Willbanks' Down Under: 333 + 229 Weeks

First off, we have about a thousand photos from this week. The weather is just brilliant at the moment, so we are outside enjoying our beautiful beaches as much as possible. Also, the new park at Mollymook finally opened, so we had a morning there with our homeschool buddies. It is pretty great. The kids loved it, and I think we will be there a fair bit. The kids and their friends decided to play hide and seek there, and of course Arley and Winny went missing for what seemed like far too long. They were hiding together in the toilets, which was, of course, the last place we looked after the panic had set in. But apart from that, it was a great morning. The pirate ship mists water, so the kids spent half their time there cooling off.

We also had Saturday night beach dinner. We took Bella to Collers beach for a run while we ate. The weather was perfect and the sky was beautiful for photos, so that is why we have so many shots of the kids. There was a bit of turmoil in our house before that, so it was really good that our dinner was peaceful. Arley had a bad day on Saturday, and Carmie wasn't so hot either. Arley was very aggressive again - all of those behaviours we thought we were pretty much done with. That night a friend messaged me to tell me to have a look at his supplements. I checked out his magnesium supplement, which I had just upped that day to a full cap (we had been working up from a quarter cap), and low and behold, there is something in it that reacts with excess glutamate. So, I didn't give it to him the next day, or since for that matter, and he is back to normal. He still is having immediate emotional regulation problems when things don't go his way, but no day-long aggression which was what we had on Saturday. He actually had a big breakthrough last night. For five months we have been working on him being able to pick up a pen and put it in his hand the right way. Last night he sat with his dad to do some dot-to-dots, and he was able to pick up his marker and start drawing. Then Jeff showed him how to colour in between the lines, and he went from pure scribble to neat colouring, right away! And today, at every opportunity, he was 'practising his writing' - colouring in his dot-to-dot book. He even chose to do this over computer time! And despite the fact that we were out for three hours this morning, and then went to swimming, I still managed to get dinner cooked and the kitchen clean before Jeff got home. So it cemented in me the fact that Arley has been my time-sucker all along!! I got everything done while he sat at the kitchen counter and coloured. I actually got to use the bathroom and brush my teeth on my own! I felt free for the first time ever with him still at home with me. Hoping this is how life is from now on!

I have also enlisted my mum to help with our baking, so that just helps us out SO much. I dropped off a heap of ingredients and some recipes to her, and now we have a supply of baked goods, which is just huge. With all the cooking I have to do these days, it really frees me up to do more with the kids and get things under control a little.

On Wednesday I took Arley up to his OT session while Carmie spent the day with Mum. Arley's session went really well, and his OT got her very first 'hello' from him, and she said he is ready to work on handwriting, as he finally has the focus. So much progress!

Today the kids and I decided to make a quick run to Dolphin Point for our morning tea. But we stayed for three hours. It was just too beautiful there. We did running races, and drew in the sand, went exploring and marvelled at having the place to ourselves. We really do live in the most amazing place in the world!