Merry Christmas

I love Christmas, I always have. Now I'm older I have an obsession with tree decorations.
I friend of ours gave us a great idea and every year now I take the kids and they can choose a special new tree decoration each (and I choose 5 or so). When and if they leave home they can take all these mementos of their childhoods with them. I know I still remember particular tree decorations on our tree from when I was a kid. A blue and red bird especially and it was also so nice decorating the tree every year and opening that box of decorations.


This year is a little more exciting as Bugs has a much better concept of Christmas. I don't think he understands that tomorrow is Christmas, and he will get presents etc, but he recognises Christmas 'things' such as Santa. I've been trying to help him understand by counting down the days with the use of an Advent Calender. Every day he's been opening a day and he gets his little chocolate. I'm so proud of him too - that calendar has been hanging up for 24 days now and he hasn't pinched a single chocolate!!! Now that's self control! Tomorrow morning I know when he gets up and opens his presents he will be excited to see them, in the past he hasn't really cared even for presents as his interests were so narrow. He would be more interested in shutting and closing a cupboard door continuously, or whatever other compulsions and little obsessions he had going. He would unwrap the firetruck and head straight back to whatever he was doing. This year however he has come out of his own little space enough that I am really looking forward to seeing how he reacts to his presents and tomorrows events. The other thing he has been doing a lot is breaking out humming 'Jingle Bells' all the time. Very cute.


Ellie is going to have a BIG day tomorrow. She's been running around saying 'Kissmass' for Christmas everytime she sees a bit of tinsel. I can't wait to see her reaction too as last year she had just turned 6 months and was too little to enjoy the day, I think if anything it was just pretty exhausting for her.
After opening the presents with the kids in the morning we are taking Lachlan's mum out to my aunt and uncles for Christmas day. It will be nice to all be together as usually we have to sort out who is going where and to what with both sides of the family.
Anyhow... I better go and wrap some more presents.
Merry Christmas to you. Have a great day tomorrow.

Autism vs. Normalism

Tomorrow I go to work, tomorrow school holidays begin. Today is in some ways my last day of freedom for quite a few weeks.

Before I had my children I would hear mothers groan about the school holidays and my first judgmental thought was - why have kids if you don't want to spend time with them??
What a fricken idiot I was!

Now I actually have children I now realise that you love your children with everything you have. You really can't imagine life without them. You orbit around their every move and they can be the sweetest things you have ever known .. and here it comes .... BUT ...... you can also feel very guilty when they are bored. You would occasionally like to sit down and just have a coffee. Your arms ache from carrying them even thought it took you 9 months to make those chubby little legs, and fair bit of the time it doesn't really enter your children's minds that you too are a person.

I wont go into my son's story at this time, that's a whole other post, and also I didn't want to write a blog solely about him, because really it's about me and possibly my issues. However he has quite high needs, but at the moment so does the toddler who is becoming a monster in her own right. Last school holidays I pretty much carried her around, while I chased her brother. These school holidays I think I might just be trying to chase both of them. My son has autism, my daughter has what I now describe as 'normalism'. Strange sudden behaviours brought on by toddlerhood. Perfectly normal, but occasionally feral.

To end this post I thought I would share a few weird things I have noticed going on around here lately with me.
Firstly - outside the front door I have a ceramic flower pot that used to have a nice plant with red flowers on it - until I killed it with lack of care. Now outside my door I have a huge weed that is THRIVING where my other plant struggled. Each day I look at it and think I should pull it out, it looks like I am growing a weed on purpose. Each day I don't pull it out. I think it, but I don't do it and I end up with an obvious weed that looks like I love it.

Secondly - I have this woman who comes to my door every few weeks - she is a Jehovah. She caught me once when I was feeling too polite and I said 'just leave the pamphlets with me and I'll have a read'. I thought maybe that would be a good way to deal with it - NOT - now she comes every few weeks talks to me about stuff and gives me the books. She is rather nice, and we mostly chat about life in general but then all of a sudden she will throw in something like 'that's why we are looking forward to the day when God takes us' ... my head kind of spins...... Anyhow.. she usually comes on a Thursday every few weeks. Today for some reason, it must be my 6th sense, I was thinking that I hope she doesn't turn up. I also even debated turning on the lights on the Christmas tree in the window - WHY? because I am an idiot. This woman comes to my door and preaches her religion to me, did I invite her? no... do I have the guts to say - look lady I will never join so please leave me alone - no. What I do is feel bad for putting my christmas lights on in case I offend her.
See... this is why I worry about me.