I haven’t posted in two weeks because I’ve been really busy. My mum flew in from NSW to surprise the kids on the 13th. They had no idea, they didn’t even know the borders were open. Jeff went to pick her up in the evening under the ruse of going to the liquor store, and then he told the kids there was a human-sized toad in the front yard. They cautiously went out to see the toad and found Lolo instead. They were so happy and surprised, it was great. It was lovely having my mother here. She was here for a week, and we didn’t do much but hang out, play games, swim in the pool, go to the mall, and one windy day we went to the beach and out for ice cream. Lolo left on Monday and it was really sad. It won’t be as long until we see her again next time though.
Things have been pretty good, with a few downs. The kids and I finished our family therapy program. We still have more work to do with the therapist, but it will be one on one with Arley for 15 minutes and then me and Jeffrey for the rest of each session. Arley still needs a lot of help. He has a baseline of anger and discontent running through him and we need to address it. The therapist thinks it’s because he is so smart and he’s not stimulated enough. He longs to be on his screens all the time, otherwise within a few minutes he is causing mischief. Anyway, as a reward for finishing our family therapy program, we took the kids to this blow-up aqua park on a river. They were SO excited to go, they had been working hard towards it for weeks. We got there, and the place was just huge, and Arley was too impatient to wait for Jeffrey and I to get our life vests on (all visitors had to wear life vests), so we told the kids to go in together and we would find them. Jeffrey and I got our vests on and entered the aqua park. It was so difficult to navigate! It was all made up of different kind of connected floating rafts and towers and slides etc. We were searching for the kids for a good 20 minutes before we found Carmie, who didn’t know where Arley was. That’s when my panic set it. We kept Carmie with us and continued to search but still couldn't find him. So Jeff and Carmie stayed in the river while I went to shore and headed back to our table. He wasn’t there either, so I found a life guard to help me search. She finally saw a little head poking out from this square of floaties, and it was Arley, trapped and unable to climb back up. He was fine, but he had been stuck there the whole time! They radioed another life guard to help him out, and I waded out to him. I was fully expecting him to be seething with rage, but he seemed ok. He kept telling me he was fine, but then as we searched for Carmie and Jeff, his anger and fear started bubbling over, and I had to get him out and take him to the cafe. He refused to get back into the water and we both missed our session. Carmie and Jeff had a blast, and remarkably Arley sat with me the whole time without demanding to leave or even using my phone to keep him occupied, which is huge progress. Super stressful day though, and a definite disaster of a reward!
This past week we had a bit of drama finding a Christmas tree. A lot of drama actually. We waited until my mum was here so she could help us decorate, but when we tried to get a tree, everywhere was sold out. Everywhere! We then called around to try to find an artificial tree - sold out too! So on Friday Mum and I got the kids in the car and drove around everywhere we could think of to get a tree, real or artificial. Three hours later we still had no luck and headed home. This is when Carmie suddenly vomited in the car at a traffic light, half in the car and half out the door. Fun times! Our Christmas tree problem was solved on Saturday when Jeff put on his work gear, got his pole saw and drove to the pine forest and chopped down a tree for us! That day he decorated outside with lights and that night we decorated the tree.
The kids have had a couple of sessions with their mentors (one which ended in a huge fight between the kids) and a couple of sessions with their support worker Jonty. We also met the kids' friend Chayse at Rush Adventureland and Carmie got ganged up on in the ball pit by eight boys throwing exercise balls at her. She stood her ground, but was very angry and upset, she was shaking with emotion. We also got our hair cut this week, which is good because we all needed it in this heat. Arley is still fully off his meds, and he is a little cranky, particularly this week. He has a very hard time filling his time with anything, and he lets us all know. We are hoping to work on this in therapy, but therapy won’t start up again until the end of January. We’ll get there though.
The kids are really excited about Christmas. We are having a very quiet one, staying home. We’re not big on crowds so going out isn’t enticing, and the kids are SO hard to feed that we can’t even organise a special Christmas lunch or dinner. So we will be doing presents in the morning, ice cream in the afternoon, and hopefully playing new games and swimming in the pool.
I’m sure I’ve missed a lot from the last two weeks. Right now the kids are having a night swim in the pool together, which is the first time they’ve played together in ages, so I’m pretty happy about that. It’s almost their bed time, so I’ll have to get them out, bugger!
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