, then we only have the toilet & laundry to go, plus the double glazed windows in the kitchen. I'll try & post again very soon. Ivy is having a birthday party this Sunday (turning 3!) . Here's a photo I took yesterday for her party invitation.

back to Work

2009-01-10T00:07:00.007+11:00

Our extra money has run dry & I am back working to pay the mortgage again.

I don't feel too bad about it, I'm actually getting very organised (for me!) & it feels good. I've had to reduce the size of my work space to make room for Brody moving back in full time after about 8 months with Mario, he's going back to school for year 10 at Springwood. High. I will be his 1st time at a public school & 1st time wearing a uniform! He has friends moving to Springwood high from his last school plus friends from his circus group already there so he will have quite a large group of good friends. Hopefully he'll do OK & stick the year out.

Finn & Ivy went back to the Cottage last week after a 3 week break so I now have 2 days a week to work without kids.

I haven't had a chance to post any Christmas photos, with no activities for the kids over the last 4 weeks my time has been full. We've spent days at waterholes, swimming pools, friend's houses, parksgoing on a steam train ride & working on the house. Finn wakes up & says "where are we going today?". He gets bored easily but needs time at home doing nothing too, finding the balance is always hard. His behaviour over the Christmas break has worsened, hopefully getting back into a routine will help him manage himself better. All the party food & holiday food doesn't help, ice blocks on hot days etc.

Just before Christmas we got his diagnosis in writing, finally. It took 4 months.

High functioning autism.

They will re-assess in about 18 months, when he is 6. I'm sure it will be Asperger's at that point, they don't like to dx (that's shorthand for diagnose or diagnosis) AS (Asperger's Syndrome) before age 5. He really is classic Asperger's to us.

Often they dx PDD-NOS (pervasive development disorder-not otherwise specified) which is what I was expecting, so HFA was a pleasant surprise. For those who don't parent a child on the autistic spectrum, you might ask why it was pleasing?

These kids are smart. They learn how they are expected to behave. That doesn't mean they are able to behave that way most of the time but they do get good at behaving well in public, when they know they are not surrounded by people who won't understand, be sympathetic & understanding. If they sense that someone may be critical ( & they are really good at this!) they make every effort they can to behave "normally". it's when they return to their comfort zones that their whole family pays the price for the effort. It doesn't mean they are always well behaved in public! It just means that on a good day, if they are OK, they will look pretty normal.

Brody did this for years at school. he was the perfect student, remembered everything he heard, was respectful, didn't mess around with rowdy kids (or any kids for that matter) & did everything by the rules. but when he got home he would lose the plot. I never understood it but know now it is common & typical of AS kids. Finn is doing it already with daycare. We brace ourselves & hope it is worth the price we pay (not monetary!). I'm still not sure. I continue to read & educate myself about homeschooling as I don't think school will work for Finn. In less than 12 months from now we will be preparing him daily to go to school. He is enrolled at 2 different school already, so we have choices & he will be well cared for. It is still scary for me, he's such a little boy with so much anxiety.

It seems that this house building blog has turned into an autism blog!?

It does overwhelm us. Last weekend was funny, we've watched a string of DVDs lent to us by friends, featuring kids with autism. The Black Balloon I bawled my eyes out through, too well done & too realistic & I related far too much to this family. Then "after thomas" & I was ready to rush out & get a dog, after a few tears again (even though it was a badly made film).

Then Kim started making jokes about heart wrenching films based on families living with autism until last weekend (or was it Monday). The ABC showed "The Magnificent 7", a drama based on a family in the UK with 3 NT (neurotypical) ((I hope you are taking note of my abbreviations because I am going to be using them from now on!)) daughters & 4 ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) boys. One of these kids, Luke Jackson, has written a book called "Freaks, Geeks & Asperger's Syndrome" which I bought & read quite some time ago, so it was interesting watching this "telemovie". Christopher, the boy in the family with AS (Asperger's, remember?) was very much like Finn. So even though we chose to not seek out any more autism movies the ABC threw one at us. We can't escape it!

Anyway, back to life as we know it. Christmas was good. I didn't get many good photos. We slept in the new house for the 1st time, xmas eve & xmas night.

Finn was good on xmas eve but freaked out on xmas night. Had a long period screaming "I want to go home". Kim & I ended up lying either side of him, holding him until he settled. On the other side of a partially built wall were our guests. it only lasted about 45 minutes, thank goodness. but that's a long time when you're in the midst of it.

xmas Eve was great, we had our new neighbours ( across the road from where we live) Suzy & Andy come over, Mario & all the kids too. The very weird thing was that Andy & Suzy knew Mario from work in Sydney a few years ago!!!

We talked about old times & found out that Andy worked with Jay, Mario's good friend who was best man at out wedding 19 years ago & Brody's namesake (Brody Jay, born on Jay's birthday).

Christmas was relaxed, present opening took about 3 hours (no rushing in &in a frenzy & opening them all at once in our family!). We take it in turns, discuss & marvel at each present & then discuss whose turn it is next. This is the highlight of the day. Finn & Ivy (& Brody & Chelsea!) got a huge netted trampoline. Everyone received copious amounts of books. Finn got boats & Ivy got dolls (as is their wish). We ate lots & drank lots (as is our wish).

Boxing day Chelsea, Daniel & Brody left with Mario to go to the Peat's Ridge Festival. Kim & I took Finn & Ivy to Wentworth Falls lake to row our "new" $10 row boat that we found at a garage sale a few weeks back (the day after we found our "new" $100 sailing dingy at a garage sale). Finn got teary at the garage sale when we found the rowboat. he was so excited about the sailing dinghy that finding a rowboat the very next day was just too much for him. Paddling on the lake (we haven't bought oars yet, nowhere to buy them in Katoomba, so we used his inflatable boat paddles) was very exciting for him.

Here's a few photos I took over Christmas.

A fairy in the garden

Fun on the Zigzag railway

OK, I'd better do a little update on the house. We have gables clad in hardwood weatherboards on both ends of the house. I think it looks fantastic! We bought these weatherboards off ebay over a year ago. It was a lot of work to get all the old paint off but worthwhile, they cost us less than $1 a metre.

We have another window made & installed, photos will follow soon.

Not much else, it's been a busy time & we have tried to take a break & relax a little. We're not very good at that but we're determined to continue trying! Our kids deserve a relaxed mum & dad.

i wrote this post at least 10 days ago, I have more photos to post since then. I'll post this now & will try & do another current post sooner!

here's one of my favourites of ivy taken over Christmas.

and another I took for my photography forum task "momentos" (which I won), pearls that I purchased on a visit to mallorca 23 years ago, modelled by Ivy.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T12:01:00.002+11:00

2009.

Thankfully, 2008 has ended.

Trying not to be TOO negative but goodness it was hard.

Never enough sleep.

Never enough money.

Never enough time in the day.

Too much work.

Not enough play.

Not enough patience.

Puberty.

Terrible twos.

Autism.

Depression.

HSC.

Day care.

A diagnosis.

Bank loans.

Exhaustion.

Family conflicts.

Intolerance.

There were GOOD things of course.

A beautiful house emerging.

A diagnosis.

Day care (yes I know they were in the negatives too but that's the truth of it).

Clarity of mind.

Motivation.

Love.

Growth.

Commitment.

A light at the end of the very long tunnel.

New friends.

Watching Brody emerge from the dark.

Photography & my new Enrich friends who I value so dearly ( :

Having Finn ask for hugs.

2009 will see us into our new house. That fact alone fills us with joy. That fact alone makes this a wonderful year.

Happy new Year everyone ( :

Nightbears

2008-12-28T20:25:00.002+11:00

tonight at bedtime:

Finn: Sometimes I get nightbears

Me: Nightmares, you mean nightmares

Ivy: sometimes I get night rabbits

lots of photos coming soon ( :

Asperger's Syndrome

2008-12-11T23:13:00.002+11:00

This is LONG. If you are not interested in Aspergers Syndrome, don't bother continuing!

My friend Simone who has a son Xander in Finn's early intervention programme emailed me 2 weeks ago to ask me to print the following for her as her printer isn't working.

I only had the chance to read it tonight & I was quite blown away by the truth in it. Only a parent who lives with this could write like this.

It is directed to grandparents, which is a nice idea, but that is not why I'm publishing it here.

I'm sharing this with anyone who may be interested in what it may be like to live with a child with this condition & how they may be able to connect with such a child, grandparent, family, friend, teacher,anyone. It bought me to tears as I read it, this is written by someone who KNOWS. Living with Aspergers has been very isolating. We are still coming to terms with what it is, what it means & what we can do. We struggle every day to be the best parents we can & for me personally there is never a day that i don't feel that I failed in doing my best. Yes I know, I shouldn't be so hard on myself. But I am. When I became a parent over 17 years ago I found it quite easy. I only started to find it hard 4.5 years ago. I'm also having to come to terms with my own Asperger traits. It's no coincidence that I have 2 boys to 2 different dads with this condition.

If your grandchild has been newly diagnosed, then welcome to the world
of Asperger Syndrome. It is a mysterious and sometimes overwhelming
world, but it is not one to be afraid of. Even if you are saddened,
disappointed or angry about the diagnosis, keep in mind that it’s for
the best. The earlier the diagnosis, the earlier the intervention, and
the better the prognosis in the long run.

For some grandparents, the news seems to come right out of the blue.
Sure, there were difficulties at school - but then, school isn’t as
strict as it used to be. And yes, there were some problems at home,
but none of them sounded like anything that “good old-fashioned
discipline” couldn’t solve. Why, then, do the parents seem to be
clinging to this diagnosis as if it were a life-raft in the high seas?
And why are counsellors, psychologists, occupational therapists and
special education teachers suddenly getting involved?

Is this child really so different?

As grandparents, you have a lot of questions to sort out. But along
with the confusion comes an opportunity to get involved where you are
really needed. Children with Asperger Syndrome have a special need in
their lives for ‘safe’ people who won’t criticize them or put them
down for their differences. They need loving, non-judgmental
grandparents who accept them as they are and make a place for them in
their lives. If you can reach out to them, they will treasure your
relationship with them for the rest of their lives.

*I’ve read articles about Asperger Syndrome. But I still don’t
understand what it is.*

Asperger Syndrome is a type of autism, and autism is a neurological
disorder that affects the way a person interacts with others and his
or her world. It’s not a mental illness, and it is not caused by weak
parenting. In its more severe forms, it’s a disorder because it causes
disorder in the life of the child. In its milder forms, it is more of
a marked difference from the norm. In our culture, which judges people
on the way they interact with others, these disorder-differences can
have a profound impact on a person’s life.

You’ve probably heard the parents complaining about the difficulties
they’ve had with the child in the home - obsessive behavior,
irrational outbursts, wild fears, and irritability over the smallest
issues. These problems are not misbehaviors, but rather the child’s
responses to an inability to comprehend what is going on around them
and inside them. Some experts have called it a “mind blindness,” one
that causes the person to stumble and bump into complex social
situations that they can’t “see.”

Yet by effectively “blinding” the mind to certain aspects of daily
life, Asperger Syndrome enables the child’s mind to focus in a way
that most of us are incapable of. They feel their feelings more
intensely, experience texture, temperature and taste more powerfully,
and think their thoughts more single-mindedly. In many ways, this
ability to focus is the great gift of Asperger Syndrome, and is the
reason why a great number people with Asperger Syndrome have become
gifted scientists, artists and musicians.

It is as if the Asperger brain is born speaking a different language.
It can learn our language through careful instruction or
self-instruction, but it will always retain its accent. While Asperger
adults go on to successful careers and interesting lives, they will
always be considered unusual people.

*I’ve never heard of it before.*

That’s not too surprising. Pediatricians don’t study it in medical
school, teachers don’t learn about it in education college, and the
mass media rarely covers it. Until the 1980s, the condition didn’t
even have a name, even though Hans Asperger’s original work was done
in the 1940s. It is only very recently that the condition has received
much attention at all. However, as professionals are becoming more
informed about the condition, they are discovering that there is a
fair amount of Asperger Syndrome out there.

You may remember an “odd” child from your grade-school years - one
that had no friends, who was always preoccupied with some obsessive
interest that no one else cared about, who said the strangest things
at the strangest times. Though the syndrome has only recently been
named, these children have been living and growing up alongside other
children for centuries. Some have become successful and happy as
adults despite their undiagnosed problems, teaching themselves over
time how to navigate around their deficits. Others have gone on to
live lives of confusion and frustration, never understanding why the
world didn’t make much sense to them.

With the recognition of Asperger Syndrome, we now can give a new
generation of Asperger children a chance at the same kind of life that
other children have.

