We are so proud of you little man and thank you to the lovely girl leading the pony, first Alec follwed along as she took other kids for a ride, then she offered him the lead, he was thrilled and when she asked him if he would like a ride he put up his arms and said "yes please", everytime we had ask he had said "no please mummy, don't want to ride pony"

Some nice things happened to someone, another person commented that they must be really nice people because nice things happened to nice people... So basing my life on that I must really be scum to have ended up with my precious baby being autistic, Riley's birth being so terrible, him having low immunity and both the boys ending up in hospital on drips with strep pneumonia and one of them having febrile seizures...

My beautiful baby boy is Autistic. We are shocked, numb, sad, angry. It is such a whirlwind of emotions. We had the second assessment by the pediatrician yesterday and we have been referred on to a clinical psychologist and a diagnostic speech pathologist.

Next week Michael and I go back and we will get a therapy plan from the Dr.

I'm not looking forward to the numbness wearing off.

Summer is coming....I can smell it in the air and by all the bloody flies!

I went out and watered the garden this morning and they drove me mad.. Alec and Riley were running around squealing because they were following them. Alec is convinced they are buzzy bees coming to get him, mind you some of those blowies are the size of bees.

I'm rather grouchy today, it could be because I have to take Riley to speech therapy with us this afternoon, not looking forward to it, then there is the $300 I have to pay to various doctors and dentists in the next 3 days, some days I wonder what the worth of private health insurance is, all this comes on a week when they didn't put through Michaels HDA (higher duties allowance) they manage to stuff this up every 3 months when the paper work is resubmitted. Fingers crossed he gets that job and we don't have to worry about it again.

Too little time and too little money. Must go back through the day and see what gifts I have received, I was reading Ali Edwards blog yesterday, she is very right but today is one of those make it through by the skin of your teeth type of days. How dreary am I!

Today I wrote my first Alec letter and it was to daycare, last week there was an issue with Alec doing a wee on the lawn during outside play. He doesn't quiet understand the social and hygenic no no that is.

Now when we go to the park we have had him do a wee in the bushes or the lawn if we haven't caught him in time so he thinks this is just what you do, I have started retraining this week but he is still wanting to wee on the alawn, as you would if you were 3. So any way I supplied the language they will need and the signals they will have to use to communicate with him, lets see what the report is at the end of the day. I am very lucky that they have staff trained in dealing with autistic and ASD kids and because they have a very structured program there has only ever been a few meltdowns when he hasn't been able to make them understand him.

Very tired..Very stressed, we are back to the paeditritan Monday to start the developmental assessment of Alec, tomorrow it is back to speech and it looks like Riley will be along for the ride, that will be most interesting.

My de-stress for the day was going to the opening of the new K-mart at Ocean keys 3 minutes up the road.. woo hooooooooo we have a K-mart, I see many lay-by's in our future :)

I have 3 scrapping projects with deadlines so I am going to make a start on those today, I can't wait to get started unfortunately the day goes too fast I could work on things for hours and hours.. 6 hours and 42 minutes until I have to get the boys.. Lets see what I can get done

take care

we start the Asperger’s diagnosis journey. I have to go alone to the paediatrician as Michael had a job interview and wouldn't make it back in time. I sat here last night noting amendments to the speech pathologists observations that we spoke about when she gave me her report and it all becomes so overwhelming, he functions well now but how can I protect him from awful teachers and bullies, who will protect him if I don't. Will anyone care apart from us?

I'm going to ask for a referral to the child development centre, I think it is only at Princess Margaret hospital which is 45km from us, but if they take you all therapies are free and speech therapy is $75 a week right now and we are going to need OT as well for his eating, which is getting worse and worse. He did eat a piece of cheese yesterday; I came so close to crying it's not funny. He wanted to help make dinner so I had him cut the tomatoes and peel the carrot for the salad with me. He has no idea of what a knife will do if it cuts him but hates me guiding him in any way but in this I'm not giving in. Then this morning he burst into tears because I put orange on his plate.

We are off to morning tea this morning, I hope he has fun; it is great for me too as he plays really well with all the kids and it means I can sit and have a chat to the girls. As for Tuesday playgroup, I have given it a lot of thought and we won’t be going back next year.

Keep well

My Riley can be such a cuddly thing when he isn't having a whine, Michael snapped these on Saturday, apart from the icky multi coloured hair I look ok in these

until Michael comes home!

