That is 44lbs if you are still on imperial :)

I've had so much encouragement. A little girls grandma from Alec's class pulled me over today and told me how thrilled she was for me, it makes me smile I tell you, I need the encouragement, I am touched and amazed that people notice. Before this everything I did was to try and not be noticed, but I suppose due to my size that was a bit of an impossibility.

This last week I have learnt so much more about exercise and calories and how many of each you need. I am loving my walking and my walking partners Ali and Amanda have been encouraging and great company, I doubt I would walk 1/2 as far without them.

I wish I had a photo, I will get Michael to take some tonight and add them on here later. I am down to about 3 changes of clothes. Ali and I went clothes trying on on Saturday and I bought a pair of size 18 exercise pants!! the size 18 jeans were still a no go but I have about 8 more weeks until I need any jeans so that will be another 8 kg hopefully.

I am just encouraged by how I feel and how easier it is than I thought. It is still hard work I have to watch everything I eat, I am weighing everything otherwise I know how easy it is to eat too much. I am using calorieking.com.au to record my exercise and food intake. If I find over a month it works I think I will buy the software.

I'm one third of the way there, another 40kg (88lbs) to lose, but that looks so much better than 60kg (122lbs) to lose.

So this is what happens when you do the same thing twice in one week and take the camera on both occasions. Then you print out some photos, forget you did them and print out some more. This way I can put one in each boys album and one in the all of us album and I had a nice relaxing time doing it.

One is a Cathy Z scraplift and the other two are taken from Simple Scrapbooks magazine Mar/Apr 2008 page 82 by Margaret Scarbrough

It is the day after the most terrible day I can remember after the last terrible day that had slightly faded from my memory.

It was a bad day.

Due to diligent control of the environment and our family schedule I can usually keep everything at a low level of stress for Alec. Yesterday wasn't one of those days. He has built up such a sleep deficit that it is now really affecting him, he fell asleep one day at school last week. He is having trouble going to sleep because he is afraid of having nightmares, he is scared of movies that 2 weeks ago he was fine with, shadows on the wall scare him and we have taken down all his posters and moved any shadow making things.

Yesterday he woke up agitated, he was snappy and uncooperative getting ready for school. He didn't verbalise his concerns until we were 1/2 way to school. He had left his Ben 10 watch in his desk at school, that meant he wouldn't be able to wear it and play before the doors opened and he had to start school. I told him we would talk to Mr Gaglia and see if he could wear it for a little while. That was no good and he quickly slipped into a full scale meltdown. I managed to get him to the classroom but he was lost to it, he was crying and talking really fast with lots of big gestures, he looked tortured. When the door was opened I had to half carry him in, I took him straight to the teacher and Helen his aide saw what was happening and headed right over. Alec was past even knowing what was going on, he had gone stiff, his whole body tensed, b now I was so distressed I just started crying, Nic took Alec and Helen took me. Nic found his Ben 10 watch and put it on him, he said once Alec realised he could wear it he could feel his body relax.

I always look back at these events and try to figure out where I could have stopped it from happening, what could I have done to make it better. You know what, nothing was going to stop this, this is what autism is sometimes. Most of it I can deal with but with these meltdowns I feel totally useless. I see terror, confusion, hurt and a look of being lost and I can do nothing and being powerless when it comes to helping my child is the most awful thing I have ever experienced.

He was fine though, he made it through the day and we went to his social skills class at the speech centre, I am still shattered, the tears are just under the surface. Alec needs more help, more therapy, more something but we are finding it hard, once early intervention is over unless you are in an autism school (which Alec isn't he is in mainstream school) you are pretty much alone. We will get there though, Alec and his brother Riley are the most important job I am ever going to have and I am nothing if not determined.

So today, the day after my very bad day I am going to kick back, do some scrapping and read a book. I need some down time.

Labels: autism

My goal is one kilogram a week, sometimes that seems so hard that i wonder if I am doing something wrong. I am right on board for portion control so I know my quantities are ok, I was just wondering if the calorie count was too high.

I started out by working out what the calorie count per cup of soup I make was, then we baked some cookies from taste.com.au and they turned out to be 205 calories each. Then my favourite snack, a sao cracker with ham and a cheese slice came out at 165 calories.

Then on my search for a calorie worker outer I stumbled across this site called calorieking.com.au, so I joined up. I can now track what food I eat, the calories I burn exercising and how much water I drink. As I am walking twice today I wont use all my calories, if I eat everything I put in I will have consumed 1568 calories today and burnt 609 calories on 2 50 minute walks. I feel as though there is a lot of food on my list but i was pretty careful working out the calorie counts.. this is what I have down for today, I am really splashing out and having a glass of milo with my cracker snack.. and 3 snacks for the day!! if this works this week I will stick with it, it seems like too much food, I will drop a snack tomorrow as I will only be walking once.

