#41 Saturday 31st July 2010

Pinch & a punch for the last of the month! Isn't the year flying past!
After 6 good nights in a row, Kaylia had another bad one .... she was awake at 3am and making lots of noise till around 5am. What made the difference? It could be that she is getting over the effects of the chickenpox and so she doesn't need the anti-histamine any longer. Maybe the anti-histamine was acting to keep her asleep through the night.
It is good at times like this that Tina is away ... on bad nights, we don't need to worry about Kaylia waking any one else in the house.

Tina will be home in about a week and we're looking forward to that. Tonight we actually went out! To "Fast Eddy's" for tea. Kaylia is very good in those situations now .... much better than times in the past when we felt that we couldn't face going anywhere!

#40 Thursday 29th July 2010

Kaylee is happy again! She went to school today and coped OK
At present she is singing along with the iPod Touch .... (what a great invention! ... highly recommended for children or adults .... I'd love to have an iPad).
The past few nights have been wonderful ... sleeping right through. I wonder if the change in routine will have made a longer term change in her sleeping habits? Time will tell.
We enter a new phase with Kaylia next week .... no au-pair!
Linda is leaving us (Thankyou for your help Linda.) on the weekend and till I find more work, we will see if we can cope with just the two of us. Tina will help where she can as well ..... but it will be a new way of arranging Kaylia's care.

#39 Tuesday 27th July 2010

The chickenpox has progressed through the usual course ... and poor Kaylia has suffered!
She has spots in some terrible places and they itch big time. Fortunately the Polaramine controls the itching fairly well. Monday she slept almost all day ... and then was in bed early and slept all night. She's sick! Today she has been OK but tired ... and then she slept again for most of the afternoon.

She will have Wednesday off from school as well ..... but she seems to be on the mend.

#38 Sunday 25th July 2010

Chickenpox! She was sent home from school with suspicions and these were confirmed by the doctor next day .... poor thing .... she is very tired, irritable and itchy in all the worst places! Today she has been obsessing on jelly ..... most of the day, it has been a chorus of 'I want jelly!' It has been driving us mad 'cos jelly takes time to make .... and she can't grasp that idea. She wants it NOW!

Three weeks to Bali ... we feel moderately confident .... I think we have a good control of the medication and we'll be much better prepared this time. Fingers crossed.

An interesting snippet ..... for some strange reason, Kaylia is fascinated by just one of Tina Arena's songs ... I had put "Je m'apelle Bagdad" on the iPod .... and she watches it over & over. She's not very interested in any other Tina Arena songs ... just that one. Go figure!

#37 Thursday 22nd July 2010

The recent nights have been better but spoilt by Kaylia having a heavy cough ... this wakes her up and then she doesn't sleep again. I've been keeping score by assigning a +1 or -1 to the night ... so far the total score is positive! (Funny - it doesn't feel that way.)
Today I took Kaylia to have a photo taken for her passport renewal .... and of course she wouldn't sit still for it. The result is less than perfect and we have to add a note that "this is as good as you're going to get from an auty one!" This passport is for our battery re-charge trip booked for 3 weeks time - a week next to the swimming pool in Bali. Of course we have all fingers crossed that we won't have the same problems as we did in December. We will have a full stock of medications and batteries for the iPods!

#36 Monday 19th July 2010

Saturday night was bliss! For various reasons, we had let her start the night upstairs .... she was very tired and she slept right throught the whole night! Then Sunday night was bad again .... she woke up thoroughly at around 2am and wouldn't settle .... she spent the next 3 hours playing in her room.
The practicalities of adult survival are definitely interfering with the management of the sleep problem!
Medication seems to be about right at present .... 0.4ml Risperdal plus 18mg Lovan .... she is still a little bit stimmy but acceptable ... and she doesn't seem to be having any headaches .
We had a little 'sweet spot' on Friday .... Kaylia had spent the morning at Kym's and when told (as she was leaving to go home) ... "I'll see you on Tuesday." .... Kaylia responded .... "I want Tuesday!"

#35 Thursday 15th July 2010

Times has got away from me!.... Since Saturday, we have had a series of good nights followed by a bad one last night. The reason for the good nights was a bit of cheating ... Naomi has not been well and so I slept downstairs with Kaylia .... the idea is to keep her in her own bed rather than going upstairs in the middle of the night. Kaylia has responded well to this ... she still wakes up but she just reads quietly and watches a DVD for a couple of hours. I can still doze through this and it means that Naomi can have some quality sleep.
We are no where near solving this sleep problem .... in some ways, its becoming less important that we solve it .... I'm so tired that I barely wake up for these sessions and in the morning, I struggle to remember what happened!