Tomorrow the boys are in daycare and I will come home do a quick clean and then I am scrapping until 5:25pm when I have to go and pick them up again. I have photos done for 4 layouts so lets see what we can manage.

Before i start.. I lost Riley at coles tonight.. I had to have them put an alert out for him over the loud speaker, thank you to the lovely ANZ lady that found him sorting friut in the fruit and veg section! I started to panic a bit after 5 minutes as I had visions of some psychopath being seen leading him away on CCT.. not a nice feeling, I could start to hear the panic in my voice as i called to him.. he got lots of cuddles when I got him back.

so anyway

I am part of 2 groups where we get together with our kids, one is a playgroup I have been in for 3 1/2 years and another is the monday morning, morning tea group. I realised that my morning tea group is far more willing to invest parts of themselves and their families into our group. Playgroup has just never quiet jelled which is such a shame. I could quiet easily drop it except my friend Jodi also comes to playgroup and some times we get so busy playgroup is the only place we can get together.

Now we have these issues with Alec I want to keep him as social as possible, I can drag myself along to playgroup as I like catching up with Jodi but I will have to evaluate the worth of going after each term I think. Today he had a great time, he gets a little over excited though.

Monday morning tea is a whole different thing, I am amazed at how well we get along and how much fun our kids have together, it is a local group so no one is more than 2 minutes away, we even do brunch every couple of months, I have a real sense of belonging.

I took the Aspergers book to morning tea and you know every one of those girls read it, play group one girl had a glance.

Jodi, well I just love Jodi, she read it and we talked about it, she said you know that poor kid, we went to that craft fair and he just couldn't take it and we just thought he was having a huge tanty.. the poor little guy was just having a total overload, it was so busy and loud and hot. We are going to Jodi's tomorrow, and she came here yesterday, she is looking after me while Michael is away.

I have great freinds, I can totally lose it and not feel as though i need to go home.

Alec is starting to become aware of his inability to socialise in a sociably acceptable manner. This morning at brunch at Andrew and Danelle's we took his bike, I incorrectly thought this would make him more comfortable, Alec got on his bike rode around then got off, Bri got on, Alec said that's my bike, Bri didn't get off, Alec pulled the bike out from under her. Thankfully she wasn't hurt but Alec ran away and hid. I couldn't even get out the front door with the bike before I was sobbing. I sat in Sam's room with him for a while and he played trains. After about 1/2 an hour he came back out and played really well with everyone. He was even able to tell on other kids..LOL then they all sat and watched a Thomas video so he was in heaven.

I must take the the booklette Can I tell you about Asperger Syndrome to morning tea tomorrow, hopefully it will explain it to everyone and then they can ask question from there. I just saw some other books she has written I would like, might order them from the library. I want a copy of this one, it will come in handy I think.

I feel adrift, i'm only ever about a minute away from tears I need to know things and do things to help him but it looks like there aren't any specific therapies for aspergers.

I am so over the rain, I know we need the rain and personally I love rain, sleet, wind and cold but Riley is a big baby sooky head who screams blue murder the minute he hears it.. and last night that would have been at 3am..

When the howls of daddy daddy rain rain.. I was already sprinting down the hallway, I needn't have bothered as it wasn't going to wake Alec as he was already in my bed, how he got there I'm not sure, after much calming patting stroking of hair and attempted bribery he settled down, I dragged myself back only to have Alec request an escort back to bed.

10 minutes later Riley was in our bed, by 4:15am I was tired of being kicked in the back so he went back to bed too. Until 4:50am. Michael went and got him and Riley proceeded to whisper in his ear, pat his head and stick his fingers up his nose, Michael said the last straw was when he started imitating my snoring, at 5:20 he was deposited back to bed.

The only thing that saved me was that he slept until 8:10am, pity everyone else couldn't have.

Michael starts leave tomorrow but then Sunday he has to fly to Brisbane for a conference, we will be alone for 5 days. I am being very positive, we will do just fine, I am going to start sourcing playdates for every morning and afternoon so the boys are too worn out to play up.

The boys put there star wars costumes on and by the time we had finished taking photos and the first guests arrived they had them off!

A lovely time was had by all and we are very very exhausted now!

All the effort with the food was worth it too!