An Outing ...

 

We had a lovely outing on the weekend. The girls and I were invited to our beautiful and dear friends home for a party. We have known Fiona and Sinnead now for about 4 and a half years. Fiona was Madison's first teacher at the Special School Madison goes to. Ever since we first met we have been great friends.

 

Funny how that can happen! That moment when you just click with someone, I'm sure it doesn't happen to often in a life time but when it does it is something to be treasured. Fiona is a very dear friend and it doesn't matter if we haven't talked in a month or three, it is always as if we had seen each other yesterday. I feel very blessed and lucky to have a friend like Miss Fiona.

 

Fi and Sinnead were having a farewell soiree for the gorgeous Miss Sinnead. This young lady is very well travelled and is just the most beautiful girl on the inside and out, we love her to bits. Sinnead is moving to Melbourne for a change of pace and lifestyle and a new school. So many new and exciting things ahead for our lovely friend.

 

Sinnead is a very brave girl and strong too, she is very much like her mum! I know Fi is so proud of her beautiful girl and she should be. She should also be very proud of herself for raising such a wonderful daughter because she is an amazing and awesome mum!

 

Look at the Beautiful Girls, see that smile on Madison's face, it's there because of that cute little black fluffy muffy dog called Bridgette. 

 



Madison called her Widget for most of the night because she couldn't get the "B" out, so cute! She was so very excited to see the little black muffy dog and wanted to give her squeezes all night and she did, much to the dismay of the fluffy black muffy dog. Poor poor widget!!




Playing dress up's because that's what all little dogs want to do. The girls are putting a jumper on Bridgette :) I am thinking she doesn't want it though!

 

 

Squeezes with the Bridgette dog :)

Sinnead and Jaimee together, it's so nice to have an older friend to share dreams and tell secrets too. And give clothes too! OMG, Jaimee was so over the moon when Sinnead had given her one of her beautiful dresses that no longer fit her. It's all the J girl could talk about and how awesome Sinnead is, well she is!! You Gorgeous Girls.




Sinnead's awesome fire, so toasty and warm! Madison really loves an open fire and over time has gotten a lot better at being around them. We still have to watch her like a hawk though. When we get the chance to go camping it's always one of her favourite things she like the most, that and the beach! She will sit for a long time and watch the different colours in the flames and all the different shape, it can get quite mesmerising and not just for Madison either.

When the girls and I were siting in front of the fire another guest at the party came over and lit a cigarette. Instantly Madison puts on one of her cartoon voices and says "gimme that smoke" about three times like she is a gangster and puts her hand out to get it from the lady. I was a little unsure as how to handle this very funny and surreal cartoony type of scene. I think maybe the lady was just a tad freaked out that a 9 year old just asked her for her cigarette.

I then of course went onto explain Madison was acting out a scene from one of her favourite old school type cartoons, you know, the really vintage violent ones. A while back we had to hide the dvd's as she went through a spitting faze all because of a green cricket in check pants who played the fiddle. It was a nightmare I tell you.

Do you know though, that is probably the first time in a while I didn't actually say "Madison is Autistic" as if to explain her behaviour. Huh !

The poor lady seemed to finish her cigarette rather fast after that, which wasn't a bad thing.

 

Look at these fabulous mice, Madison found them of course! Fiona has a lot of cool and interesting stuff which is pretty fun when your 9 and Madison. She happily played with these three little fella's while the little black fluffy muffy dog had a rest from her squeezing. A good diversion.

It's nice to be out with my girls.

  

This is too funny, Poor little Widget (Bridgette) had a full cuddle and squeeze work out with Madison and for awhile there she was on operation divert from the squeezey girl. The little dog was hiding from Madison a lot, until Fi pulled out a hand full of soft, fluffy bird feathers and handed them to Madison. That's what is in Madison's hands.  

 

Bridgette couldn't take her eyes off the feathers and kept trying to eat them!! Think she might have thought it was a real bird, haha, oh no that's not funny is it! What was funny and clever was that Madison worked out that all she had to do was hold onto the feathers and that sweet little dog would sit by her side and not try to hide anymore. Clever Madison.

 

Adam is so funny, I had told him that the girls had invited us down to their place so he skyped me on the day, just to make sure I was going to go. He seems to think I need to get out of the house more often then I do and he is right of course. I do tend to forget and the cabin fever creeps up on me in funny ways, especially in school holidays.

Some days I feel that it is a real effort to get motivated and to put on my "we are going to be out of our comfort zone" hat today. That's usually every time we step out of our front door though.

Although I don't need to be worrying about much going to the girls house. These lovely ladies are very down to earth, go with the flow, your non judgemental type of people. Pretty much just real people, genuine is the word I'm thinking of and this is why we love them so much. And plus they just wouldn't give a shit if Madison did a Madison kinda thing anyway.

Well, tee hee, I did catch Madison putting lip gloss on one of Sinneads teddy bears, she did do a nice job of it and then she was trying on all sinneads sunglasses :) I did do the responsible thing and removed all the make up as that could have gotten very interesting. Madison was great and Jaimee enjoyed our night out, me too. So glad we went, beautiful food, Sinnead made all different types of curries very delicious.

Adam would have freaked out! At the curries I mean. While he is in India the cook on board the Baldur is a local, so pretty much they eat curry all of the time. He says the pasta taste like curry, the stir fry tastes like curry and pretty much everything taste like curry that isn't suppose to. At least he is going to appreciate my cooking when he comes home, hahaha! Poor darling.

I'm glad we went on our outing, even though I am always on Madison watch it was really nice to be invited and included. I even got to have a grown up conversation with other real live grown ups.