*Great. So how do we fix it?*

We can’t fix it. Despite all the marvels of modern science, there are
still some problems that can’t be cured. Nobody knows what causes
Asperger Syndrome, though most scientists acknowledge a genetic
factor. So the deficits your grandchild has can only be understood,
minimized and worked around. They will require accommodating on
everyone’s part. But in time, with proper programming, the child’s
behavior and understanding of the world should improve.

Specialized therapies for autism disorders are available, but in most
cases, the parents must bear the full cost. This can cause tremendous
financial strain on the family. In addition, while most regions
require specialized programming for Asperger children, these programs
are rarely sufficient for the child’s needs. So the parents must fill
in the gaps with their own home-made programming.

Drug therapies are also sometimes available in cases where extreme
behavior needs to be controlled. But these drugs don’t treat the cause
of Asperger Syndrome. So even if some of the symptoms can be relieved
with drugs, the central problems still remain.

*A lot of kids have these sorts of difficulties. It’s just a part of
growing up, isn’t it? After all, he looks perfectly normal to me.*

He is normal. And he has the capacity to grow up to become a
wonderful, normal adult - especially now that he has been diagnosed
and is receiving special training. But he is normal with a difference.

The deficits that comprise Asperger Syndrome are not always readily
apparent, especially in milder cases. The child is usually of average
intelligence or higher, yet lacks what are essentially instincts for
other children. If your grandchild seems “perfectly normal” despite
the diagnosis you’ve been told about, then he is probably working very
hard to make sure he fits in - and it’s not as easy as it looks.

It is best to treat your grandchild for what he is - normal. But be
prepared to take some advice from those closest to him regarding what
is the best way to handle certain situations.

It may not look like much to you, but Asperger Syndrome is a cause for
concern. It’s not at all the same thing as the sort of developmental
delay that some children experience, and a professional trained in its
diagnosis can determine the difference. Certainly misdiagnoses are
possible. But in such cases, it’s always wiser to err on the side of
caution. The wait-and-see method is risky when there is evidence
suggesting a neurological problem.

*So what if she doesn’t do what other kids do? She’s advanced for her
age.*

Unchildlike behavior doesn’t mean that a child is “too smart” for
play-dough and playgrounds. Even if she is smart, she still needs to
learn the skills of play, because play is how children learn - about
things, about life, and about each other. Precociousness is cute and
is sometimes a source of pride for grandparents, but it is also often
an indication that there is an underlying problem that needs to be
addressed - and the earlier the better.

*If Asperger Syndrome is genetic, then does that mean we have it too?*

You might, or you might not. Usually at least one of the parents has
some Asperger qualities to their personality, and so it seems likely
that the same might be true of the grandparent generation.

But before you get defensive, remember that Asperger Syndrome
shouldn’t be regarded as a source of family shame. It’s a difference
more than a disorder. And we know it takes all kinds of people to make
the world go around. Many famous people are believed to have had
Asperger Syndrome, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Anton
Bruckner, and Andy Warhol. It seems a touch of autism often brings out
genius.

And that’s not such a bad thing to have in the family!

*What if I don’t believe the diagnosis?*

That’s your privilege. But keep in mind that the child’s parents
believe it. They live and work with the child daily and are in a
unique position to notice the deficits. Because they care deeply about
that child’s future, they aren’t concerned about the stigma of a
label, as long as it means the child is eligible for the specialized
programming she needs. They have put their pride aside for the sake of
the child and expect the same from the rest of the family.

Consider carefully what could possibly be gained by refusing to
believe the diagnosis. Then consider what could be lost. The parents
are already living with a great deal more stress than other parents,
and they don’t need the added strain of skeptical or judgmental
grandparents. Otherwise you may suddenly be faced with the pain of
being unwelcome in your grandchild’s home.

*The child’s mother looks exhausted all the time. Could that be a cause?*

It’s more likely an effect. Consider what her life is like: she has to
constantly monitor what is going on regarding her Asperger child,
thwart anything that might trigger a meltdown, predict the child’s
reactions in all situations and respond immediately, look for
opportunities to teach the child social behavior without creating a
scene, and so on - every minute, every day. So it’s not surprising
that she doesn’t feel like sitting down for a cup of tea with you and
making small talk!

The truth is that the majority of mothers of Asperger children
struggle with depression. While the special services she will receive
over the next few years should help in some ways, she will still be
the one to deal with the day-to-day difficulties of raising an unusual
child. For many mothers, this means ceaseless work, often to the
exclusion of their own needs. Their physical, mental and emotional
exhaustion can have a profound effect on the health and happiness of
the entire family.

For this reason, mothers of Asperger children need those closest to
them to give their full, unconditional support, both in words and in
action.

*I’d like to help out and get involved. But my son and his wife always
get defensive no matter what I say.*

Your son and daughter-in-law are now so used to defending their child
that it comes as second nature. Give them some time. Once they are
more certain of your support, they will be less sensitive.

In the meantime, think carefully before you speak. Choose expressions
that suggest sympathy and genuine curiosity, and avoid those that
convey criticism. For example, instead of saying /‘He looks perfectly
normal to me’/, you can say /‘He’s doing really well.’ /Phrase ideas
as questions, not judgments by saying /‘Have you thought about…’
/rather than /‘It’s probably…’./

The most destructive things you can say are those that convey your
lack of trust in their ability to parent, your disdain for the
diagnosis, and your unwillingness to make accommodations. Here are
some real-life examples gathered from mothers of Asperger children:

/‘Just let him spend more time with us. We’ll whip him into shape!’
‘She may act that way at home, but she’s not going to do that in MY
house!’
‘He wouldn’t act this way if you didn’t work.’
‘I managed all by myself with four kids. You’ve just got two, and you
can’t handle them!’
‘Don’t believe everything those psychologists tell you. He’ll just
grow out of it, wait and see!’
‘There’s nothing wrong with her. You’re making a mountain out of a
molehill. Are you sure you’re not the one that needs to see a
psychologist?’
‘He’s having all these problems because you took him out of school for
that home-schooling nonsense.’
‘Everybody’s got to have a problem with a fancy name these days!’
‘All you ever do is complain about how hard your life is.’ /

*Ouch! *

Keep in mind that parents of Asperger children face these hurtful,
humiliating attitudes every day - from bus drivers to teachers,
doctors to neighbors. Their tolerance level for such opinionated
criticism is low, especially since they spend every bit of their
energy raising their difficult child. So avoid insensitive comments at
all costs. And if you unwittingly blurt out something the wrong way,
be sure to apologize.

*So then what can I do for them?*

Look for ways to be supportive. Let them know that there is another
heart tugging at the load - and it’s yours. Keep on the lookout for
articles about Asperger Syndrome and send them copies. This shows that
you are interested. Ask lots of questions about the special programs
the child is in. Be enthusiastic and optimistic. Let them know you
think they’re doing a great job. At other times, be a sympathetic
sounding board when they have difficult decisions to make, or when
they just need to tell someone what an awful day they’ve had.

If you live close by, consider how much you can help by giving the
parents an evening out. If you’re not certain how to handle the child
on your own, then spend some time shadowing the parents to learn how
to do it - or offer to babysit after the child is in bed. Whatever you
can do to help will be appreciated.

*What does my grandchild need from me?*

He needs to know that you are a safe haven in a bewildering world. It
may seem a lot to ask to be flexible with a child who appears to be
misbehaving, but inflexibility will only put distance between you and
the child. If the child’s manners and mannerisms drive you crazy, ask
the parents for suggestions on how to set expectations for your house.

Learn to listen to the child when he says he doesn’t want to do
something. Maybe some children are happy to spend a couple of hours at
a flea market, but think very carefully before dragging an Asperger
child there. Accommodate to his needs, or you run the risk of ruining
your time together.

When in doubt, ask the parents for advice.

But in general, just make the decision now that you will spend your
time enjoying the child for what he is - a unique and unusual person.
That annoying stubborn streak you see in him is going to be his
greatest survival skill. And even though he seems to be afraid of just
about anything, recognize that he is like a blind person - it takes
tremendous courage for him just to walk through each day. Celebrate
his courage and tenacity.

*To tell the truth, I don’t feel comfortable around my grandchild. I
have no idea what to do when she acts in her odd ways.*

No one said it would be easy. But most Asperger kids are easiest to
handle in one-on-one situations, so look for opportunities to go for
walks or spend time in the workshed puttering around together. Tell
your grandchild your stories, especially those that touch on aspects
of her life affected by Asperger Syndrome. She will love hearing about
the time when you were a girl that you blurted out the secret, or how
difficult it was for you to learn to tie your shoes. You might tell
her about times you wished you knew how to say something, or times
when you wanted to be alone. Stories like these can create a powerful
bond between you and your grandchild.

You may discover that all she wants to talk about is her pet subject.
Don’t despair. If it’s something you know nothing about, then this is
an opportunity to learn something. Search for some magazine articles
on the topic so that you always have something new to share together.
In time, you may find that you have ideas for helping her expand her
interests into other subjects. But even if you do nothing more than
listen and share her enthusiasm for her favorite topic in the whole
world, your grandchild will learn that Grandma cares.

When you spend time with her with other people or in public places, it
might be helpful to think of yourself as a seeing-eye dog. Remember,
she is “blind” in certain ways. Point out trouble-spots and guide her
around them, explain social situations that she can’t “see,” and
narrate what you are doing as you do it. By doing so, you’ll help her
to feel more secure with you, and you’ll be actively participating in
her special programming.

One word of caution: watch the emotional levels. Asperger children
often have great difficulty sorting out emotions. If you get angry,
the child could lose control because she is unable to deal with your
anger and her own confusion at the same time. Reign in your temper
when the child is clumsy, stubborn, or frustrated. In situations where
you feel you really need to be firm, keep your tone calm, your
movements slow and even, and tell the child what you’re going to do
before you do it. Get advice from the parents how to deal with little
meltdowns so that you are prepared in advance, but do your best to
avoid triggering them.

Here are some simple *DO’s *and *DON’T’s* to remember when spending
time with your grandchild:

    * Do praise the child for his strengths.
    * Do get involved in the child’s interests.
    * Do learn what sorts of activities are recommended for the child.
    * Do acknowledge the child’s expressions of frustration.
    * Do respect the child’s fears, even if they seem senseless.
    * Do control your anger.
    * Don’t tell the child she will outgrow her difficulties.
    * Don’t joke, tease, shame, threaten, or demean the child.
    * Don’t talk to him as if he were stupid.
    * Don’t compare him with his siblings.
    * Don’t feel helpless - ask for help.

new kitchen roof part 3

2008-12-02T10:57:00.003+11:00

First I must say thank you to "anonymous" for leaving us such a lovely comment on my last post. It is always nice to hear from people, either friends, family or strangers! Unfortunately most people don't let me know they are reading. Please don't be shy, if you're reading this why not leave a comment just to say hi!? It would make my day (yes, I know it's pathetic but we live very sheltered lives!).

Anyway... the story continues...

The roofing iron covering the kitchen was cut & removed.

Kim then built a pitched roof frame from the inner end of the kitchen/dining room all the way out to the open end.

Then he lined it with plywood. This will eventually be covered in a product called bamboo ply.

The kids play in their toy boat (which sits on their trampoline to create that realistic feeling of movement). Note the outboard motor, a $2 garage sale find that really works.

Ivy loves to swing!

Insulation was placed on the plywood.

& finally the new roof.

Nothing like some company while you're on the loo. What a lovely sight, TWO toilet trained toddlers!

Daddy's boy.

Funny boy.

Happy girl.

My first attempt at sunflare.

New kitchen roof---part 2

2008-11-28T08:08:00.004+11:00

Kim turned an ordinary looking piece of ironbark into a beautiful window sill to go across the front of the kitchen. It's 5 metres long.

Finn never stops helping.

Ivy never stops playing & being cute.

Preparing to install the corner posts.

Got help from Mario & Brody, heavy things they are!

Then a big solid piece of ironbark as a header that will frame the windows. There wll be 3 windows across the front of the kitchen, the 2 outer ones fixed & the middle one sliding so we will have a large opening for summer, right in front of the sink (so I can yell at the kids). They are double glazed so we won't need blinds in the kitchen (imagine the cleaning). Thes windows face north & will gets lots of sun in winter, some sun in the summer, hopefully the double glazing will reduce the heat & there is a section of roof covering the verandah that runs it's length, about 1 metre deep that will offer some shade in summer but not much in winter when we want it to shine in!

Then the window sill.

Kids hanging out together, all 4 of them (rare these days!).

Satisfied with his day.

Stay tuned for part 3. Off to Early Intervention for the morning. Sounds like a program for criminals doesn't it?

PS you're allowed to leave a comment ( :

A new kitchen roof---part 1

2008-11-19T15:01:00.002+11:00

Our house has changed! I have so many photos to post, I don't know where to start so I'll break it down into eposides, otherwise I'll never get this post finished.

