Babies Born ~ September 2007 #74

Is that a private school MD? We have a $50 resources fee. Well, we did at the old school. I didn't pay anything at the new school. I wonder if I should have lol. They are pretty good with things like that though - the full day skiing lessons every week in winter didn't cost me a cent.

Just back from a weekend at hometown. So nice now that my kids and my cousins kids are all bigger - they just disappear and play for hours. Living the dream :) DH fixed the roof on my grandfathers garage - he is in his 80's with bad legs and a bung eye but he would have got up there and done it himself :roll eyes:

No need for aircon here - summer seems to have skipped us this year. It is average at best with lots of rain.

MP, W isn't doing laces yet. TBH, I hope he settles for velco/slipon for a while longer. I think he would be capable but his frustration of not getting it right the first time is not appealing.

OMG, just googled the lymphoedema - I hope that it isn't as bad as the wiki pictures!!

Yep, it's a private school, but it's the local catholic one so not really high-end private, kwim? I suspect we're charged (a lot) more than we need to be and some of those funds are then siphoned off to other schools with (much) lower socio-economic profiles. Which I really don't mind (in the big social justice scheme of things) but they ask for it up front before school has even started which is a bit harsh. But for DD2 it's just a standard book list, you order online and it arrives in a box.

Arte, that's my kind of summer. Rain. Coolness. A tiny bit of sunshine! Aaaaah. Maybe I should emigrate. Before they film The hobbit 3 so I can sign up to be an extra. (*Indulges in hot-summer-induced-fantasy*). And re lymphodema - mine is v. mild. I have to self massage though to keep it under control, and every now and again I see a physio because it builds up on my back where I can't reach. It'll stay mild if it's managed & because I still have some lymph nodes, but I have a ton of sympathy for those poor ladies you sometimes see with massive chunky legs or arms - can't imagine what a living hell that would be.

E isn't doing laces yet either. We chose shoes with velcro too, but she's got a pair of canvas shoes (white ones we decorated with fabric pens, awesome school hol activity) with laces so she can practice with those.

The other skill we're desperate for her to learn is time-telling. Not sure how to teach it really, it's pretty complex.

MD, telling the time or the concept of seconds/minutes/hours/days etc? Digital is a handy way to go, but you can get the analogue watches with the minutes written as well. Watches are something W has loved from toddlerhood but I can't remember how we taught him what it represented.

Hasn't Hobbit 3 been filmed yet? I thought they did it all in one go and the time is the production? Last time they were shooting up the mountain but I was too short and too tall for any extra roles. MD, you might be tall enough to get in :). As for the weather, coolness is nice but today it has been downright cold. In the middle of January! People are putting their fires on. I am sitting here cold but refuse to put on the heat pump on principle alone lol.

Just telling the time (with an analogue clock cos I'm a hardass mumma). They have to be able to know how to count in fives to get anything other than o'clock and half past and quarter past and quarter to. But I did see some Lego time teaching clocks in my travels so maybe something like that would be the go.

Yeah, I'd be tall enough ... Possibly too wide but definitely talk enough! :lol:

wait. what? there's more than one hobbit? they split it into three? oh. you can tell that i dont get out much. i so want to be an extra! but that i am boring average in everything body size i dont see myself as being cast as either a hobbit or something tall. bah humbug!

Bad news, they have already finished shooting The Hobbit. The bit they did here last year was some of the last of it :( I shall never be a hobbit. Although my leg hair and wide sausage feet beg to differ lol

That's too bad. I'm kind of fine with it though, I'm totally a hobbit on the inside, I have huge, hairy feet (! yes, for real) and I'm totally down with second breakfasts and elevenses. It's my inner orc that wants expressing :lol:.

Well Miss E is safely back at school today - looking glum because it's a different classroom, new teacher, and her (overly dependent) bestie has been split off to a different class on the teacher's recommendation. Such a wrench. There were a few kids this morning looking miserable. I hope they have a bit of fun today and she comes home a bit happier!