There came a time when people actually stopped inviting us to outing, parties etc, only cause I think we said no a few to many times. People get sick of asking I guess, which is fair enough. It's just a bit too tricksy sometimes with the whole Autism gig, and we need to think of our girls, they come first. Social outings can be great, even awesome or they can be a catastrophe. So this is another one of those situations were Adam and I pick and choose our battles.    

A big thank you to our lovely friends who always accept us for who we are!

Ad says they are our hippie friends, Jaimee says they are our greenie friends and Madison says where is Widget and I say we are so lucky to have you in our life, Miss Fiona and Miss Sinnead.

It's nice to have good friends.

Steph

x

This is Our Thing ...

The thing we love to do most as a family is go to the beach!!!

Ad is happy, the girls are happy and I'm happy just seeing all of them happy!

The beach has always been in Adams life ever since he was a grommet so as soon as the girls were big enough he couldn't wait to get them down there.

This is the view looking back at the seaside town of Coolum. Since we have moved house we have a new beach we go to now, at the end of Pita Street, Peregian Beach. Madison loves it, the ocean with lots of dogs, heaven!!

 


 

Madison loves the beach, its on her top 5 list of things to do. She doesn't ever tire of the waves and the water. That's why we would have many meltdowns when we would have to leave to go home. Thankfully as she is getting older it doesn't happen as often, and I repeat often, as she will still let it rip every now and again!

Madison loves that feeling of the waves pummelling into her body. It's a sensory thing. Ever since she was very little she has always loved swinging, spinning, running and banging into things, squeezes, jumping on the trampoline and of course the waves at the beach as well as other stuff.

When she does all of these things it helps her to define her body in space and it provides feedback to into her muscles and joints. You would think all of those things would hype her up but they don't. They actually calm her by getting that deep pressure to her body and this is very important for Madison.

I was watching an interview with Temple Grandin, a very well known lady who has Autism. She actually made her own squeeze machine and after she uses it she would feel a lot calmer and can cope with this crazy world much better. When Jaimee was younger she wanted to make her sister a squeeze machine, she even drew up plans for one too, god love her!

Madison never rocked back and forward, just liked to run and bang into things, like the lounge or humans. But she really enjoys the office chair at the computer now so she can move about how she wants to. She does hand flap every now and then, a lot more when she was little, it's more of a side to side action instead of up and down. She will do this when she is either really overwhelmed or extremely excited.

I could probably write a whole post about the girls and their sensory issues, so I think I will do that. Everyone one's got a sensory thing, mines fluffy socks, uhhh so snuggly and comfy, when I put them on at the end of the day it's just divine.

Do you have a sensory thing? Have a think about it, I bet you do.



  

 

The girls found this little lagoon to play in and float around.

 

You can see Adam in the background mucking around on his board. Even when there are no waves he still manages to find something.

Poor Jaimee is being very patient waiting for a go. I tell you, Jaimee has got to be the most patient kid in the world, she puts up with a lot and rarely complains and the girl does a lot of waiting around in this family.

Come on Daddy!! Hurry up.

 

Still Waiting ...

 

And still waiting ....

Jaimee watching over Madison making sure her little sister is ok and having fun, doesn't matter where we are, Jaimee is just like that. So sweet!

Finally Ad gives up the board so Jaimee can have a go. Thank God, that took forever.

Adam has been wanting his girls to be his surf'in buddies for along time. It has been tricky with the whole OCD and the Autism thing but with lots of patients and time he is finally getting his wish.

This is were it does get tricksy though as Jaimee, just being Jaimee, wants to be able to surf perfectly from the first go. She does get pretty upset and down on herself when it's not going how she wants it and just wants to get it, well, perfect!

That's just not surfing either that is all things in her life, I say with a big sigh... It gets complicated explaining how we live in a messy and not so perfect world. That we all just have to do the best we can with what we've got and try not to worry so much when things in life aren't how we want or how we expected them to be.

It wont matter though, I can talk about being "Not" perfect till the cows come home but she will still want things to be "just so" and how she wants them to be. Which is fair enough because we all want that, don't we! I guess it's the pressure that she puts on herself that I want her to be free of and the intense disappointment.

The biggest thing of all is she doesn't want to disappoint her Dad or anyone else for that matter. It's an OCD thing and a PDD thing! All this gorgeous girl wants is her daddy's attention like any little girl. Jaimee tries her hardest to please him all the time, ( and everyone else ) which must be exhausting for her.

Adam is great, being a blokey bloke he sometimes needs a little help understanding the teenage girl thing. Although, he does all right and will give her the right advice and attention she needs.

The pressure is off though and it's all about having fun, being happy and carefree down at the beach. That's why we love it so much.

On this day there were many different types of beautiful butterflies playing around us, it was awesome. I have a thing for butterflies and this one made me chase it up and down the beach while I crazily tried to get photo's. 

 

Madison doing her art work in the sand, she did the love hearts and wrote her name. She will always write her whole name not just Madison, too cute!

 

 

 

Treasure

 



My Favourite photo, just perfect!

Madison found a little rock pool to explore & play in, she was there for ages.

Talking about the surf, perfect Dad & daughter moment! xx

Treasures at the beach. A few of my favourite things shells & driftwood. There was a lot of pumice stone washed up on the shore too.

This was a perfect morning at the beach. We were down there for about two and a half hours and it was a gorgeous day. The sunshine was so nice on our skin and there was only a slight breeze in the air, just enough so it wasn't to hot and it had that awesome smell of the salty ocean.

No sooking, No wingy whiny peoples and best of all No meltdowns. We didn't even have to fight about bring anyone else's dogs home with us, yes it was an awesome day. Madison was happy to get dressed after her 10 minute warning and the count down. Jaimee was surfed out and Ad & I were just so amazed and ecstatic at how the morning went, we were whoohooing all the way home.

Love the beach!

Steph

x