We have a flowering waratah.

We're geting more & more birds.

One of our black boys (that's a plant for those of you that don't know) grew a stem (thingy), so, so quickly.

We have our 2nd window installed.

We bought ironbark 6" x 6" posts from our local timber mill. Planed & sanded them. They will form the outer supports of the kitchen.

Got lots of help from Finn, Ivy, Jasper & Ziggy.

Stef & Ziggy, enjoying a gorgeous night about 2 weeks ago.

Finn & Ivy are into their 6th week at the Cottage, doing OK but our departures are no easier. They do enjoy going though. I love them going. Better get some work done, stay tuned for part 2.

2008-11-04T20:32:00.002+11:00

Today was Finn & Ivy's 5th day at the Cottage. They are doing OK, not great but not badly. Finn had some tears this morning when I told him I would leave soon, he clung to me & begged me to stay & begged me to take him with me. Then Helen pulled out a big tub on legs full of boats & water toys & filled it with water, heaven! I was off fo a couple of hours. They are playing happily when I'm not there but hate me leaving. I get away a 2nd time for about 1.5 hours in the afternoon. I'm hanging out for the day that I can drop them & have some guilt free time to myself. I want to get involved in building this house, it's near impossible for me to get anything done when they are with me at the block, one of them needs something most of the time.

We are struggling to shake colds & a lingering tummy bug. I think we're just totally run down. A holiday would be nice!

Sunday I took the kids to a BBQ put on by the Mountains Autism Support Group. It was pretty overwhelming with about 40 kids including siblings. It was nice to meet other parents living with what we live with, & see other "normal" looking kids like Finn who are challenging to their parents. Finn threw a wobbly when we were leaving & it was so nice to be surrounded by understanding people who didn't blink an eye at his behaviour, not having to make excuses for him or explain what's going on was refreshing.

We've been overwhelmed with the news that Brody's circus trainer, a 28 year old man, has been sleeping with one of the girls in the circus whose family he has been living with. She is only 14 & it's been going on for over a year. Our whole community is in shock. Lots of tears & talk in our house since we found out last Thursday. Awful, awful, awful. Brody is devastated, this man was a role model he looked up to & adored. He has been teaching our kids circus for 4 years & everyone loved him. He has vanished, so there is a sense of loss in more ways than one. The girl won't press charges because she believes he loves her. We are so, so sad.

Tomorrow I'm going to photograph a friend's little boy aged 2.5. I've photographed him about a year ago. I want to start doing other kids to hone my skills & hopefully lead into getting some work through it. It's a long way off but I've got to start somewhere! One of the highlights of my weekend was Chelsea's boyfriend Daniel downloaded Photoshop CS3 for me for free!! I haven't had a chance to have a play yet but I've finally got it! You gotta love computer savvy teenage geeks (sorry Daniel!).

Kim is putting in the 2nd window tomorrow, my work room. it looks fantastic, a bit better than the 1st I think. he took a frame with him today when he went to the timber mill to arrange more timber & showed the owner & it looks like he might have his 1st window order for next year. e has been hoping to offer custom made timber windows to people once the house is finished & from how they are turning out I think he'll get plenty of business.

Once that window is in we'll start work on enclosing the gables as we're having a bit of rain & water is blowing in every rainfall. We have 2nd hand hardwood weatherboards for the gables, they need paint stripping off them 1st though & then oiling. They are also ironbark.

One thing I didn't mention in my post about our first window is the glass. Becasue of the building regulations in our high fire danger area we have to use toughened glass in all our windows. Not a bad idea when you have kids in the house anyway! it costs about $140 per m2 though, & with big windows that adds up fast! So we watched on ebay for about 2 years until the right sized glass came up, & the right amount. Our glass was 6 mm balcony balustrading from a high rise building on Darling Harbour. We bought 17 sheets for $300. We love our bargains!

I'm having another garage sale this Saturday to continue to declutter of the house. I'm slowly making progress & it's feeling good. it is SO good to not have to work every day, although people keep buying things from my store & I've become a bit behind in the posting while we've been sick. Something sells every day, most days a few things, so I have to keep up with it.

A window!

2008-10-29T19:09:00.000+11:00

Kim got our first window in yesterday. It's all handmade by Kim & it's absolutely stunning (IMHO)!! The joinery is fabulous, the timber beautiful & the hardware top quality, so it glides open! Timber is recycled ironbark.

Finger painting

2008-10-29T18:47:00.004+11:00

It wasn't intended to be finger painting, but I turned my back for a few minutes.

child care

2008-10-22T18:07:00.004+11:00

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

2008-10-20T07:05:00.004+11:00

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!

A break

2008-10-03T06:42:00.003+10:00

As of last Friday I have officially been a lady of leisure! The money came through, so we now have a bigger mortgage & I couldn't be happier!

We have enough to pay all our loan repayments & bills for about 3 months. So my days are now very, very different. This is the 1st time in 12 years that I don't have to work. It's taking a bit of getting used to. My 1st reaction was to get very, very tired! I suppose my body decided that it is allowed to be tired now, so I slept & slept & slept for a few days. I've still had a bit of work as my current auctions end. My store will stay open of course, I have about 700 listing up & something sells every day, so there's be some spending money coming in, & I'll still do a few auctions every week as time permits. I will be putting more energy into selling offline, I'm having a clothing sale from home this weekend & will advertise in the local paper every couple of weeks. I have thousands of items of summer clothing to sell (not to mention the winter gear that's now going into storage), boxes of books, toys, cloth nappies, maternity wear, shoes & other bits & pieces. So I'll keep it trickling out as time permits.

The priority now though is the house, keeping Kim's time free to get over there every morning & work as many hours as he can every day. Now that the weather has warmed up (thank goodness for an early summer) we have started having dinner at the house, we have a good little kitchen set up with running water, fridge, BBQ, microwave, kettle, toaster, etc.

We then get home, bath & bed the kids & have an evening to relax. Heaven!!!
Today I'm getting a few parcels ready to go & them I'm taking the kids for a picnic lunch at the lake. I feel like I'm on holidays! The laundry, dishes, housework & kids are nothing compared to what I've been doing for the last few years, the hours have been ridiculous. No more late nights working, we all get up together at about 6 & I'm in bed by 10pm for a full 8 hours sleep. It's all very strange still, as I said, taking some getting used to. The guilt is still dominant, "I should be working," "I should be taking photos while I watch this show' etc. I can't wait to lose that feeling!

Kim has started on the kitchen roof. We're expecting rain this weekend so he's just getting it all ready to go & hopefully will be able to get it done next week. He's spent the last week pottering about doing bits & pieces, getting his shed ready for making windows, etc. We bought him a new thicknesser off ebay, he's pretty happy with that. We've also spent some time tidying up the block, we had begun accumulating a bit too much just so it was good to clean up a bit.

My vege patch is well under way with 4 different tomatoes, cucumbers, silver beet, zuccini, endive, beetroot, peas & beans planed. Trying to get some watermelon sees happenning but they won't come up, same with capsicum. Might buy seedlings instead, it'd be nice to have watermelon from the garden for Christmas! I'm loving my garden!

The kids are all good, Brody is back from 6 weeks in Canada, he's off to the Yurt farm In Goulburn with Mario this weekend. Chelsea's on holidays for 2 weeks & making the most of every day to socialise so we don't see much of her. Finn is being hard work, very autistic lately. Screamed at Ivy yesterday when she wouldn't play the game to his liking "you can't do it like that, that's not the rules", he likes his rules. Still in the midst of the assessment, the psych was supposed to go watch him playing at Steph's yesterday but Ziggy had a tummy bug so we had to postpone. At Steph's he plays on his own & follows Steph around, or he tries to get the other kids to play his way which almost never happens. His speech is quite funny lately, he goes into long drawn out explanations or questions, or directions. eg, yesterday when telling Kim to take something to the block:
"Dad, when you go to the block can you get it from by the door, and then put it in the ute, and then when you get dressed & go to the block can you take it in the ute with you to the block, and when you get to the block can you take it out of the ute & put it in the shed so it's at the block now?".
He talks like this a LOT, so everything takes soooo looong to say, it drives us nuts when we're rushing around trying to get things done. We really don't know what to do about it. We just repeat what he's said in 1/4 the words & hope he'll get the picture eventually. he can finally count to 10 , at least he gets it right most times. We've been told this is normal for his age but I don't buy it, he's the 1st 4 year old I've known who can't count to 10.
Ivy is being very "2", but cute, bright & so affectionate it's hard to not just love her to bits all the time! The whine is increasing in frequency though, we'll have to work on that!

Waiting...

2008-09-18T07:38:00.002+10:00

We have applied for an extension on our mortgage. Not because we have run out of money, we're actually doing OK on the building front, but so I can stop working until we get into the house. Or maybe not quite stop, but slow right down, any work I do will be a bonus. We are trying to borrow the money we'd need to cover all our bills & loan repayments until the end of the year. This way we can just focus on the house. Kim can get over there early every morning without having to help me with either my packaging or the kids. We had the land valued yesterday so we are just waiting to hear from the bank if it is valued high enough to get the extra money. Wee only need an evaluation of $215 000 so it shouldn't be a problem.
We look at it as buying time, just like you'd buy a holiday. It will hardly be a holiday but it will be heaven for me! I have worked hard for the last 12 years. I am hardly daring to believe it might happen quite yet! I'm not good at waiting, I want to know NOW!!
The funny thing is that the loans manager at the bank has offered us a different mortgage so with the extra money our repayments will actually drop by $50 a month!
Come on phone....ring!

A Blizzard on my Birthday!

2008-09-04T01:19:00.004+10:00

The following pics were taken on my birthday, August 10th & the night before when we had a party at the house. It was FREEZING but we had a fire & Kim put a gas heater on in the house. He went to such a huge effort for this party, I'm afraid I didn't take many photos at all on the night, I was too busy having fun (socially deprived I am!!). I had always wanted to have a 40th (last year) but we had nowhere to have a party (our current house is tiny & my business takes over half of it!) so I always threatened to have a belated 40th for my 41st, if we got the roof on the house in time.
We had such a great time. Kim made makeshift stairs to the front door & put plants either side, set up furniture in my workroom with the fire right outside the window. He put the BBQ in the kitchen & set up tables with flowers on them, etc, etc. The most amazing thing about the night was that our building site turned into a home! Everyone loves the house & the feel of it already, & it has no walls! It felt just great having people there with us. the kids ran around & had a ball, it all felt so "normal"!!! We need times like that to remind us of what we're working for.
The next day was Sunday, my actual birthday & I decided that I'd really love to go to the block & have some help building my vege patch. So Kim, Chelsea, Daniel (Chelsea's boyfriend) , Finn, Ivy & myself headed out for breakfast & then hit the shovels. The snow started while we were still at the cafe but at the block it really started to get heavy, it was magical. Because we were working we weren't cold at all & it was just beautiful. Our red roof turned white! Of course I've seen lots of snow when I lived in Canada but having it here is different, it is unusual & exciting. Finn & Ivy didn't know what to make of it!

Kim was yelling from 100 metres away, as he continued to get the garden together in the heavy snow " I LOVE YOUUUUU" !!!

You can see my little vege patch top right, we're just started filling it. I've since finished it, added a ton of compost & I'm just waiting for the last frost so I can start planting!

Chelsea, Daniel & Finn having a laugh to himself. Breakfast at the Common Ground Cafe on my birthday. I love this pic ( :

My friend Tracy snuggling with a tired Ivy at the party.

Not a great photo but one of the few I got. Mario (Chelsea & Brody's dad) with my friend Penny visiting from Buladelah. Penny & I went backpacking together when we were 18! Chelsea's friends in the background looking like surly teenagers!

Had to put this in as it's such a great shot of Kim!

I think this is a terrible photo, especially of me looking like the Michelin man (I was extremely rugged up as it was about 0 celcius but I have also put on a lot of weight this winter, working from a computer chair & no time for exercise) but it's the 1st photo I've had of all of us for so long now. Finn & Ivy were getting tired! Brody left for Canada the next day.

THE ROOF IS ON!

2008-08-31T12:04:00.002+10:00

What a great day it was when our roof was completed! Our house is starting to look like a house!
The roof isn't actually complete but at least the house is now covered. The central part of the house that juts out is our kitchen. The long lengths of roofing iron you see will be cut up high & then a roof section will come out at 90 degrees to the rest of the roof. We just had the lengths to cover it for now so Kim left it as is until he gets to the next stage.
We are VERY happy with how it's looking ( :

isn't it lovely ( :
all our hard work is finally paying off & the rewards are becoming so much more obvious.

Looking from the east side.

this is the back of the house as seen from our neighbour's driveway.

