#807 Saturday 1 February

3:30am. .... it's not Kaylia's fault this time .... it's Teddy instead.  He goes outside and barks at possums .... or whatever else has offended him in the night. So I have get up and bring him inside and chain him to his bed.   Grrrr!

Afternoon

She's had a morning at the library .... then the water park .... then after coming home she's been for a car drive while I did some jobs.  Now it's hose time.

#806 Friday 31 January

Last day of January ..... Kaylia starts school on Monday in Year 5!  She will have the same teacher but a slightly different class this year.  Not long till high school now!

This year we bought all her school needs online .... Good Move!   Today the shops were chokkers with people buying school  stationery.

She's in her outside bath now .... when she empties the bath, the water tops up the frog pond in the garden below .... and we have frogs croaking in the garden again!

#805 Thursday 30 January

Happy Birthday Kaylia .... 10 years old today!

She began the day by sleeping in!  .... and when she woke she was quite 'dopey' for her present time.

Then downstairs, Lara and Chris had left a tiny cake with candles and another present

Then .... at tea time we had a little party .... Aden (Kaylia's therapist from years ago) and Alison (current therapist) joined us for our favorite pizzas ....

Followed by birthday cake

From Zoe's Facebook page today  .... what a wonderful story

Zoe says "My thanks today go out to Naomi Ward and Poh Gan for teaching me so much about children with special needs and ABA. A child with autism that has been at my school for 6 months is now in my class. In the last 6 months he has not spoken a single word, NOT ONE!! I have had him for three weeks now. Yesterday I spoke to the parents. They constantly told the school that he can speak but nobody believed them. I refused to accept that this is all he is getting out of his time here and gave the parents a list of things I wanted them to bring to me from home. Today I used all my knowledge, turned my way of thinking upside down, followed the child and ... BAM ... he spoke ... no I stand corrected .... he read an entire book and smiled. He was so happy. Silence for 6 months and now his anxiety is gone and he is sharing his beautiful voice."

#804 Wednesday 29 January

Another good night.  Phew!

Later

I was asked today what the weekend had been like ..... I thought about what to say ... and realized that Kaylia is so happy that she makes me happy too!  Her happiness is very infectious.

..... so the answer was that it was a very good weekend.

#803 Tuesday 28 January

Another good night.

2:30pm. Kaylia has just come home from her day with Lara ... they went to Whiteman Park.  Clearly she is recognized as a 'regular' at the park because today she was able to ride in the engine of the train and to blow the whistle!   She was so pleased about it when she came home.

It's very satisfying for us that her memories are full of good experiences .... the birthdays, the dances, the ship voyage, the villa.

Evening

Once again therapy was quite astounding!  She is playing "hide and seek" ..... and loving it! (plus other games). The next big step will be for her to play the games with other children.

#802 Monday 27 January

WB  ..... I'm making note of this as a record .... as well as sharing the happenings of our life with K.
I woke at 11 for the wee run and found that she had only just done the deed! Curses!  I can't complain .... it's been a good run of dry nights and she's made good progress in self-managing.

Bedtime

The sore tooth blues continued today .... the pain causes anxiety attacks till we can get the pain back under control.  The trouble is that we don't know she is in pain till it shows in her anxiety behaviour.

#801 Sunday 26 January

Another really good night.  Kaylia seems to understand that she did a good thing when she woke herself up for a wee run ...... she has continued it!

Today will be the usual .... Aunty Moo's in the morning followed by Aunty Max after.  Will we do anything special for Australia Day?  Not really .... we're firmly in the camp of feeling that if the 'stop the boats' policy is OK, then it should also have been applied 216 years ago!

I've just been outside .... it's going to be a hot day!  I was refitting the door on Naomi's office ... it was painted yesterday .... on of the final steps for the office painting.   Chris is doing a great job on repainting the house now.

Nightime
It's been a day of high anxiety for Kaylia .... and we finally worked out that it was caused by the pain from an emerging new tooth. Poor thing.