I'm a day late because I was busy painting yesterday. I am working on a large still life, and it's all I want to do! Annoyingly I have these two scallywags to contend with...
It's been a week of ups and downs. Jeffrey and I took the kids to Maleny Bird World on Saturday, and it was great. Arley almost cracked it, but he pulled through. We went to the petting zoo first, and the kids loved it. There were three miniature donkeys and a bunch of goats, as well as bunnies, guinea pigs, chooks and sheep. The donkeys and the goats were crazy and brought a lot of laughs. Afterwards we went up to join a tour of the aviaries, and that's when Arley started to get stressed. We were in a fairly large group, and there was a bit of standing around until we could get inside. A crowd plus a wait is not a good combination for Arley. However, once we were in with the birds, he was much better. Bird World was great - beautiful birds, although I did feel a bit sorry for them not being able to fly free in their natural habitats. Carmie loved it and wants to go back.
Carmie has had an ordinary week, going to her groups as usual, and not causing too much fuss. She had behaviour therapy yesterday. Carmie's behaviour therapist is very quirky and very good, and Carmie really likes her. She has been doing assessments on Carmie, and one thing she told me yesterday is that Carmie's 'personal space bubble' is larger than most people's. Carmie starts to feel physically uncomfortable when people are closer than one meter, and when she is stressed, it goes to almost two meters. All these little pieces of information help us relate better to Carmie and help to keep her anxiety low. Carms is learning a lot about her own anxiety and sensory preferences, and we are teaching her to become outspoken in her own needs. She can be quite blunt, so I guess the next step is teaching her how to spare people's feelings when she is telling them she needs space.
Arley has had a bit of a crap week since then. He didn't leave the house all week. On Wednesday he had a massive meltdown before our support worker Savannah came to take the kids to see Clint. He just could not go. Of course I didn't accept that, and we clashed and it turned really emotional, and in the end he didn't go anyway. He just couldn't. He actually put himself to bed and went to sleep instead. He has been napping each day this week, so perhaps he is just getting over his cold still, or perhaps he was burnt out from our outing on Saturday. I don't know, but he has been resting all week. We are trying to teach him to stop creating so much drama and histrionics when things don't go his way...we have a LONG way to go!
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