We're really happy with how the house is discreet from the back due to the 900mm excavation we did. It's not much but it made a big difference. We are also delighted to hear from our neighbours Sid & Natalie that they can't see any of our house from any window of their house. This is due to the placement of their studio/garage which although small blocks us completely. We all appreciate privacy so are very pleased with this result. When you live on 1/2 an acre in the bush you don't want to look at buildings!

the back of the house Kim's very happy with his straight lines!

some wind shelter, it's been FREEZING!!

FRONT ON, HOUSE FACES NORTH

STARTING THE ROOF

2008-08-31T11:42:00.002+10:00

The following photos were taken about 4 weeks ago (I'm slowly catching up!).
George (Kim's stepdad) helped Kim with the roof from beginning to end & they had it all done in about 9 days. Will post competed roof photos shortly!

Finn is 4

2008-08-19T15:28:00.002+10:00

I thought I'd better pop this post in before months had gone past!

Finn turned 4 on July 23rd. He was such a happy boy to be having a birthday & he had such a great day! His birthday was on a Wednesday & we had his party on the Sunday. Grandma & Pop George were here for the week helping us get the roof on the house. Pete & Renie came up on the Saturday to give him a present & Pete helped with the roof. The weather was glorious & he glowed with smiles in the sun.
I had asked Grandma to bake a cake for him as she's more of a cake whiz than me & as usual I was flat out with my work, but he insisted on an ice cream cake. he's never even had an ice cream cake so I have no idea where he got the idea. He wanted "3 coloured" ice cream (which we never buy) & he wanted strawberries on top. So shopping we went & he got his ice cream cake.

Happy Birthday big boy! 4 year old now!

These photos were taken over the weekend. Pete & Renie bought him the cutest rocking chair (he wouldn't sit in it for a photo) & thoughtful as always, they bought Ivy a lovely present so she didn't feel left out. Finn was very impressed with such a huge present! They then proceeded to play peek a boo with the box for half an hour, even at age 4 the packaging is still one of the highlights of the day! On the Sunday for his party Jasper & Ziggy came along with mum Stef who babysits for me, Chelsea & Brody's & their friends came & we had a cheap Coles mudcake! I would never have stooped to this a few years back but times are tough! An old friend from Pittwater Steve Wells also came along with his 3 year old Christopher so it was nice to catch up with him. It was cold & we even had a little snow!

CEILING JOISTS

2008-08-18T18:14:00.005+10:00

Oh my goodness, 2 posts in 3 days!! Amazing! How am I finding the time? I've been given yet another ebay suspension. I'm such a naughty girl! What did I do this time? I used a template with the dreaded wording "I don't take Paypal from Australian bidders". It was 1 of 450 listings & obviously done in error but they gave me 3 days off. Thanks ebay, I needed it. Of course our bank account didn't need it, but at least they didn't end all my listings this time so sales have still been good & I have caught up on my packaging.

We have sold our truck. We did a private trade with a chap from Orange, he was interested in buying the truck & had a dual cab Holden Rodeo to sell so we swapped (plus some cash). We're happy with the vehicle & even happier with our healthier bank account! We'll be paying some overdue bills & buying timber to build the veranda, timber for our kitchen, the ridge capping to complete the roof, amongst other things. Happy days!

Today we had Finn's 1st assessment day with the Child & Adolescent Development Unit (CADU) at Katoomba hospital. I was quite nervous as I was expecting them to ask lots of questions but mainly just play with him & observe him then turn around & tell us there's nothing wrong with him. I've just heard & read too many stories of this happening. We were there for about 3.5 hours. He was observed & talked to by an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, a psychologist & a lovely girl Rose who is doing her master's & "on loan" to the hospital, she was amazing with him, did lots of activities testing his IQ, drawing, plying, imaginative play, etc.
It looks like they are not going to give him a diagnosis as I suspected, although they still need to see him in a group setting with other kids. This is when they will see him in a different light as in a room full of engaging, interested adults he is in his element. He had a ball! I was not that happy with the outcome of today, I felt dismissed with a lot of things I raised, for example I said that I was somewhat concerned with some areas of his learning. Lyn asked what in particular & the 1st thing that came to mind was his counting. He still struggles to count to 10 at age 4. it's coming together slowly but I feel that he's not really getting it as well as he should be. I was told that that's not of any concern, it's within the "normal" range & nothing to raise any concern. I wasn't asked any more questions about his learning, the subject was changed. I could have gone on! After 3 hours it's hard to continue being pushy & assertive, even for your child. I am sure this won't be the last assessment we'll go through & I'm sure I'll get better at describing the situation but today I found it difficult to be heard. We told them that we'll be going home to a meltdown & we were told that that's to be expected, even "normal" kids would have a meltdown after a morning like his. Dismissed again.
The best thing that came out of today is that the psychologist, Lyn, feels that it's very important to get him into a preschool, as do we. He's been on the waiting list to get into the Children's Cottage here in Katoomba, for about 18 months now & we've been told that he might not even get in this year. It's an amazing centre, very small & intimate with a high level of care. It's very popular so people enrol their kids at birth. Once kids are in very few leave until they start school. Lyn agreed that this was the only suitable place in our area for him & she's going to try & pull some strings to get him in asap! They will follow programs to support him in learning to interact & feel safe with other kids. I'm not yet excited as it would be too good to be true to get him in, good for him & good for our finances. I don't dare get excited just yet! We've been paying $150 a week for private childcare for over 6 months now, I have to do it to get my work done but it's hard to cover the cost. And I believe that if Finn gets a place then Ivy goes to the top of the waiting list in her age group as a sibling. It would be so, so good for all of us! Fingers very firmly crossed at this stage!

The photos below were taken about a month ago with the basic frame complete & the ceiling joists going on. Kim powered through this stage! We had a great time with it, probably the best stage of the building so far, Kim really enjoyed it & I went over every late afternoon to have a beer with him & just admire his work & let the kids have some outside time. The weather was very kind to us & we had almost no rain & mild days. If only it was always like this!

Above is the hallway running from the kitchen/dining room through to the living room. We designed it nice & wide (6 feet) to avoid having any cramped narrow spaces in the house. The large opening on the right is the entrance to my work room, it is wide at the moment as it will be a double cavity sliding door with opaque paneled glass so the northern sun with come through into the hallway without us having to look at mountains of clothing!

had a bit of rain this day, pooling on the chipboard flooring. it's shaping up pretty well to the weather but at this stage we were looking forward to the roof.

my work room

looking down the hallway from the other end

the back of the house, the 2 bedroom windows

the man at work

so neat! I am very impressed with how it's all looking!

This is Kim trying to get the last joists up before dark. He actually ended up being about 3 short!

MORE FRAME--ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO!

2008-08-15T00:17:00.003+10:00

This is the beginning of what I hope will be a quick catch up to get my blog up to date! These photos are about 6-8 weeks old. As usual I just haven't had the time for updates, we've been very behind with everything financially so taking time to "blog" just hasn't been justified.

These photos were taken as Kim advanced with the frame, he got most of the external & internal walls done in about 2-3 weeks. It was fabulous to see the rooms emerge as it went up, getting an idea of size & space.

Finn & Ivy giving a little performance for me

the beginning of my work room, a better view than I have now (not hard to do!)

looking out my office window, full view of the cubby & sandpit

pile of recycled hardwood ready to be used for the ceiling joists

taken from the east side of the house, our bedroom

looking from the front of the house into the living room that runs the full width front to back

taken from the West looking into the living room. French doors will be in the space at the centre of the photo, large window to the left.

Rosellas, our new daily visitors. They are shaded by a waratah. The marble frog was Kim's 40th birthday present. He wanted a frog as we have a species of endangered frog on the property, the "giant burrowing frog", we found about half a dozen when digging for the piers, trenches, etc. They live about 50cm underground, are quite big & ugly & have long claws!

Framed!

STARTING THE CEILING JOISTS.

my son the jet setter

2008-08-11T21:08:00.002+10:00

Brody left Australia yesterday for a 6 week jaunt in Canada visiting his grandparents, aunts, uncles & cousins. At 14.5 years it's his first time going without his dad. We're so proud of him.
He arrived in Boston a few hours ago where his uncle Jean picked him up for the long drive home to Quebec (flights to Boston are much easier to get on frequent flyer points). He is looking forward to going fishing with his grandfather & (to my unspoken horror) trapping. must be his hormones going haywire, hunter/gatherer & all that. This was a little boy a few years ago that was in a rage when I considered getting mouse traps when the little critters started taking over a rental property we were living in!

I don't know if I've mentioned yet (& if I take the time to go back & check, this post won't get finished) but Brody left school about 3-4 months ago. He has been so unhappy for 2 years & everything became way too much for him & he just refused to go. We've been to therapists, psychologists, etc, all to no avail. What I've realised in recent months is that his behaviour is very typical of a teen with Asperger's. I've spent a lot of time reading & researching over the last several months & it makes me think back on Brody's life & realise how many signs he's shown us that Asperger's should be considered. Nobody has ever alerted us to it but as the school counsellor at Korowal said when I asked if she had considered this "oh yes......but it's not my position to talk about that".

So he's gone from homeschooling to doing not very much at all over the last few months, not coping with any pressure placed on him. We've gone for the de-schooling approach as nothing else has worked. I'm kicking myself for not going there sooner as he does seem to be slowly moving forward to a better state of mind. We were surprised when he agreed to a trip to Quebec as he has hardly left the house for the last few months (or his dad's house, he's been staying with Mario a lot of the time).

So I hope he has a wonderful time, I know his French Canadian family will dote on him & give him some much needed attention over the weeks he'll be there & I'm glad for that. He needs it & deserves it. He doesn't get much attention from me these days I'm afraid, not from a lack of interest but lack of time. Which brings me to the house....

Since my last post our house has a roof. Finn has turned 4 & yesterday I turned 41. My dinner is awaiting me now & it is 9.07pm so I must go eat. Hopefully I will post again soon. I definitely have plan to catch up on my blogging soon!

Finn & renie

2008-07-10T21:57:00.001+10:00

I LOVE this Photo!!!
It's so rare to see Finn so relaxed & happy & it shows what a wonderful aunty he has in my gorgeous siter in law Renie!!!

Big kids & little kids

2008-07-10T21:52:00.001+10:00

birthday girl

2008-07-10T21:51:00.001+10:00

Brody

2008-07-10T21:48:00.000+10:00

I have so many photos that I would like to post, all out of order but here we go.

Frame!!

2008-07-08T00:37:00.002+10:00

It's been 6 weeks since my last post. Where does the time go? Every day is so full to bursting & yet a month goes by in a flash, it's hard to understand.
Life has been as mad as ever.
Winter magic in katoomba, a good day (photos to come).
Brody up for 10 days from Mario's, he's spending all his time with his dad these days. no school, he's officially de-schooling. The more pressure he's put under the less he function at an even basic survival level, so it's no pressure for now. He goes fishing & does some cooking, Dr Who & more Dr who. When he's gone it's hard. When he's here it's even harder. trying to maintain my faith in him, that all will be OK. I am now sure he has Asperger's Syndrome. Which takes me to Finn...
Finn has been consistent with his difficult behaviour. I continue to read & learn. He has all the classic signs of Asperger's. We are still waiting for an assessment at Katoomba Hospital. Living with Finn is HARD. Every step of every day is hard, there's very little that ever goes smoothly. Some days I just want to walk out. I thought as Ivy & he grew older it would get easier but that is not the case right now. She is catching up to him with her intellect, being incredibly smart. he is also smart, but struggling in so many areas. She can count better, he can hardly count to 10, the 5 seems to go missing in his head most of the time. She is recognising numbers, he doesn't get it. She is getting good at puzzles, I can't get him to understand about the straight edges on puzzle pieces & where they need to go. I also can't get him to look at the puzzle piece to see what's on it. So this afternoon when we say together to do puzzles it was all I could manage to stay calm as Ivy screamed at Finn for doing it wrong, Finn screamed at me to help him & I tried hard to not scream at them both for screaming. There's a lot of screaming that goes on in our household at the moment. Being very noise sensitive I hate it. It does my head in.
I was talking to the occupational therapist who is part of the assessment team at the hospital recently & she said that AS kids can be much harder than the kids with classic autism. I can't compare thank goodness. He has enough intelligence to drive us nuts. This morning he needed a violin out of cardboard. No matter that he has a real one. And when he decided he wants something he wants it now. You can do the wait , soon, later, in 10 minutes things dozens of times a day but his behavior doesn't change. Punishment of any sort doesn't change his behavior. Finn doesn't want things, he needs them. It's really that simple. He needed that cardboard violin so badly this morning. He had to wait half an hour for it but it was 30 minutes of hell for everyone.
I could go on & on about Finn but I won't. That's enough I think! We love him so much & will work hard to make his life a good one, right now though I feel like I'm failing that so often. We just don't have the skills to make it work, or the time, or the money.
Chelsea is busy! School mainly, social life as every 17 year old should have, spending lots of time with Daniel, her boyfriend who is here often. She helps me out a fair bit, not as much as she could but I can't bring myself to turn into a slave driver so I can have my house faster, she'll hardly get to live in it, this crazy lifestyle we're living is for us, not for her. it was meant to be but it's taken too long. That makes me very sad.
An ebay suspension, I don't even want to go into it, too hard. Setting up an Oztion store. No sales there yet, hopefully it'll start happening soon. It's cost us heaps of lost sales, lost income, things are pretty tough, as they have been for months now but getting worse I think. I just have to work more & work harder. I have been a bit slack, demoralised by everything & have spent more time watching TV in the last month then I have for a long time. I just need a break I guess.
I'm so sick of ebay. I've lost a couple of things that I sold lately & missed a few faults so have to refund money that has already been spent on bills & I get so annoyed at myself.
But the main reason for this blog is our house! It's the one thing in our lives that is going really well! Kim has just been powering alone, the weather has been pretty good, not too much rain & we're having a mild winter. The main frame of internal & external walls is pretty much done! the ceiling joists are also done. Kim has now started work on the hanging beams & hopes to be pitching the roof by next week.
We'll get there eventually, & when we do we'll look back on these times & shudder. It has changed my perspective on what hard is. I never knew before.
I will add photos soon.

