#304 Saturday 2 July

Welcome to Helen! (Sally's mum) who arrived from NZ at 6pm last night and is staying for a week.

This morning Helen's having a "baptism of fire" ... Kaylia is in full "nagging" mode .... something is wrong but it is so hard to work out what it is. Trial and error. At times like this the best course is usually the course of least resistance .... car. A car trip has been 99% reliable over the years ... it nearly always calms her. The only time that I can recall it failing was the last trip to Bali ... it was the first day there and our new 'rule' for Bali is that we should not attempt to do anything on the first day.
(Naomi later says "Duh! Of course she's going to act up when there's a new person in the house.")

Yesterday I had my 6 week review of the wrist. The 'wrist doctor' says that of the 4 points, two - the LH solid arrows - have clearly fused ..... the point shown by the RH solid arrow can't be seen .... and the dotted arrow point at the lower right has not fused yet. This will happen, it will just take longer.
"Come back in 3 months. Use it as much as low level discomfort allows." he says. It's great to be free of the splint!

This afternoon we went on a Kings Park tour and stopped for Nandos on the way home .... A good afternoon.

#303 Friday 1 July

Pinch an a punch....

It's 4:45am .... I've been awake for an hour wondering if I should get up ... I'll write this and then get up. At least Kaylia is sleeping well .... no noise from Naomi so she may be awake too.

Wrist doctor today ... splint off ... Yay. (Provided of course that the X-rays show that the fused bones have healed properly.) This whole saga has been right up there in the severity scale .... I'd thought "Wrist = fairly minor" ... but using pain and effect on lifestyle as a measure, this has been worse than the bowel surgery I had a few years ago .... and that was classed as one of the most severe procedures.

Of course this view is distorted by the fact that I can read back over this blog and remind myself of each long night ...... but the tummy operation was pre-blog so my record is not so detailed.  I have an email written to a cousin who has been considering having the diverticulitus procedure done ..... I described the recovery time in hospital in a fair bit of detail.

As I write, Kaylia has become too hot .... Legs out from under the covers ... now she's jammed them into my back. Just as well I'm already awake!

5:45am   After a coffee and some fiddling with a minor repair job, I feel relatively human again!  Reading back through the recent blogs, it's a while since I've been able to sleep right through the night!  I wonder if that's a thing of the past?  Mostly I wake because the diabetes is making me visit the loo ..... then I can't go back to sleep because either my wrist is bothering me or my daughter is bothering me!  I know which I prefer!  The iPhone is magic though .... most of my writing is done while lying in bed in the middle of the night!

Naomi goes to Bali on Sunday night for two nights (... a quick trip to arrange things in the villa).  It will be interesting to see how Kaylia handles her absence.  Maybe the fact that her routine is that she uses me as a cuddle machine to get to sleep will mean that she copes with mummy being away.  I hope so.

#302 Thursday 30 June

Missed a day! It was busy.
Kaylia came home and crashed .... we Naomi & I got home she was already fast asleep. Not surprising considering her operation.

This next few weeks will be very intense ... juggling normal work while closing off the old financial year, starting the new, preparing the BAS, preparing the tax returns .... 6 of them. It all needs to be complete before we go to Bali on the 17th ... or I won't be able to relax while there!

We have a visitor arriving tomorrow night ... Sally's mum coming to stay for a week! Should be good! Sally's time with us is drawing to a close ... she finishes when we go to Bali .... she's coming too and the staying on when we return home.

The search for Aupair Number 11 continues ... it always seems to be a last minute dash! We have two good possibles at this stage.

Today? It's been a good night. It should be a good day for K. She's really loving the new school ... she seems very happy! She was always happy before but now she's even more happy! She dances her way to school.


Night: ..... yes, another good day at school followed by swimming pool ... (don't worry ... it's heated!)
She's becoming increasingly independent within her routines .... tonight she initiated and completed the bedtime routine without prompting.

#301 Tuesday 28 June

1:30am .... can't sleep ... it aches. I've been taking the splint off for massage and exercises ... I've taken a tablet ... I still don't sleep. It's only four hours till we have to get up to go to the hospital. C'est la vie. I'll write.

(This is a message to a reader who is thinking of starting her own blog .... hurry up!)

Yesterday I had a good talk about the nature of autism ... about the effect of the absence of imagination ... the nature of this .... whether this can be repaired or compensated for ... whether it should be at all! It was pointed out that our role (as parents) is to help Kaylia to cope with life in our society ... we are not here to make judgements about whether her nature is good or bad ... or if we should "fix" her. Hard thoughts!!

In a way this is one of the themes in the latest "X-Men" movie that we saw on Sunday ... good movie BTW! I enjoy a movie that prompts a lot of thought about the underlying themes and messages ... this one had more than most.



What does "Raven" have to do with this? She wanted to be accepted by human society because she didn't accept herself. Once she accepted herself, she could adjust to society.










It's 8:10am and Kaylia's just gone into theatre ..... very woozy! The pre-med does wonders.






Midday: we're home again after a well managed major event! It turned that Kaylia had an abcess under a molar bottom LHS ... the tooth had to go .... then two upper molars were obstructing emerging teeth ... they had to go too! So she's had 3 molars removed!
She recovered well and she was determined that she was going in the car! She wasn't going to stay in that hospital! So she was discharged in quick time and now she gets to sleep off the drugs.



We were shuddering at the thought of how this would have played out before modern dentistry.

The abcess explains her poor eating in the past few weeks ... she would have been in pain.

#300 Monday 27 June

We're sitting on the lounge after tea .... watching Kaylia. She's deeply involved in a set of rituals where she tries a DVD and changes it .... she does this in a set pattern of walking round the room in a particular way.... swinging a dingle-dangle ... dropping it at the right moment. She has a large pile of DVDs to process in this way. The whole process seems to be highly pleasurable.
She does it over and over. We finally tell her "Time for bed!" ... she's happy.

Mystery



Tomorrow she goes into hospital for some dental work. Any work means general anesthetic ... so a day in hospital and two anxious parents! Fortunately the hospital/dental team is highly skilled with kids .... the anesthetist uses a pink rabbit to do the pre-med!