Breakfast	Load Meal | Save Meal	Cals	kJ
You have not added any foods to breakfast.
(x) 1 scoop (60g) of Sustagen: Energy Drinks: Hospital Formula, All Flavours, dry		228	954
(x) 60 g of Fruit, fresh: Banana, raw, edible portion		59	246
(x) 200 mL of Dairy Farmers: Milk, fresh: Skim		70	296
Meal Total		357	1496
Lunch	Load Meal | Save Meal	Cals	kJ
You have not added any foods to lunch.
(x) 1 oz of Ham: Leg, lean, fresh		32	133
(x) 1 1 cup of turkey and spinach soup		135	564
(x) 1 30gr of bega supa slice		97	405
(x) 1 cracker (8.6g) of Arnott's: Crackers: Sao		39	163
Meal Total		303	1265
Dinner	Load Meal | Save Meal	Cals	kJ
You have not added any foods to dinner.
(x) 1 1 cup of meatball soup		280	1170
Meal Total		280	1170
Snacks	Load Meal | Save Meal	Cals	kJ
You have not added any foods to snacks.
(x) 1 1 of apricot cookie		205	857
(x) 1 bar (68g) of Nestle / Peters: Ice Cream Bars: Skinny Cow, Vanilla Chocolate, bar		82	340
(x) 1 cracker (8.6g) of Arnott's: Crackers: Sao		39	163
(x) 1 30gr of bega supa slice		97	405
(x) 1 cup (250mL) of Dairy Farmers: Milk, fresh: Skim		88	370
(x) 1 serving, 3 heaped teaspoons (15g) of Milo: Chocolate Powder: Original, dry		63	263
(x) 25 g of Ham: Leg, lean, fresh		28	117
(x) 25 g of Ham: Leg, lean, fresh		28	117
Meal Total		629	2632
Food Total		Cals	kJ
Day Total		1569	6563
Exercise		Cals	kJ
You have not added any exercises.
(x) 50 mins Walking 6 kph		-304	-1273
(x) 50 mins Walking 6 kph		-304	-1273
Exercise Total		-609	-2546

So I am wondering what we should expect as far as quality goes, and by quality I just don't mean by the finish or materials used I mean do they do what they say they do.

You see I have this huge issue with things that are sold as self adhesive drying up and giving up the ghost. This is all well and good if you know this is going to happen but lets face it, when we buy a product we assume it will do what is says.

I was looking for letters today to use on a layout and sadly 3 brands of self adhesive alphabets I have either have dried up and have no stick or have been found to stick.. initially, then have slipped off. As I look through my albums now I am finding some pages with a little puddle of letters at the bottom of the page protector.

The guilty parties ?

dried up and fallen off - Heidi Swapp chipboard alphabets

falling off pages - chip chatter by pressed petal

not sticking, falling off - just about all the american crafts thickers

To me this isn't quiet good enough, I now have a hoard of flawed product. I used some of the HS chipboard alphabets today, I glued them, but as I was gluing them I am wondering well will this be enough or will it fall off too, I started with some dimensional magic and moved over to craft glue... just to make sure. You know what though, I bought self adhesive letters so I could cut down on the mess glue makes when you stick letters down, but now if I don't use glue I am out of pocket a fair bit of money if I don't use them.

I am considering moving entirely over to letter stickers, while these are a great looking bunch of products they let us down and don't do what they say they will do.

And here is where I glued my self adhesive letters! another in my scraplift series... this is another Cathy Z interpretation

ahhh my first school day of scrapping. The boys have been back at school for a week and today I did 3 layouts! Two were straight up scraplifts, one from Ali Edwards and another of Cathy Z's . I love these, all about the photos and the story, nothing too distracting going on. I think I will just scraplift from now on LOL.

I thought I had lots of interesting things to say today but after watching the news for 10 minutes this morning if you can afford to, donating to the red cross bushfire fund is far more important.

Michael and I have started a new blog that is dedicated just to recipes, it is called Gastronomology
and here are a few of the soups I have posted recipes for this last week

I'm a little sad today.

My boys went back to school, Alec started year 2 and Riley started pre-primary. They will both be gone everyday. Riley has been looking forward to school for weeks, always talking about it almost as a rite of passage, growing older, going up a class. He is already in a hurry to celebrate his 6th birthday which isn't until October.

Alec is 7 in 3 weeks and we still haven't finalised plans for his birthday yet. I only realise once we are among Alec's class mates how much different our lives are. A bit slower living in the now. I suppose when you deal with autism you shed a lot of baggage, I'm not saying this right I know. You try to travel light but with all eventualities covered, bit of a contradiction that isn't it. Things can still change, things you thought had worked well ended up being discarded. Like soccer, we had assumed Alec would want to play soccer again this year, but he started coming up with lots of reasons why he didn't want to, and we can't do the, you'll be right it will be good for you, because I don't want to be standing there at the first day being told I hadn't listened and he didn't want to do it. I don't want him to be distressed, sad, confused, hurt. Already on the first day there were things that could have caused hurt, thankfully this is a time when I feel a little relieved he can't read people. I mean what 7 year rolls his eyes when someone tells them something, we must have missed the bad attitude when it was going around, atleast it let me make a note of who to guide him away from during the year.

We have had lots of sleepless nights the last week, any new thing or change causes concern for him. It seems to manifest itself at bed time, so most nights the last week he hasn't been to sleep before 10pm, then he is awake by 1am, most nights I have tried to settle him again, one night it was 4am before that happened and then he was back at 6am, lucky we were able to sleep until 9am that morning. This morning when he came in I let him sleep on the floor, just so he would sleep.

He was excited to get to school, back to routine, he thrives on routine, it is something he can rely on, he wasn't all that excited about the first day of school photos though and I hope he doesn't fall over his new shoes too many times before home time.