Untitled

2008-05-16T15:59:00.001+10:00

Finally, finally, finally, we have a house going UP! After Ivy's birthday in Febuary we had weeks & weeks of rain (not to mention all the rain between new year & Ivy's b'day!). Then Kim hurt his back & couldn't work for a couple of weeks, the latter of these the weather cleared up so that was very frustrating. Then his back got better, the weather was good but he had to put some skylights into someone else's house who had been waiting ages for some rain free days to have it done, so our place had to wait.
Eventually everything fell into place, health, weather, timing, kids, work, & Kim has been able to get a good solid 2 weeks on the house & we have a basic frame about 3/4's done. It's fabulous to see the layout now & the size of windows, french doors, etc. Now, after 2 very long, hard years, we have a house happening!!

putting down the chipboard flooring, Pete, Renie & George lending a hand!

                                Our first wall! back eastern corner, back of the bathroom

                 Finn always there to give Dad a word of advice or a helping hand.

East side with bathroom & bedroom windows.

Kim in our bedroom, french doors opening out onto the deck.

Kim's enjoying his Paslode nail gun!

View from our bedroom window, the caravan & shed will no longer be there, just my parked car.

East wall, first window is our bedroom, next is the bathroom. I have always dreamed of living in a light flooded house, hence the BIG windows!
There will be a walk through wardrobe in between with large glass bricks for light.

Finn lending a hand with the broom. He made the "floor" on the right with oregon offcuts.
He'll be building houses by the time he's 10!

Building inspectors

Above & below- a maze of framing! Bedroom, walk through wardrobe, bathroom & 2nd toilet.

                     Finn standing in between the 2 kids bedrooms,
big windows at the back, built in wardrobes betweens the 2.

Taken from the West side looking across the living room.



Taken through the bathroom window.

A little fairy in the garden ( :

Well, there's a bit of a catch up post! I will try & post more often now things are progressing nicely. I often get put off by posting because it's been so long since my last post there's so much to catch up on & I don't have time!
Please feel free to leave comments, we love getting comments, especially those of encouragement to help us through our very long, often difficult days ( :

Ivy is 2 !!

2008-05-08T16:28:00.000+10:00

Am going to try & start posting again, & uploading some very overdue photos. The avove is taken on Ivy's birthday, Feb. 23th. We were luck with a great day & had a lovely party for her on the block with lots of visitors including Pop George & Grandma, Uncle Pete & Aunty Renie, Uncle Mario, & lots of friends. Brody made her cake with just a little guidance but no help! The next day everyone hoed in & helped get the last of the floor joists down.

Overwhelmed

2008-03-05T00:51:00.002+11:00

We are officially overwhelmed & overloaded. I feel like standing on the roof & screaming it at the world. How hard can things get? Our days are mad, there's no other word for it. From 6.30am to 11pm at the earliest (it's 1am as I write this) we simply don't stop, apart from dinner. Every other minute of our very long days are busy & intense.
Ivy turned 2 ten days ago & decided she should be assertive & defiant now. Just like that, overnight. I couldn't believe it, still can't. So instead of her being bossed & bullied by Finn all day they now take it in turns. Oh, the joy! Not one but TWO screaming toddlers filling our ears all day.
Ivy's speech is also expanding at an almost alarming rate. This evening before dinner when she was getting tired she came up to me at my computer & said "I want some titty" (our term of endearment for a breast feed that she'd determined to not give up for a while yet). My reply: "not now ivy, Mummy's working & dinner will be ready soon". She gave me the cutest smile she could muster (which is about as cute as cute gets), held up one finger & waving it around says, "Just a little bit, just a tiny bit of titty!". Way too cute for anyone's good ( :
When she wakes in the morning she is VERY chatty so whoever is getting up with her needs to do it fast, otherwise Finn will wake up before he's ready & be grumpy all day. Neither Kim or I are great morning people so that getting up fast business is painful. Kim usually puts a pillow over his head when she wakes for her morning feed, so when she finishes & loudly says "I want to get up now!" I need to decide, in my sleepy stupor, if I can justify shaking him & asking him to get up or if I have had more sleep. it usually depends on night wakings. 2 nights ago Finn woke at 2am & screamed his high pitch scream for at least 30 minutes. We still don't know why. Of course then ivy woke & needed cuddling back to sleep for at least half an hour too. Last night Ivy had a tummy bug & wanted to go to the toilet at about 3am so I sat with her in the bathroom for ages while we chatted about the bath toys. Such fun!
They sleep either side of our bed, in their own beds. There are 2 reasons for this. We rent a 2.5 bedroom house & there are 6 of us. Brody sleeps in a Kombi van in the driveway. One room is my work room. Chelsea gets the .5 of a room. & the rest of us get the other room. BUT even if we had more rooms, we don't believe in sending babies to a room alone until they are ready. We receive a lot of eye rolls, direct criticism, shaking head, etc, for this. But what other species on earth sends their young to sleep apart from them from birth. I find it the most barbaric of practices imaginable! Chelsea & Brody slept with me until they started school & even after that they would sleep with me on weekends until they were 10ish. i loved it. it most definitely increases the bond & also the child's confidence, I've been noticing this for 17 years now in my & other's kids. 3 of my 4 kids have been incredible confident from a very early age, Finn is different but I hate to think how he'd be if he were born into a family who expected him to "be a big boy" before he was ready.
He's all over the place at the moment. So much aggression & screaming lately. We've seen our wonderful kineisiologist Antonia again today & she's put him on more supplements, the selenium did wonders but then we started iron which seems to have not agreed with him. it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few days.

House: we had some wonderful help from Kim's mum & step dad George & Barb & his brother & sister in law Pete & Renie over the weekend of Ivy's birthday (23rd Feb). So our joists are finished, the tie rods that attach the bearers into the footings are nearly done & the 1st layer of flooring (chipboard bought on eBay for $200) is almost finished being painted (to protect it from rain while Kim does the framing & gets a roof up). Coming along nicely.
We are totally broke at the moment. I had the embarrassment today of not being able to pay for my groceries. I had to go home, transfer funds from Brody's bank account into mine & rush back to the checkout chick who was holding my shopping for me to pay. My own silly fault for not checking before I went out, I was sure there was money there! I should be listing now instead of writing this but it's the 1st thing I've done for my own pleasure for days. Having people visit is lovely & makes for a nice break but when I'm not working it really costs. if I don't turn over about $150 a day I have to make up for it by doing bigger days to catch up. I've been a bit of a mess lately & not very efficient so our finances are really showing it. Telstra suspension notices, etc. I'm getting back on top of it now though, no Easter break for us!
Brody's been having another meltdown. Kim's been stepping in there to try & keep him afloat so I can keep working. He was taking with him til 11.30 pm last night. He's better today. It's complicated....
My Grandmother died yesterday. She was a good nan, although I didn't know her very well. I think she had a good life. She seemed to be always happy, I'll remember her for being a happy person, even if we weren't close. The saddest thing for me about her death was that I don't feel a sense of loss. I really wish I did. I just didn't have a relationship with her. I hope that my children will be sad when they lose their grandparents, it will mean that they had a close & loving relationship.
I'd better get some sleep, 1.30am now, will have to be up in 5 hours & do it all over again (unless I give Kim a shake!).

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY

2008-02-18T15:27:00.003+11:00

That's life at the moment. Dealing with the rain.
Work on the house is so, so slow. It rains every day & I think it's rained almost every day this year. We are still on the floor joists. Nearly finished, but a couple of good days of work. I think Kim has just about got his head around working in the rain.

Finn's behaviour has improved since seeing a kinesiologist, Antonia Swift here in Katoomba. He is testing strongly for Arsenic so she has him on Selenium drops as it detoxifies. We had him on it for a week before we forgot the drops in Sydney. We then went about 10 days without & he's back on them again now. The difference is amazing, his screaming has decreased by well over 50%. He is also more affectionate, ie he actually asks to be picked up & I've even get a hug or 2, although brief. He also seems more flexible on how things are done. Today he started to scream about Ivy starting the 2nd half of her sandwich before finishing the 1st but when I asked him to just let her decide how she wanted to eat her sandwich he actually let it go. Usually he would create a huge fuss & get very upset.

It's a huge relief to have him acting somewhat normally occasionally. Kim just called me from the block where he is with Finn. We're having a truck load of timber delivered & the ownder of the recycled timber yard bought his 4 yar old son with him & they were playing!!! This warranted a phone call to tell me. He was even speaking to the boy. Finn still has an obsession with boats & we picked up a small plastic boat being thrown out the other day (meant to be a small sand pit) & they were in it together playing. Very, very unusual for Finn. In fact it was a first. Wonderful!!!

We have started going to a new playgroup here in Katoomba that is set up for kids with "special needs". There are 2 facilitators, one stays with the kids in one room that is filled with gorgeous toys, the other sits & chats & makes tea for the mums in an ajoining room. The kids can go back & forth. There are only 4-5 kids/mums so it is calm & quiet & Finn is really enjoying it. The faciltator who stays in with the kids brings her own "normal" 3 year old son Clancy & there are 2 other 3 year old boys too, one who is non-verbal & the other very shy. It is run by the Connect Children's Support Services who have done an assessment of Finn & at this point feel that even though he has a lot of typical Asperger traits he makes eye contact too often to have it. I'm still not convinces & need to talk to more parents before I make the decision to have him medically assessed or not. He makes very little eye contact & his Aspie traits are so overwhelming, if he doesn't have Aspergers & is just a strange child, well, he's pretty strange!

We have had Brody to see Dr Varipatis in Manly last week & he has asked for lots of tests to be done, hair analysis, blood & urine tests. They go as far afield as the US for testing so we won't have results until after easter. It costs a small fortune so I hope we get some results. The dr suggested we will be able to use the results as a guide to what may be affecting Finn too as we can't afford to have him tested quite yet.

I don't think I've written much about Bordy before, basically he is totally exhasted most of the time & is emotionally extremely fragile. He is hating school, refuses to do homework & hardly helps at home, apart from helping with the kids but even that is getting more resistance these days. I know that may sound like typical teenage behaviour but it's really extreme, he really does have a problem & I'm getting desparate to figure out what's wrong with him.

I'm not coping with things very well at the moment. It all seems so, so hard. So much to do, so much to think about. I dream of a boring, simple life!

scroungers

2008-01-30T00:33:00.000+11:00

Kim & I are self professed junkies, no not drugs, we love junk. At the moment the "chuckouts" are on, for those less informed this is the time that people place their unwanted goods on the side of the road for council workers to collect. We take great pleasure in saving these treasures from landfill, greenies that we are. So in the last week or so we have a clothes dryer!!! (look at ebay item 320211777520, same as our 'new' one), a 3 way camping fridge, old but works perfectly, new ride on plastic stuff for the kids (as if they need it!), nice pine chest of drawers, imaculate timber venetians x 4, an incredible toilet (my favourite find, photos to come, it's amazing!), plastic drop down blinds for the verandah, boxes of books, very nice rugs, an old ornate fire place surround in cast iron (bound for our outdoor bathroom someday I think, we have 2 clawfoot baths, one for indoors & one for my long dreamt of outdoor "bathroom"), brooms, new mops, a gorgeous old cane chair, 2 art deco light fitting & lots more that I can't think of right now. I hate that people throw such great stuff to landfill but I love that we can just collect it for free! I really don't get why these people can't take these things to the charity shops though, what are they thinking? Oh, I forgot to mention the 200 year old violin. I'm not kidding. thank god we saved it. It is just gorgeous & quite valuable. A Hopf from germany. Oh, and at least 100m of thick black plastic pipe that will connect the house to the water tank (quite an effort to get it onto the truck!).

