Isla

Isla Rose

The littlest member of our family.

What's she been up to over the last 2 months?

Well at the end of last year a little girl in Bradley's class came up and said to me "Isla like things doesn't she? She likes things but she doesn't like people" the little girl's mother was absolutely mortified but I laughed. It's true! Isla does not like people. And not just unfamiliar people, she dislikes pretty much everyone.

And she's a fussy eater. But not with flavours. She will eat sweet, sour, spicy, savoury. She will eat all the flavours under the rainbow but ONLY if the texture was right. She's got a textures problem. She's 19 months old and still wants me to spoon feed her mashed foods. She point blank refuses to eat meat (chicken, fish, red meat, sausage she hates it all) and anything else with a different texture she's very fussy with.
Each day is a challenge to see what I can get her to eat, what texture she wants each day...

She also has this thing with textures in life in general: she always wants to wear shoes so her feet don't touch the grass/dirt/rocks/sand. She doesn't like getting messy hands. She hates having any food crumbs on her hands or face.
She loves being clean. Brushing her teeth, flossing her teeth, brushing her hair, washing her hands, putting dirty clothes in the basket, dirty nappies in the bin. She does it all.
A funny little side story is when we took Isla swimming. We spent ages in the pool and when we got out her hands were wrinkly from being in the water so long.
Isla noticed this for the first time and she HATES it! She whinged and tried to pull her fingers off. She pointed to the wrinkles and showed me and whinged. And then she found the wrinkles on her toes and she literally tried kicking her feet off to get rid of the wrinkles. Even now she notices the wrinkles after the bath or something and she gets fussy and obsessed with them.

She also doesn't talk much. 19 months old and she can only say 3 words 'mum' 'dad' and 'zac' by 18 months I think they are supposed to say 10-20 words.

A week ago we took her to the child health nurse for her 18 month vaccinations. I mentioned the above to the child health nurse and we have determined there is definitely a sensory problem that we need to get under control. Being around even 1 extra person makes Isla so fussy and out of sorts that she won't eat properly (even worse than normal) she's clingy, whingey etc...and that's just with one extra person! So clearly it doesn't take much for little one to get to the sensory overload point.

Unfortunately for us there has suddenly been a massive cutback in the health department in this town. Our speech therapist, occupational therapist and the visiting dietician have all been sent on their way. Unlucky for us those 3 people are the people we need right now.

I've filled out some paperwork and have a follow up appointment with the child health nurse this week. We are hoping that we might be able to do some activities at home that can help Isla out.
Unfortunately though there is only so far we can go by ourselves, if we don't start to see some big improvements over the next few weeks/months we may have to travel 5/6 hours to our nearest big towns to see some specialists. Fingers crossed we won't need to start making those trips. Hopefully we can help her out ourselves at home.

But in the meantime-boredom. Because it doesn't take much for Isla to go into sensory overload it means things like playgroup and kinder gym and even just play dates are hard for her.
We tried kinder gym last year and she mostly just sat on my lap and watched everyone.
We also tried crèche while I was doing an exercise class but leaving her alone with the crèche ladies was torture (for her and the carers) she screamed continuously the whole hour and even when I picked her up to bring her home it would take me a further 30 mins to calm her down. So we lasted a few weeks of that and gave it up. It wasn't fair on the carers or other children, so I exercise at home.

This year I've signed up for kinder gym again. We will go for the first couple weeks and see how she goes. But if it's too hard I won't go back next term.
The child health nurse said play dates with one other mummy/toddler are probably the best thing for her.

At home when it's just us Isla is the easiest most fun little toddler, she plays and doesn't whinge. She has fun and enjoys being by herself.
But I swear everyone else must think she's the clingiest annoying baby ever because when we go out she gets so unsettled.

Hopefully we can play some fun sensory games and get her improving with her separation anxiety and eating over the coming months because she's the cutest little kid and the world is a much more fun place when it's not so scary :-) :-)

Bradley

Bradley.

My little Mr. The middle child. Only boy. And Mr EasyGoing himself!

This year Bradley has started year 1, finally up in the big school with his sister.

Over the holidays he had a great time in Perth. He got to feed a giraffe at the zoo, went rock climbing, tried snorkelling and got his eyes tested for the first time.
I've worn glasses since I hit puberty. And Bradley's always squinting and seems very sensitive to the sun so I took him in with me.

He did awesome, he sat through the same eye tests that I take and aced (most of) them. The optometrist kept commenting on how smart Bradley was-he went through all the colourblind tests, reading the charts, everything.

AAAAAANND we've discovered Bradley does have a little vision problem. He's a teeny bit long sighted (opposite of me), but he has a DUST ALLERGY that is affecting him a little bit.

A dust allergy. And we live in the Pilbara! Dust is so fine and so common here everyone looks like they have a freaking sun tan from all the dust!
So how do we help this dust allergy? Well there were two options.
Option 1: medicated eye drops 6 times (!!) per day-meaning I would have to go to the school each day to put drops in his eyes.
Option 2: ice his eyes 3 times a day every day.

We took option 2. So every single day before school, after school and before bedtime he sits on the couch with a brand new packet of frozen peas that we've shaped nicely for him and he ice's his eyes!
As can be expected he doesn't much like it, it's cold and uncomfortable and he gets distracted and ends up with the peas in his lap instead of on his eye.
Oh and he also got a pair of really cool prescription sunglasses to help his sensitive little eyes 🙊🙈😎 he loves them!

Kaitlyn

My little Kaitlyn (or should I say big!) is still horse riding to help with her anxiety.
Meg is a very sweet, gentle and caring pony (very unlike the spoilt, cheeky ponies I'm used to!) and Kaitlyn just loves her.
Unfortunately her riding teacher is moving to Canada in a few weeks, so we only have about 3-4 lessons remaining.
As you can imagine Kaitlyn is upset. However I am absolutely devastated! Seeing your highly strung, stressed out, anxious child finally relaxed, in control and at ease is something very special. Words can't even describe it.

I hope that in time we will find another riding teacher or (hint hint hubby) get our own pony so Kaitlyn can continue this experience.




Today is the first day of year 2 for Kaitlyn. Thankfully on Friday the principal set up a meet and greet with Kaitlyn's new teachers. We went in, had a chat, had a look around and I got to tell the teachers a little bit about her anxiety and what to look out for.
Then the teacher gave Kaitlyn a big squeezy hug and she smiled, a great big smile of relief.
I left her feeling a bit nervous but looking good this morning in her new classroom.
I have a much better feeling about this year than last. I think 2016 schooling is going to be much more successful for kaitlyn. And I'm hoping to see some good progress.
At the end of last year I asked for kaitlyn to be tested. To rule out any learning disabilities. Hopefully once everyone is settled in Kaitlyn will begin her testing and maybe we will have some more answers. Or maybe we can just rule out difficulties, maybe we will know it's only her anxietystopping her...

Who knows, there's no harm in getting her checked.

So: that's where my biggest girl is at, at the moment.
Still dealing with her anxiety, still doing all we can to help her.