#875 Saturday 30 March

Dawn was at 6:05am   While Naomi and Kaylia slept in, Brynn and I went to the rock to greet the sun.  The colours were 'ho-hum' this time..... much less startling than our last time at the rock.

                                                          The air was crisp and clear.




By 7:30, Kaylia was up and showered .... it was then time to go in the salt pool again. I explained about keeping her head out of the water so that her eyes didn't sting .... she understood and her hair stayed dry.
It feels very strange to float on top of the water rather than in the water. It is hard to rotate your body so as to change position in the water.

Now she's in the shower again.

8:30 .... We're all breakfasted and she's back in the salt pool! She's on her own in the pool and she's discovered that sounds echo .... the pool is set in a circular walled area and every sound she makes echoes around. She's trying out different words and sounds to see what makes the best echo.





"Daddy, come in yake pease."

No .... I'm enjoying sitting in the morning sun.

See Wave Rock behind the trees?





Checkout is 10 and we'll travel via a fete at Karlgarin .... then Narembeen to Bruce Rock and home.

Evening:
We didn't go via Bruce Rock after all.  Kaylia was showing signs of anxiety so we decided on the quickest route home.  The trip took 4 hours and we arrived home at 2pm  .... by that time Kaylia was ready for a hose session ..... and  Naomi was ready for an "op shop" session.....

#874 Friday 29 March

It's 4:00am .... she's downstairs singing her head off .... very happy .... very awake. She woke about an hour ago. In the current enthusiasm for "hose" it worries us that she might decide to go outside for a hose session at this time! So I need to be a little "lert"!

Yesterday I was telling her about our little holiday trip to Wave Rock .... based on her expression, I'm sure she remembers the place. It should be good.

8:30. She came back to bed about an hour later .... she's still asleep now. Fortunate that it's not a school day!

12:30. It's been a bad trip with Kaylia in high anxiety .... we're in Corrigin now and Naomi has had to do intensive management nearly all the way.

4:30pm. We're at our overnight spot at the Wave Rock Resort .... a 2 bedroom chalet ... one of about 14 in the middle of a series of salt lakes. Close by is a "pool" ... It's so salty that its like sitting in an armchair! An amazing experience.



After that pool we tested the surrounding pools ..... one was about 10cm deep with a solid salt bottom. Kaylia loved it.

Now we're relaxing before having a BBQ followed by a walk round the rock before bedtime.

Sunset at Wave Rock

#874 Thursday 28 March

One of the items that Kaylia "scrolls through" (when she's getting anxious) is ..... HOLIDAY! Well .... tomorrow we go on a mini holiday.
We're off to Hyden for an overnight at Wave Rock. We did this 3 years ago when Anni was here for a 2 week stay en-route to her uni stint in Qld.

Last night .... while waiting for Naomi to get home from work ..... we were doing some language exercises with Kaylia. .... helping her to actually form a sound when she wants to. I tried teaching her to sing a sentence. We were saying "Where are you Mummy?" and singing it as _^\_ _
Kaylia caught the idea well and I think it's something we can use in future. I played the notes on the mouth organ and she got the pitch spot on.

Teddy is now shorn. The new clippers work a treat. This is the "new look Teddy"

I hope that my clipper skills improve with practice!

#873 Wednesday 27 March

Full moon!

It explains the OTT behaviour we've seen over the past few days .....

At therapy yesterday it was a good session .... she was really firing! One of the exercises has her arranging picture cards into the right sequence for a nursery rhyme .... she had the audience in fits as she "performed" her version of the rhyme.

This will be a good 'benchmark' for language development.

Further thoughts on the big "A" ...... there have been some significant occasions in my life when people have reacted to me in a way that has puzzled me. In many of those situations I still don't understand what I have done to cause the result  ... and most of the time, you can't simply ask "What did I do wrong?"  Even if I could ask, the topic is probably not something that people will be comfortable discussing.  This is probably what a person with "A" experiences .... the sense of puzzlement about what went wrong with the social behaviour. 

There have also been times when I have looked back on the way I handled a social situation .... and wondered why I did that!  In hindsight I can see that my behaviour was quite wrong or inappropriate .... but at the time it just happens.

#872 Tuesday 26 March

Happy Birthday Maxine!

Time rolls on ..... Kaylia is 9 and in another 9 years she will be 18. What will she be like as an adult? I think she will be a very happy cheerful person .... family will be very important to her but at times she will be very hurtful and she will struggle to understand why ... she won't understand how people's feelings and reactions have changed .. let alone the "why"s of it all.

I guess this picture would fit many people ... and it illustrates how "A" is such a pervasive disorder .... that it has many differing components and so many of us have a few of these components in the makeup of our personality.
Many people that we dismiss as being badly raised maybe instead have a component of "A" that has affected a part of their makeup. Not enough that they would be unable to cope or need development help ..... but enough.

..... and how can parents cope when they lack knowledge and understanding of how "A" is affecting their child .... and them. The pressures must be intolerable. This thing that is "autism" is a monster.

#871 Monday 25 March

Today we were visited by our kookaburra mates .... they sit on the balcony rails outside the dining room and tap on the window till we take notice. I laid out a trail of bits of sausage .... and it was really appreciated.

#870 Sunday 24 March

We began the day with a sleep-in ..... bliss! Kaylia had a shower and then went straight down for a hose session! .... and this was before breakfast!

After breakfast we headed for Aunty Moo's and the usual spa bath. Then it was home and more hose! She's amazing.

In between all this I've been shearing Teddy! Since it costs so much for his grooming, it made sense to buy a good quality clipper .... and it makes a huge difference. He's not afraid of these clippers and he actually likes being put on the table for clipping. I do it in 5 minute blocks to keep the stress down and the system seems to be working!