BEARERS & JOISTS

2008-01-25T09:20:00.000+11:00

I went over to the block last night to take some photos of the Peugeot (for ebay) & took a few more pics while I was there with no kids to take up my time. It was lovely being there alone for a few minutes! Here's where we're up to. That's the kitchen in the foreground! Kim put a piece of chipboard there so I could stand at the kitchen sink & enjoy my view! Eitherside where there's no joists yet will be decking, that will come later. We're off to spend the weekend in Sydney, hopefully the joists will get finished next week, the weather's been bad again ) :

ramblings

2008-01-24T08:38:00.000+11:00

My Ivy is a girl, a real girl! She is a feisty little thing & quite defiant & cheeky but such a girly little thing. She's started to insist on wearing dresses, yesterday I dressed her in pants to go out to see a friend & when I'd finished she said "OK, my dress now!". So we popped a little skirt over the pants & she was happy. She was given 2 dresses by a friend yesterday & she had to immediately put one on , then take it off & put the other one on. She also loves shoes, hats & bags. It's all a bit foreign to me after Chelsea being such a toboy but it is fun dressing her up!
Finn has decided he wants his hair short like Mum. Dad's not impressed, Finn's going to have to really persist with this one! He cut a bit of it himself last week, then brought Ivy into my workroom to show me how he can cut her hair too! I think he knew he needed my aproval before he began! He just hates having it brushed & it's quite a bit ofwork keeping it knot free, a job we often give to Lucy our nanny twice a week to catch up on. These days she's plaiting it which looks gorgeous on him!
I've added some new photos to previous posts, it takes me a while to get to these things, catching up financially after 2 weeks off over Christmas is proving to take longer than I thought it would. Ebay's a little quieter than I would like but not too bad.
We've just had another week of rain so not much has happenned on the house, still getting through the floor joists. I think they're about 2/3s done. The sun is out today so Kim's over there for the day. We've bought our roofing this week, due to be delivered next week I think. Another bargain at $6.20 a meter but we are having to change the planned colour. New colourbond at this price is just about unheard of so worth a colour change, it's saved us about $2500. So the colour will now be headland (dark red, almost a terracotta) instead of ocean blue. With our funds very tight now we need to save wherever we can.
We've managed to get a tax return done so that will bring some dollars in & we'll have to sell the Peugeot now too, I'm happy with the Mazda so no point keeping it.

she loves her twirly skirts!

arm in plaster, due to come off Jan.31st

belly laughing, she's always happy!

Finn always happy to RUN!

Brody's artwork on her plaster

must be the smallest plaster cast on earth!

This Sunday we're off to Sydney for the 20th reunion of the crew of the 1st Fleet Re-enactment that I was involved in in 87-88. We're going sailing on the Svanen (one of the tall ships that did the trip & is still here in Sydney) followed by a party at an ex-crew member's place in the inner West. We went to the opening of an exhibition of memorabilia from the event, put together by the organiser Jonathon King in Avalon. I won a writing competion when I was 15 (25 years ago!) that was held by the First Fleet re-enactment comittee & Jonathon had my original story, letter that accompanied it & photo I had submitted all on display. At the time I won a month on a tall ship. It was so funny to see it, my handwriting back then was sooo neat! I don't know what happenned lol! We caught up with a few people we hadn't seen for years (Mario came along to). I went on to work on the Bounty as a cook & sailed to England from Sydney & then did the 1st half of the re-enactment voyage back, Mario & I met on the Bounty & left together in Rio to travel in South America. That seems like another lifetime ago now. Here's a few pics I took at the exhibit.

he had even kept the little cutout I filled in from the newspaper!

a photo of a photo, the ships at portsmouth. Bounty is to the right of centre.

Laid back Ivy

bored teenager

she just wouldn't keep those toes still for me! I like it anyway. Her feet on the table at a restaurant, little feral.

wildflower

2008-01-17T14:51:00.000+11:00

I took this on the block the other day, then went back in the afternoon to look at it again & it had vanished!

NEW CAR!

2008-01-13T10:06:00.000+11:00

My last post had been saved as a draft for about a week so it was actually quite old.
We have since been back to Westmead & had ivy's arm xrayed & placed in a full plaster. It is healing well & she looks so, cute, her plaster is just tiny. Brody drew a dalek on it (he's a mad Dr. Who fan). She won't let me write on it!
Yesterday we were out at the garage sales & came across a 1988 Mazda 626 7 seater station wagon with 6 months rego for $800, so we bought it! My old Peugeot has been out of Rego for 2 months so I have been carless. It need quite a bit of work to get it registered & we just haven't had the time (or haven't wanted to put the time into the car instead of the house) or the money to pay someone to do it. Kim was going to have to do it soon as you can only leave a car unregistered for 3 months before you have to get a blue slip, so we were dreading him having to take several days off the house to work on the car.

We weren't looking for a new car, this was just too good a deal to pass up & I love it! It drives beautifully, has heaps more grunt & mod cons than the Peugeot & (touch wood) seems to have no issue other than a CV joint that will need replacing sometime soon.
The house: Bearers finished & joists about 1/3 done, maybe a bit more. We are having to de-nail as we go as all out bearers & joists are recycled timber & most of it was not de-nailed. We've paid about $1 a meter for most of it so it's worth the extra effort of denailing. hoping to have the joists finished this week. Photos coming soon.

BROKEN ARM!

2008-01-08T10:05:00.000+11:00

No, it wasn't a sprain. She has a fractured elbow ) :

Here she is playing with a half cast on about 3 days after the event.

Of course I now feel like a real goose!

On Sunday after the fall (new years eve) she was OK & using the arm but was whiny & it was tender. We kept checking her wrist which seemed to have full movement & no pain. It was in the afternoon when we went swimming at the lake that I noticed her very swollen elbow when she screamed in pain as I tried to get her arm into her swimsuit. She couldn't straighten it. So we took her to hospital Monday morning & had x-rays done. The Dr told me that he couldn't see a fracture & they didn't have a radiologist there until Wednesday so if the radiologist saw anything we would get a phone call. I thought it a bit strange but there wasn't much I could do so home we went. We went to a NYE party & she was happy & had a good time. Tuesday she was also fine, we had to be careful dressing her & putting her in her car seat, otherwise she was using it without pain. Tuesday night at 2am (wed. morning) she woke up in pain & was awake crying for most of the night. I knew then it was broken although had thought it was since the Monday (always trust your gut feelings!) So we were back at the hospital 1st thing Wednesday morning, she was still in tears, had hardly stopped since 2am. The radiologist took one look at the x-rays & of course saw the break instantly. They showed them to us that time & it actually seemed quite obvious.

While we were waiting for a Dr to put a plaster on she went to sleep in my arms, I put her down in a cot & they put the plaster on while she slept, she was totally exhausted. They only put a half cast on & gave us a referral to an orthapedic surgeon at Westmead for the next day at 8am. So up at 5.30, out by 6.15 & there by 8, only to be told that it was too swollen for a full plaster so come back next week! She was the youngest patient to have this type of fracture he had ever seen. He also said it is worse than it appears in the x-rays. And he will need to re-x-ray next week (this Thursday) to check for any movement as there can be complications if it moves at all including growths on the bone causing deformity as she grows! That brick pier was only 60cm tall, are we unlucky or what!

Anyway, she's coping pretty well with it & it's not stopping her from doing much but causes us much stress everytime she falls, which of course she does a fair bit. We're looking forward to getting that full plaster on to protect it a bit better. She won't let us put a plastic bag over it so we can give her a bath & the bandage around her hand is getting pretty disgusting!

Things are progressing extremely well on the house (finally!!). Kim has finished levelling all the piers, he had to make timber forms to sit on each pier & then adjust their height with cement to make them all level. We used our $5 laser beam level (garage sale find) to level them all, it was so easy! So we're now into the bearers, it's very exciting! Kim thinks he'll have the bearer's & joists finished by the end of the week & then we'll be laying the floor!!!!! OMG! It's been so hard getting to this point, if only things could go smoothly for a while. The weather is being kind, a bit of rain here & there & overcast a lot but not too bad.

PIERS FINISHED!!!

2007-12-29T22:55:00.001+11:00

Today we finished our house foundations! 116 footings & brick piers all DONE!!! It was such an amazing feeling, to stand there in the middle of all those bricks! I took heaps of photos (will add when I have more time) & stood the kids on piers, until Ivy fell off. What a bad mum I am (Kim says i'm over-reacting). She whined & cried in pain for the rest of the evening, complaining of "an owie" in her arm. We'll see how she is tomorrow, hopefully just a sprain. It was hot, which we're not used to, & everyone was tired. but SO elated!

a well deserved beer

hooray!!!

hooray again (no wonder she fell!)

Christmas

2007-12-27T00:33:00.000+11:00

This was Ivy's 2nd Christmas & Finn's 4th! It was good, although different this year. we decided to celebrate Christmas on December 21st this year, so that Chelsea & Brody could leave with Mario for the Woodford Folk Festival http://www.woodfordfolkfestival.com/ early (23rd).

We spent 3 nights at Mario's new house on Scotland island. Finn loved the boat rides, both the ferry & Mario's 'fast boat'. We took our new 2 man kayak down & he loved that too, until we put mum & dad in it with a toddler each on their laps & mum (to her shame!) capsized it. Well, it was VERY top heavy! Luckily Finn had a great time alone with dad paddling around & then another great time with Mum & Ivy, so he has some good kayaking memories, although they do seem to be the less memorable. We'll try again in a few weeks!

Brody received his new kayak that we were very proud to have picked up (in shabby condition) for $1 from a garage sale. Kim did a few minor repairs & spray painted it & it looked fabulous. Then on the big morning Brody opened his huge present & couldn't fit in it ) :
We think it must be a white water kayak, designed to be a snug fit & to be righted when rolled. We want him to be able to get OUT quickly. Especially after out little capsize with Finn & Ivy! We were out so quickly then that they hardly got their hair wet! So we are on the lookout for another one for Brody before he get's home from Queensland.

Ivy on the phone

Christmas lunch

happy birthday Brody

2007-12-12T22:56:00.000+11:00

Today Brody turned 14. Definitely not a little boy any more, although it only seemed like yesterday that he was. He had a sleep in, we woke him with a chocolate croissant for breakfast followed by scrambled eggs with parsley (a favourite in our house). We then all went off to school to the end of year assembley to see Chelsea get her school certificate. I sat there with Ivy on the breast while Chelsea gave a speech, it was weird! She thanked her parents "all 3 of them"! I was proud!
Brody hadn't been to school since Bosun died, he was so upset we've let him take the rest of the year off, about the last 10 days of school. After school today he has taken the train with his group of friends to randwick for 2 nights where his friend Brenagh has moved. it's strange to not have him here for his birthday night but he's doing what he wanted & will be having heaps of fun. I took a chocolate mud cake to school for him to share with his friends.
We went to Sydney last night to get him & had a birthday dinner at Ibiza, one of his favourite restaurants in Avalon. It was a lovely night.

BRODY IS 14!!!

IVY & MARIO

WHAT A SHOW OFF!