W doesn't start school again until next week. Should be a good year - there are 4 new entrants starting so W is going to be one of the senior kids lol. I know all the families of the new kids and they are all nice - including A's best friend from across the road that W has always been a bit sweet on. They may be trouble together, I pity the teacher lmao. However, it gives me car pooling option which is great. We also have the fantastic teacher back as she went on a science fellowship for the last half of last year. She is very science/ecology focused and W is going to really love that.

I hope that Miss E comes home happier xx

School starts back here on Thursday for Miss K, but DH is back today. She is going to the movies (Frozen) with Granny today, then visiting friends tomorrow. Nice way to finish off the holidays.

All good here. Had a colonoscopy (due to family history) on Friday during which I vomited. Have now lost voice and have chesty kind of cough. Feeling heaps better than I was on the weekend, but luckily haven't had too many phone calls at work today!

Miss K can kind of do laces. Her school shoes are the velcro mary janes and sneakers have elastic laces and velcro up the top. She can sort of tell the time - they worked on half past and o'clock at school last year, but she knows that all the numbers on the clock really represent 5 minutes so she can do some early time telling (ie 10 past). Currently she is obsessed with bike riding and has been dragging us off for big hour long rides each day (have to take it in turns because our old bottoms aren't coping!!)

Arte, LMAO @ W being a "senior" student. It was kind of weird walking past the reception classroom today, there were a few kids there (ie the repeaters) but the newies won't start until tomorrow (ie Carparking Hell, Round#2) - but it will be amazing to see how big our kids look next to the littlies.

That's fantastic that the awesome teacher is back. I haven't formed any judgement on E's new teacher yet. The OTHER teacher (ie, the one who has E's little separated friend) is FANTASTIC so I'm having a tiny bit of anticipatory teacher envy... without even knowing what this one is like LOL.

YAY also for carpooling! I don't think any of that will be happening here, but DD1 is (finally) keen to start getting her own self to school so that might take a bit of pressure off our mornings (and thousands of km/year off our mileage)! We'll see how long that lasts...

Didn't see you there Cally! That does sound like a nice way to finish off the holidays. Bummer about the colonoscopy AND the vomming. Chesty cough sounds a bit of a worry - do you think you might have aspirated? Maybe try some honey in some warm water, small sips - might help soothe the irritation. xxx

And WTG Miss K with the laces!! Do you think it helps having a trained teacher in da house? I sometimes have those moments when E wants to know something and I'm just not sure how to break it down into something short and sticky. (Notice a trend here re lack of brevity??? LMAO)

Rickrolled!

Cally, sucks about the colonoscopy. Hope you are feeling better now xx

Soz, couldn't help myself. :p.

Well, end of (a very HOT) first week of school and it looks like miss e is settling in to her new class ok. She was a little unsettled during the week and even wet the bed the other night after a very long dry run. I think I underestimated how big a transition it would be for her. Wondering now if we should have done more preparatory chat in the lead up, or whether that would have prolonged the changexiety.

How are the rest of our kidlets finding the transition?

Very hot weekend coming here. Not much for it but to find aircon!

Miss L had her first day back yesterday :D I was surprised at how GINORMOUS she looked in comparison to the prep kids...the children grow! they really do! hahahahaha.

I will have to buy her some new sneakers or something as ATM she only has some velcro mary jane things. cute as, but i dont think they will last very long. That said, i will have to get her to learn to tie laces (Cally, you wanna come down and do that for me :lol: ... not sure my patience will cope) as they take their shoes off when in class.

Cally: omg! i cannot believe that you vomited! you poor thing! i can only imagine that it was pretty horrendous to go through :( did you get the cough afterwards? strange! have you spoken to your specialist about it? I guess it will go away soon??

MD: apparently we have the 'cool' teacher. but that coolness is because he makes igloos out of milk bottles. so not sure how far that will stretch across the year LMAO.

