#1553 Monday 15 May

As I write, Kaylia is sitting at the table in the dining room .... in the middle of a therapy session with Simone.  From the tone of her voice, she is clearly excited and enjoying herself.  She is learning how to respond to people when she is greeted ...... how to speak of "my" vs "your" ....   Although her articulation (when speaking to Simone) is not much better than we are used to, her eagerness to actually speak is much greater.  We shall have to ponder this.

So far we have missed being attacked by "ransomware" on our computers ... touch wood!  We've done all the precautions .... updated OS, backups of data ..... warned all the staff about attachments on emails ..... now we wait with fingers crossed.

The Subaru Forester that I drive has been diagnosed with a terminal illness .... to expensive to fix .... so we have to start thinking about a replacement in the near future.  Fortunately Foresters of this vintage are fairly common so it won't be a problem.

#1552 sunday 14 may

Mother's Day ..... and Naomi has been hit with a recurrence of the dengue fever that she had last year.  Poor thing .... It's not nice.

To give her a chance to sleep this afternoon, I took Kaylia for a long drive .... we ended up out the back of Walyunga National Park .... then through back roads nearly to Toodyay .... then home.  Kaylia loves it ..... and I get to enjoy the beautiful country.

#1551 Friday 12 May

This morning Kaylia has been to the hospital to have the fit of her brace checked and adjusted.  She has grown since the brace was first made and it needs to be enlarged to fit her new size.  It now has lengthened straps and a few other refinements .... but Dr Steve says that she really needs a whole new brace.  This means further appointments at RPH to check on the progress in her neck ... and to refer her for the new brace.  It was good to be able to report to Dr Steve that she is experiencing less neck pain .... and that she clearly feels benefit from the brace and that she wants to wear it.  When she gets to a point that the brace is no longer needed, she will probably want to keep on wearing it and we will have a new problem!

After the appointment at Fiona Stanley Hospital was complete (9:30am) we headed off to school.  Kaylia was "chomping on the bit" when we arrived a school and she really didn't want to wait for the regulation escort to her classroom!!  She wanted to be there now!!  It's so good for us to know that she gets so much pleasure from her school experience.

At home, Ashley helped me with the steady progress on preparing to move "the bungalow".  (The plan is to move it sideways by about 2-3 meters to get it away from the property boundary.  When the house was built around 1970, the bungalow was erected too close to the boundary and now this is a nuisance.  I can either disassemble it and re-erect it ..... or I can slide the complete building onto new foundations.  The latter is my preference.)  I hope to complete the move this year.

Naomi has just arrived home .... and she has found this giant mug in an op shop .... and brought it home for me. It holds 750ml!  Now that's a cuppa!!!

#1550 Thursday 11 May

The dreaded lunar cycle struck again last night ..... we had been out for a drive earlier and noticed the big yellow moon .... and sure enough,  Kaylia woke at 2am and was full of the twitches ..... it took me over an hour to get her back to sleep.

In the spirit of building a record of Kaylia's life for the future, I'm going to try making some VR recordings using Google Cardboard.  If possible, I'll share them on this blog.  Watch this space!

#1549 Wednesday 10 May

I found the upper limit for the block splitter today .... I had a big block and it just couldn't do it.   When a block is that big,  I can't pick it up ... I used the tractor to get the block onto the splitter but once it had fallen off the splitter, I can't lift it back on!  I'll have to saw the block into smaller bits.

Kaylia is very happy .... but still nagging about "I like school".  The diversions are not working.

#1548 Tuesday 9 May

Kaylia slept all night! Yay.  Even though I can rejoice in this, the current night time experience is a delight compared with a few  years ago .... so I'm not complaining.

I got a bit carried away with splitting firewood today .....

.... two thirds of this pile is today's work! It's about head high.

...... and speaking of heads ..... isn't this a fine specimen?

Ashley is wearing my coon skin hat .... it's a momento of Canada in 1990.

#1547 Sunday 7 May

This morning I held up the rubbish bag to Kaylia .... and she understood without words that I wanted her to take it out to the bin.  Wow!   Then after that I just pointed to her medicine ... and she came and took it ... again without words.  These two actions impressed me because I've been reading back over the early blog entries.  It is easy to forget the long road we have been down to get Kaylia to the current level.  Many of her behaviours​ approach normalcy ..... Wow.

On a gardening note ..... we currently have a bit of garden growing in the laundry!! The vigorous creeper that gives us most of our greenery .... has snuck into the laundry via the floor drain .... and overnight we have creeper winding round the basin and the ironing board!  It's a shame .... it has to go.