ADORATION

FINN HAVING FUN WITH MARIO

CHELSEA & BRODY WITH THEIR DAD

THE BOYS

TRUE LOVE

Ivy

2007-12-11T01:02:00.000+11:00

Ivy thought that Finn was getting too much attention. So she fell over in the local op shop & bashed her head against the floor. I heard the clunk as it hit. I turned, walked toward her as she screamed. Then she stopped. Everything. No screaming, no breathing. Limp in my arms. Only for about 15 seconds but way too long for any parent's liking. Ambulance was called. She breathed & stayed semi-conscious & sheet white for about 15 minutes & slowly came right. Ambulance arrived & they checked her over. Suggested a hospital visit. i chose to keep her calm & watch her but knew she was fine. I wasn't!
We've booked Finn in for a "screening" in early feb. His behaviors is getting more strange by the day I think, or is it my imagination? Am I looking for it? maybe, but I don't think so. Wouldn't kiss me goodnight tonight because he'd brushed his teeth & I hadn't. he's 3 years old for god's sakes.
He's always been great with food but he's starting to get fussy. Apples going too brown, that sort of thing. Wouldn't eat his peas tonight. He's always eaten peas. he's coming out with funny things. life revolves around boats. thank goodness for Duplo. dad makes great Duplo boats! he replicated the Scotland island rubbish boat tonight, to put Finn's rubbish truck on. Finally found his much awaited steering wheel, I think it's supposed to be a Duplo camp fire , bits of wood sticking out but looks like a steering wheel to me (wishful thinking?). Did the trick anyway. he's been hard today. needs company but won't play with kids! Dad's working, mum's trying, he wants us to play! the rain keeps coming, more fog & drizzle than rain today but not outside playing weather.
We had a good weekend. Found a 2 seater kayak at a garage sale. Finn almost wet himself with excitement. it's on the block & he goes fishing, ties it up at wharfs, takes ivy for rides, etc. he knows that we'll hit the water with it at Xmas. He asks questions every day, where, when , how. You'll hang on tight to ivy won't you mummy? he keeps life interesting but our days are SO intense. We managed 4 piers yesterday. i think that makes about 65 of 108. Slow going. Finn had to help, with his own trowel (said with a very round mouth). constant thinking of what he can do next. "what's next dad?", "what can I do now", over & over. don't bother trying to distracting him, a waste of time & energy & he might get insulted, then all hell breaks loose. he sees right through us, no fooling him.
Cannot toilet train him. ivy's pretty much there but he just refuses. Stayed in a poo for 2 hours today because he denied he'd done one & refused to lie down for me & I didn't have the energy to fight him. he wanted his train set & i said "only if I change your nappy". He went without his trains.
my mother tried to call tonight. Spoke to Chelsea for the 1st time this year but apparently didn't ask how she was, how her school certificate went or anything else. Then she proceeded to call Kim's mobile to let us know she got a letter from the bank saying our loan is in arrears. Our building loan is in their name until we are able to re-mortgage when the house is up. So they get all correspondence. I have no idea why it should be in arrears, we were at the bank about 3 weeks ago & all was fine & all payments have been made. It just irks me that my mother wants to call when she thinks we aren't paying a loan that's in her name but has no interest in calling to discuss creating an honest & respectful relationship. my stand in life is this, if it isn't good & healthy I want to change it & if that fails then I reject it. i am open to working on every relationship in my life if the effort is mutual. I believe the world would be a better place if we made a stand to reject the toxic relationships in our life & demand respect & a loving environment for our children. i won't ever talk to my parents unless they accept my request that we focus on improving our relationship. harsh? hardly. for the 1st time in my life I'm being kind to myself, demanding what it is that I need. it only took me 40 years! We're slow to learn & even slower to change, but I know we're all capable of it if we want it badly enough. My children deserve this change.

Finn's Poem

2007-12-03T20:47:00.000+11:00

finn
I've always had a gut feeling that something wasn't quite right with our little boy Finn. He has always been different. But all my kids are "quirky". So at times I've just settled into thinking he is just part of my unusual but lovely family, keeping life interesting! Then other times I lay awake at night wondering what makes him tick, why he is so challenging in his ways. last week a friend mentioned, when I was venting my frustrations over his behaviour, the word "Asperger's".
When I got home I went online & started reading. I ticked all the boxes. Doesn't make friends or relate to his peers. Plays happily with older & younger siblings, older people in general who are familiar to him. Doesn't like change or upset to routine. Has intensely strong emotions. is highly intelligent with a very good vocabulary. Steers away from affection. Is highly imaginative & obsessive in his interests (boats at the moment). He worries about things that a 3 year old should even notice, eg Ivy going near the road or even that possibility will get him screaming in no time. He has peculiar obsessions with a variety of things, eg having to turn the TV off the instant a program has ended & if you try & stop him he will get extremely upset. If you promise him something he will never forget it. If he wants something he will never forget it until he gets it. E.G. wanted a violin for his 3rd birthday & talked about not much else for 2 months beforehand. Is clumsy & motor skills are somewhat delayed, walked at 16 months, still not riding a tricycle at 3 years 4 months. trips & falls constantly. Will often not listen, even when he asks a question, just repeats himself. Has irrational fears, The Hooley Dooleys, lately the Wiggles, he flips out if he knows Ivy is watching them, even if you offer him another activity in another room. They are "scary". I could go on but that covers most of it I think.
Where to go from here???
last night he made up a little poem:

Humpty Dumpty sat in a puddle

poor Humpty

Give him a cuddle

and a recent one of Ivy at the park

GOODBYE BOSUN BOY

2007-12-01T22:38:00.000+11:00

This week our gorgeous dog Bosun left us.
He was with us for 9 years & was loved immensely. We are all in shock. He went to work with Chelsea & Brody's dad Mario, as he always does, on Wednesday this week but Mario hopped out of his car & forgot the dog. He is extremely busy this time of year, he is a yacht rigger. He has many big contracts leading up to Christmas & is always under pressure to get everything finished on time. Bosun spent the day in the car. He was still alive when Mario found him but he didn't make it. It had been hot. Telling Chelsea & Brody that news was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do as a parent. I had to wait for Kim to get home to take care of Finn & Ivy before I told them, I knew Chelsea & Brody were going to fall apart. He had to get all his tools packed away so it took him about half an hour to get home, such a long half an hour. Time seems to stand still in times like those.
We threw stuff into bags & were on the road to Sydney by 5. We went straight to the vets to say goodbye to him. That was so hard. he looked so fit & healthy & strong.
Mario was, of course, devastated. we stayed that night & the next, just crying & trying to come to terms with it. We have lost a family member.
I wish I'd taken more photos of him. 9 years of great memories will never leave us though. i miss him so much already.

the long hard haul

2007-11-22T23:26:00.000+11:00

things are hard. really hard. it keeps on raining. It's very hard to build a house when it's raining. I know I shouldn't complain about rain but I want my house. I am so tired. The kids are hard too. They are so gorgeous & of course so very loved, but they need so much of our time. And yet I still feel like they are neglected due to our work. They watch about 4 times the amount of TV that I would be comfortable with. Just the Wiggles, Playschool, Postman Pat & the like, we're very selective on what they can watch, but they are addicted. especially ivy. She loves to watch TV. I think they love the fact that someone sings & dances for them for at least half an hour, often more! Mum & Dad never do that! They'd be lucky to get 15 of our time in a stretch. Sad but true.
My work is going well. We have moved Brody out to a Kombi in the driveway for the summer, so I got the big bedroom as a workroom. It's amazing. I have already filled it with all my stock & it's already looking like organised chaos but I am so much more efficient. We have taken on a nanny 2 days a week, Lucy, one of Chelsea's best friend's older sister (but also Chelsea's friend). She's 18 & has just finished her HSC. She's fabulous, the kids love her & she's so patient, even in the trying times. And she gets trying times. Like Finn insisting he eats the mango IN the supermarket, not in 10 minutes time at the park. When Finn insists he really insists. You couldn't believe it til you see it. Lately he's clenching his teeth & nearly hyperventilating when things aren't working out for him. He's waking too early & needs to sleep in the afternoon but if he does, which is rare, he doesn't go to sleep at night until 10pm. So we tolerate him, just. It's hard. He's a very intense little boy. Gee, I wonder where he gets that from??
I said work is good but I've just had an awful experience with a buyer who was just YUK!! I wish I could let those things jut wash over me but I am human & I am sensitive! I work so hard, I try & do the best thing by my customers & we barely make ends meet, so when someone calls me greedy for trying to the best of my ability to harmoniously finalise a sale it actually really hurts! She deserved negative feedback which she got from me, she then followed up with outrageous lies, so ridiculous that they didn't actually bother me. She then left me negative feedback which was very insulting but it was automatically removed because she didn't respond to my non paying bidder alert. But the ugly comments still stay & that hurts. Today I had a buyer want a refund for a Baby gap Pj they bought that was new but she expected it t be in a sealed plastic bag & it wasn't. I photographed it as it was, no bag, but because the previous Gap PJ's she'd bought on eBay were in bags she expected this to be. What do you do!?? I agreed to a refund.
What I really hate is when people aren't polite. They ask something of you as though it's their God given right but can't seem to take the time to be friendly & polite. What's going on in our world?! MOST people are great, thank goodness. But I'm sure the percentage that are rude & demanding is increasing. i have some wonderful regular customers who I feel like I know even though I have never met them & I love that. I really enjoy those relationships. But the bad eggs just do my head in. it's not that hard to be nice is it?? Apparently for some people it is.
Anyway, enough griping. Although I don't feel like doing much else these days. I'm pretty miserable to be around. I do wish I could manage a bit better, I should be pretty happy really. I have a wonderful partner who I love to death, 4 gorgeous, intelligent quirky kids, half an acre of the most beautiful bush land with the makings of a home to die for. But I work my butt off, from 6.30am to midnight 5 days a week every spare moment is spent on my computer, taking photos or packaging things. I breastfeed & address envelopes at the same time. I have my morning cup of tea & toast while I answer emails. I create listings while I talk on the phone. I constantly find distractions for the kids so I can keep on working. I sell about $1000 worth of clothing every week. I'd be proud of that if I did it while my kids are at school. But 2 of them are at home with me. I don't feel proud of what I'm doing to them. If only we could get some help to get this house up.

2007-11-22T22:20:00.000+11:00

ABOVE GROUND

2007-10-18T13:32:00.000+10:00

I can't believe it's been nearly 2 months since my last post??!! Where does the time go?
People always ask, "how's the house going?" & we always say "great", "good", "OK", or however else it's been going but the fact is it's going SLOWLY!!!
Trying to build a house at the same time as make a living from home to cover both rent & a mortgage, AS WELL AS parenting a 1.5 & 3 year old & a 13 & 16 year old , well, all I can say is "what were we thinking?". No regrets, far from it, but it is soooo hard.
To make matters worse, Ivy has slowly shifted her waking schedule to begin at 5.15am. Like clockwork. So night time work has all but ceased, I just fade at about 9.30pm these days. Which means I need to work during the day, with 2 toddlers to keep busy at the same time. Kim tries to take them to the block sometimes but then he get's very little done. So we either build a house & go broke or pay the bills & make painfully slow progress on the house. We'd love to just borrow an extra $10 000 to cover bills for a few months, then I could slow down with work & just be Mum & Kim could soldier on & build this house. But the banks won't come to the party. Our accounts aren't impressive enough for them, so struggle on we will. We are getting there, we've taken on a nanny 2 days a week so I can work more. Lucy is an 18 yr old friend of Chelsea's from the circus group they are in, Finn & Ivy know her & look forward to their days with her.
At the block we have finally gone above ground & we have piers! They should be done by the end of next week, 108 of them. Then Kim gets to start playing with timber!! The weather has finally warmed up so that has made things a lot easier too. I hope things will start to progress at a faster rate now.
Finn & Ivy have had a cold for about 3 weeks now. It has gone to Finn's chest & he's not shaking it. Fever is going up & down & we've all had a strange rash, especiallyIvy. So we're off to the naturopath/herbalist tomorrow.
I don't get nearly enough time for my photos (apart from ebay ones!), I still haven't even touched on the workings of my new camera. It is great for my ebay pics, so, so much faster & the quality is great but I am not always happy with the accuracy of colours. Would like to figure that out.
The slideshow I added a few posts back doesn't seem to work??
Here are a few of the favourites I've taken so far:

You know what I mean?

Ivy at the park

Finn -Blackheath

little Lily -I love this pic!

Luca - love this one too!

Ivy modelling Baby Lulu

and again

Finally completed the footing holes & starting the retaining wall at the back of the house. Time to BUILD!!!!!

duck at the lake, wentworth falls

wildman

duck feeding

wentworth falls lake

Ivy at Cirquinox, getting into the spirit of things

checking out the talent

I'm so cool

Fire twirling at McCarrs Ck, Full Moon drumming

summer is here-well spring!

yum!!

2007-08-24T23:56:00.001+10:00

happy snaps

2007-08-24T13:25:00.000+10:00

I am enjoying my new camera! I haven't had a chance to sit down & learn how it all works but I'm having fun anyway. It's been raining, cold & miserable pretty much since I got it so I can't get the kids outside so that's a bit frustrating, we are all going nuts indoors.
Here a few of my 1st pics of them with it.

my fave so far! How cute are those chubby hands!!

\

I've got to remember to clean their faces before I pull the camera out!

this is one of Ivy's classic looks of feigned surprise, it always makes me laugh!

flooring, gardening & doors on the shed

2007-08-14T23:07:00.000+10:00

We have progressed slightly on the building front but not a huge amount over the past few weeks. We've just had another couple of weeks of rain to delay things. Kim also went to Victoria & collected our flooring & was gone 5 days. It took a week before that to prepare the loaned trailer for the trip, saving money takes so much time!
Our shed is now pretty much complete & locked up & kim has moved a lot of stuff out of our garage here at the house over there so now I have been able to clear the house a bit & make some breathing room. We are planning a garage sale in a couple of weeks, going to garage sales every week enables us to find some great bargains for the house, to sell on ebay & for the kids but also to accumulate a lot of STUFF!!
The flooring is fantastic, a great buy. It looks great stacked neatly over on the block ready to go! It's nice to see all the piles of materials accumulating, it makes it start to feel very real finally.
Here a pic of the truck/trailer loaded up the day after they got home.