Arte: that will be cool that W has someone he really (really!) likes with him at school. i do have moments of guilt at having forced miss L to start all over again in the friend department.

AFM: we are all good. Baking hot here (as MD is probably also experiencing!). we have been hit with hot sun and even hotter blustery winds now for weeks and absolutely NO rain. everything is just scorched. i have had to go around watering trees by hand as they are being hit really hard and loosing their leaves etc.
Miss M starts her 3 year old Kinder on tuesday!! she is sooo cute in her new little kindy top :heartbeat:
In some sadder news our neighbour here passed away this morning. he was up on the roof doing some odd jobs and had a heartattack :( first we knew of it was that there were firetrucks everywhere. really sad as he was the primary carer for his wife who had recently suffered a stroke. just so sad. so we have had some big conversations with Miss L today about it all as she was there having a look at the firetrucks.

Cass, sucks about your neighbour. I hope his wife has some other family to support her :(

MD, from the other thread, the Alexithymia thing sounds interesting.
From my experience, talking about upcoming events too much increases the anxiety.

W had his first day back today. They went swimming twice at school, and then we had swim club in the evening. Got to make hay while the sun shines around here!

How are our kidlets all settling into school? I think E is still feeling the effects of the transition, esp the changes to the little friends in her class etc. Also we are hanging out for the parent info night - E keeps saying she thinks she's got homework (words to practice in the green book) but the book never comes home and no other info either? I'm sure all will be revealed but I never understand why they wait until week 3 for the big reveal.

Cass -LOL at the milk bottle igloos (yeah, that is cool). How is M liking kindy? So sad to hear about your neighbour, it's tough knowing where to start to explain things like that to the kids.

Arte -
Yes the alexithymia stuff is v. interesting, bearing in mind that it is often thought to be an aspect of ASD (or comorbid with ASD). Other really interesting aspects are the lack of imagination/dream ideation, and tendency towards thinking in concrete, externally oriented ways. I'm running a theory about a family member, and I only stumbled across the alexithymia concept when I was searching for info about poor recognition of emotion/facial expressions. On an associated theme, I'm also sussing out 5-point scales for dealing with some of the OTT emotional outbursts that go on here. It's a "check yo self before you wreck yo self" thing where you use a 5 colour scale (red, orange, yellow, green, dark green/blue) to remind kids visually to check in on themselves and tone down their reactivity/behaviour - can be used for voice (shouting, etc) or stress or argumentativeness/aggression or hissy fits.

Md - yes, I did aspirate during the procedure. Voice back to normal now, but it was probably affected for about 10 days.

School is going fine. The bestie is in a separate class, but Miss K is coping fine with it as there are a few other girls she is friends with. Back into readers already - grrr. She is a great little reader, but trying to get her to sit down and practice drives me crazy! The wriggling, checking if her mozzie bites are bleeding, being cold so needing a blanket, too bright from the sun etc. If she's in a mood, the moment we hit a word she doesn't know, she won't even try and work it out, just guesses random words that often don't even look like what the original word is. We are trying to just read in the mornings straight after breakfast, when we have a bit of extra time as the evenings are fairly busy, but it hasn't really helped this week. This morning took us 15 minute to get through 2 pages - then she got in the zone and flew through the next 8 in the next 15 minutes! I wouldn't normally make her sit there for 30 minutes, I was just about to give up when she just turned the page and get into it. Oh and she can never find her place! Gets distracted by looking at a picture and can never remember where she is up to. DH has so much more patience than me so he will be tasked with weekend reading. The teacher is happy for other books to be included on the reading sheet so we can read some of our own books and they will still count towards her reading award. I was even considering this morning secretly recording her to show the teacher what she is like to try and get some ideas of strategies!

Super dry here too. Are you going to get some water tanks in Cass - with that massive garden you're going to spend a fortune on water if you don't!

Hope everyone else is well.