I believe that's about 4 tonnes of timber.

We also had Finn's 3rd birthday (July 23rd), here's a few pics of his party we had on the block that was a really great day, cold but not freezing & everyone just had fun.

getting some help with the cake, he wanted "a cake with strawberries on it".

His very own brushcutter to help clear all that tea-tree!

Mario & Brody helping Finn get a little more bounce out of his trampoline!

Talking to Grandma on the phone, & seeing her!!

Chelsea & friends

Still 40 holes to fill, they've been rained in so many times they need a bit of re-digging.

Ivy's 1st fairy bread experience, I think she liked it.

Today I got the kids outside & took my 1st natural light shots of them with the new camera (I think I'm going to nickname it "the toy", it's just too much fun!)
I couldn't chose which shots to add here so I made up a little slideshow but forgot to include a few a that I am quite happy with:

40 today!!

2007-08-10T16:55:00.000+10:00

I wrote this 3 days ago on my birthday & saved the draft but didn't get a chance to add to it, so here it is:
yes, I'm 40 years old today!! A new decade beginning...Boy I hope it will be an easier one than the last decade which has been rich & rewarding but overwhelmingly full & way too busy to the point of chaos! I've lived in 7 different houses in the last 10 years. I have one more move to do & I won't be going anywhere for a long while!!

I spent the first half of my birthday at the hospital (life is never boring) with brody who woke complaining of a painful neck & looking like death warmed up. He also had put himself to bed at 10.15 last night saying he was really tired, this is unheard of for him, I always have to insist he goes to bed & never succeed before 10.30 at the earliest. He & Chelsea missed the bus this morning & while they were waiting for Kim to drive them to school he asked if he could stay home which I agreed to. Then at the last moment as Kim was leaving he changed his mind & went off to school. About an hour later I got a call from school as he was in the sick bay in tears. He had become so hot in 1st period that he said it hurt. I went & got him & took him to the hospital as my dr. was out of town today. A couple of hours later we finally saw a Dr who said the neck pain was muscular, couldn't explain the other symtems, gave him Nurofen & told me to keep him hydrated & watch out for rashes. He's slept most of the afternoon so he's definitely not himself but I don't know what's wrong. They went swimming yesterday following a trip to the national Museum, I think he may have caught a bug from the pool.

We came home & popped a bottle of champagne & Kim made us a lovely brunch of smoked salmon, capers, scrambled eggs, brie, sourdough & advocado, yum!! Chelsea arrived home too as she had a half day today, tomorrow is school open day so teachers needed time to prepare.

This afternoon I did a bt of work, we tidied the house a little, went out for some op-shopping (about the only shopping our budget allows for) & played with the kids. I have been hanging out for my birthday present to arrive but I knew it probably wouldn't as I ordered it too late. I have bought myself my long dreamt of SLR digital camera, a brand spanking new Canon 30D with 18-55 & 75-300 lenses. We can't afford it & it was paid for straight out of our building funds so it was a real indulgence but I am so happy about it!! I never buy anything for myself & I work so damned hard I decided I deserve it! I've wanted this camera for years now.

SHED COMPLETE...well, nearly!! AND.. a cubby house!

2007-07-31T20:48:00.000+10:00

As usual everything has been very slow but things are happening. We have a shed, almost completed & ready to become a workshop. we bought this shed quite some time ago off ebay & Kim has made it slightly bigger, so we've had to find extra colourbond to fill in the gaps. We'll eventually reclad it with corrugated iron & add a pitched roof & verandah to match the house, but for now it will do the job.
The kids have a very cute little cubby which they love! Happy kids mean more work done, so it was a small sacrifice of time to move it from the house Kim has been working on in Leura & it was a bargain at $80. Of course Kim being Kim had to do his modifications, make it stronger & add a ramp in place of the silly little stairs that ivy would have fallen on several times a day! The verandah also got a new railing. Next project for them will be a big sandpit next to the cubby when we find some sleepers.
This week Kim & Finn are off to Victoria to collect our flooring that we bought on ebay (of course). It is 150m2 of victorian Ash, 25 mm thick that we got for $10 a square metre. Worth a trip to Victoria & Kim will spend the weekend in Melobourne catching up with friends. as he hasn't been back in 4.5 years. Chelsea may also go with them as she is desparate to go visit NICA (National Institute for Circus Arts). I'm waiting on a call from her class teacher to hear if she's been keeping up with everything before deciding if she can have 4-5 days off school. She's been a bit slack this year& has been told to pull her finger out. This is her last term of year 10.
I'll be staying home to try & creat some order in our tiny, chaotic house. And of course, keep ebaying!
The weather has improved & days are actually quite nice. Hope it lasts as I am over this winter, the coldest since we've been in the mountains. The kids just love playing outside & it's been so cold they can't spend much more than 30 minutes without something turning purple!

FOOTINGS & PIERS

2007-05-28T13:38:00.000+10:00

I've been so busy I haven't posted for weeks, but things are slowly getting done! We have had a weekend to Buladelah for my good friend Penny's 40th birthday party, lots of fun apart from me coming down with a tummy bug on the friday night so not feeling too good until the Sunday.

We also had Chelsea's 16th birthday which coincided with Mother's day this year so we had a lovely lunch on the block.

Chelsea getting some help with her candles!

Me & my big girl!!

Sweet 16, isn't she lovely???!!! (ohh, she'll kill me for that!!). ((I think that's champagne in that cup!!))

The kids wanted to know what I wanted for Mother's day so after a few days thought & not coming up with anything material that I really wanted I asked for help pouring concrete! We had the holes for the footings emptied out & squared off ready to fill. We all stayed on the block on saturday the 12th, the kids Dad Mario came up in his Combi & they all slept in that & Kim & I , Finn & Ivy slept in the caravan. Kim & I stayed up pouring concrete until after midnight, I filled the mixer while Kim filled the holes.

After lunch the next day we all got stuck in & got about 2/3 of the 120 hole filled.

We had a big party for Chelsea on the block the following Saturday (hence the rush to get those holes filled). We had about 20 of the kids sleep overnight & party until about 3am. We created a Chai Tent for Chelsea, her favourite hangout at the Woodford music festival where we go almost every year for the Xmas /new year holidays. We had a big fire & the kids danced, fire twirled & I think generally had a good time. Chelsea's old teacher Julie from Kinma came up on the train, she taught Chels for years 4, 5 & 6 & we hadn't seen her since Chelsea finished year 6.

DANCING!!! WHOO WHOOOOO!!!!

LARA FIRE TWIRLING WITH THE POI. GO LARA!!!!

CHELSEA FIRE TWIRLING, GETTING VERY GOOD THESE DAYS!

FIRE, FIRE, EVERYWHERE!!!

MUM HAVING FUN, FINN GETTING TIRED

IVY RUGGED UP TRYING TO GET SOME NEW MUSIC OUT OF THE CD CASE

The gang the next morning on the 'shed" floor: Chelsea, Tom, Jack, Brody, Nat, Merade, Warren & Stef.

The morning after , Brody & Finn chilling out in the Chai tent

kim got the piers for the shed built & the joists/bearers/floor structure up in time for the party . We rigged up a big tarp over it & it became a stage/kitchen & the kids slept there too.

THE FIRST BRICK GOING DOWN, AN EXCITING MOMENT. FINALLY BUILDING UP!!!

AND THE FIRST COMPLETED PIER FOR THE SHED. ISN'T IT BEAUTIFUL!!!

Finn & Ivy in one of their more gorgeous moments ( :

and another one!

KIM & FINN HAVING A BREAK

HOLES!

2007-05-07T08:37:00.000+10:00

There are 120 of them. Eddie used his auger to dig 30cm deep , 30cm diameter round holes & we turned them in to 40cm square ones. Luckily we had plenty of rain before hand to soften the soil but almost none once digging began. We had our 1st building inspection when they were all finished last Friday & all is good.
Kim has finished the outhouse, nice to have a loo!
The gas has been connected & the trench has now been filled.
George & Barb (Kim's folks) arrived from Victoria week before last with 2 lemon trees to add to our ever expanding future garden. We have the beginnings of a good garden bed between the parking area & the house with a defined pathway through it that will lead to steps onto the deck.
We had a truck load of road base delivered last week which will be a cheap alternative to gravel & sand for out concrete pier supports, it was $150 for 8 tonnes as opposed to about $50 a tonne for the latter. We will also be making a concrete retaining wall along the back of the building site to keep everything contained. That will all happen this week. Then the plan is to get the shed up as we need it up by the 19th May for Chelsea's big 16th birthday bash.
We've just got back from my friend Penny's 40th birthday celebration on their lovely property near Buladelah between Newcastle & Taree. They have built their most amazing house & it is always inspiring to visit them. We have had our corrugated iron cladding stored on their 30acre property for the last 18 months or so (we've been buying building materials for about 3 years!0 so we loaded that onto the truck yesterday & are off to the block shortly to unload it, 60 sheets @ 6m long. The truck is paying for itself.
Still not getting much work done but my photo girl Emma is back at it this week (she takes my eBay photos for me) so I should get back into the swing of things soon I hope.

slow but steady

2007-04-22T11:03:00.001+10:00

Progress is slow lately due to a number of things. We went away for 5 days over Easter to the national Folk Festival in Canberra. Camping with a baby & a toddler is a questionable activity but the teens were keen to do something & camping is the only things that fits our budget at the moment. I got the festival tickets for half price on eBay, saved $300. Thank goodness for eBay! The trip was OK, nice to get away but so much preparation & effort to get there & then we didn't sleep well, it was cold at night. We slept in the truck, Kim rigged up a canopy to fully enclose the back. Ivy slept in a hammock hanging over the bed & that worked well.
I had 35 eBay parcels go missing in the post just before Easter, only to be returned to me after 4 weeks with apparently not enough postage on them, which was bollocks & caused huge amounts of stress & lack of sleep & gave me 6 negative feedback from very unkind people who refused to believe I had even posted their items, or held me responsible for the loss in the post. I had a major downer for a few weeks there, it all just got toooo hard. Anyway , that's all sorted now, although a couple of people are still saying they haven't got there parcels so hopefully the sage won't continue.
We have a sewer out on the block now, & Kim is in the middle of connecting a toilet. He has built a very cute little out house & I picked up an old door for $5 at a garage sale this morning to go on it. Kim's mum & stepdad George & Barb are visiting this week for a few days from Vic. so we have been giving the caravan a good clean & making it as homely as we can so they can stay in it. Just need some curtains so I'll be off to Vinnie's tomorrow.
Our budget's taken a bit of a blow with the head on our van that we sold to friends cracking, the mechanic says it's been cracked for a while so we sold it like that, consequently have offered to pay half of the $2500 repair. The truck needed new tires, another $700, & I haven't been earning much with all the eBay drama, too stressed to work & the time taken up emailing 35 upset buyers. Plus a week off over Easter & the cost of the trip, it's all taken a toll on the bank balance. I need to work!! I also need to night wean Ivy who is waking more & more through the night to feed. I started last night & she cried in my arms from about midnight to 1.30am before falling asleep. I gave in to her a 3.30am, too tired to resist. The again at 6.30am & we were up at 7. So if this entry is not making much sense you now know why!
We've had Eddie back with the excavator as we had a bit of water accumulate in one corner of the building site during a storm before Easter so it obviously wasn't flat. We have him coming back again on Friday to dig the holes for our pier supports. Kim decided that 108 holes would be easier with an auger. Eddie reckons about 30 seconds a hole! So next weekend we might be building piers!!

POWER

2007-03-31T03:20:00.000+10:00

We have power! Electricity that is! Successfully connected today & well under budget so we are very pleased. it all went smoothly with no hiccups. The trench will remain open while we organise the sewer & water next week, gap & phone lines after that.
The lights in the caravan even work!
The meter box is positioned exactly where it will sit once the house is built so there'll be no moving it at that time (planned to reduce electricains cost). We are pleased to have found an electrician taking Bartercard so that reduces the cash expenditure nicely. He & the plumber are both happy to let Kim do a lot of the preparation work too & have both offered to give advice along the way. So we have had nothing but good experiences with tradesmen so far.
better try & sleep, it's 3.30 am & I've been lying awake worrying about a few parcels I've sent going missing in the post lately. Someone left me negative feedback so I guess I'd better prepare myself for more, ebay buyers seem to not understand that I can't prevent loss in the post, somehow I am to blame. I get so upset by it, not to mention the rude emails. If only people could be nice, it's so hard to take when I am so tired. It is strange that several parcels have vanished so I will have to call the PO on Monday & try & track them down. Until then I'll try to not stress about my feedback & people thinking that I'm a crook?!!