Challenge for Scrappin' Patch

Boyzone challenge over at Scrappin Patch was from Hannah to scrapbook a layout about a struggle/challenge you have with one of the boys you have in your life. Here is my take on the challenge.


The journalling reads:
Just over 6years ago Steven was diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay as well as being deaf in his left ear. It has been a very long and somewhat hard journey that we have travelled to get from there to where we are today. Endless appointments for hearing to make sure his good ear is still okay, speech-language therapist, Early Intervention Teachers(EIT) and Educational Support Workers(ESW). Less than a year after Steven was diagnosed my married ended and I felt very alone, but living with someone who does not accept that there is need for intervention and that Steven did have autism was too much to deal with. Routine was Steven's way of coping and knowing what was going to happen next. For many years visuals were my life saver in explaining/showing Steven what to expect. I have many boxes of visuals from over the years from toileting and bathing to haircuts and what’s for dinner. At one stage I even had them in the car to show him where we were going after school whether it was home or down the road to the dairy. Steven need for routines and to know what was happening made me become a very organised person but it in all honesty it drove me mad that we couldn’t just pop out or go and visit someone whenever we had some time. Over the years I learnt to deal with these struggles that I had but also remembered that Steven had the most struggles to deal with. At kindy Steven had full one on one support right through, once he was at school that all ended and he was pretty much left on his own just to cope the best he can. It frustrates me that there is not enough funding in school to support kids like Steven who with a few hours of one on one a week would make things so much easier for them. Holidays are hard work and I love both my boys to bits but I don’t enjoy holidays much at all. They are both so different and as they get older Liam doesn’t want to play by Steven rules and doesn’t want to spend lots of time with Steven, yet Steven still wants to spend lots of time with Liam. I struggle with the fact that academically Liam will be ahead of Steven by the end of this year if he’s not already. It frustrates Steven that Liam knows things that he doesn’t and I can see this will be another struggle to deal with as the years go on. Steven loves school because once again it has routine that he needs. He knows every day what is going to happen its written on the board when he gets to class, he knows what day he has maths which means going to another classroom he knows what day his teacher has release day and he has a different teacher, but when he doesn’t know or he is unable to tell me that there is something at school happening that he doesn’t like I have a hell of a job getting him to school. Most of these days start with me having to physically getting his dressed myself cause he wont do it by himself, followed by him not getting out of the car once we are at school leading to him screaming as he holds on for dare life to his booster seat which of course makes people turn to stare to see what on earth you are doing to that poor child. 90% of the time I can block out the stares and ignore the comments made but that other 10% of the time I break and end up in tears and I question the job that I’m doing am I doing the right thing for Steven, should I do something different? Many people have asked how I cope being a single mum with a special needs child, the honest truth is most of the time I don’t, behind closed doors I struggle and there are days where I feel like I’m drowning. I struggle with not knowing how Steven will come in the coming years with college and the forever changing routines that come as time goes by. I have guilt after getting annoyed and frustrated with him because of something he does or doesn’t do but when I calm down and think about it half the time I'm sure he is frustrated and confused about this world we live in. But most of all my heart breaks for him when he has to deal with change, its part of life and he is made to deal with it, he has to fit into what everyone else calls ‘typical’ or ‘normal’, he has to change who he is so that people like him or will be friends with him.

Another layout

using the Paper Pesto monthly kit, other than the butterfly and thread for stitching everything else is from the kit. I really like how this page has come together. The chipboard butterfly had crackle paint which I love the affect of once it has dried. I'm loving hand stitching at the moment and did a bit on the machine for this layout as well.



The boys are away with their dad for two nights again this weekend and while I do enjoy having that extra night I do miss them when they are not here and I miss our Sunday mornings at home not having to get up and go anywhere. But since he is off to America for a month I am making the most of the breaks I get before he goes away and they don't have their Friday nights with their dad......Steven finds the extra night a bit hard to deal with in that its a change from whats normal but he loves his time away and I love when they come home and give me big hugs and tell me they love and missed me.

Liam is doing REALLY, REALLY WELL at school and had a test yesterday(and if you know the name of the test let me know I was told but I cant for the life of me remember-it was maths reading and spelling all that sort of stuff to see what level he is at)and the teacher who took the test told me I should be very proud of Liam as hes a very smart young man. In many ways hes too smart for his own good,LOL.....His class teacher has also said to me in the past that he is very good at his maths and spelling. he is one of the youngest in his class and he does do really well for himself, he does however need to remember when he needs help to ask his teacher for help which he wont do and even at home if he is stuck with something he tends to sit and just wait for me to notice he needs help or he will continue and get him self annoyed and frustrated because he cant work it out himself instead of just asking for me to help him. I do think its good to a point that he wants to do things himself and work things out but he needs to learn that there is a point where he needs to ask for help and that its okay to need to ask for help. So I'm very proud of Liam and I think its great that he is doing so well and above his age level in most areas.

Steven is also doing really well at school and is now getting into doing most of his school work. After weeks of Steven not writing his homework into his book or even doing his homework I suggest to his teacher that letting Steven type it on computer and print it out might help and encourage him to do his work. So Monday he let Steven type his homework list out and print it off and glue it into his book and Steven did it no fuss, YAY....so through out the week Steven has had more computer time to do some of his work, like story writing which Steven totally hates but with the use of computer he is happy to type you a whole book, lol. And for years now I have asked the school for Steven to have more use of the computer to do his work because at the end of the day he is not a typical child and you need to try different things with him to encourage him to do his work. he is still doing story writing but he is typing instead of writing BUT to me its the same as he still needs to think about what he wants to type and hey at the end of the day if it means he will actually do his work instead of flat out refusing to do any work all day then let him use the computer I say. So YAY for his teacher willing to give this a try and see that it works for Steven. Looks like another great year for Steven at school.

Well thats all from me for now Im off to scrapbook my next few nights/day away,lol....have a good weekend everyone and hope we still have this lovely sunny weather for a few more days.

All about Steven

Steven has been a bit funny today and very moody with moods changing without any warning at all. Had his bag packed for his over night stay at carer support house and his yellow hippo(who by the way is called piggy...and do you know how hard it is to remember to call a hippo piggy, I have been growled more than once by Steven). Anyway piggy was sitting on top of his bag as piggy has to go everywhere that Steven goes at the moment. Steven was piggy sitting there by himself and picked him up to take over to sofa to watch TV with him. A few minutes later Steven said that piggy said he wants to watch Steven jump on the tramp, so Steven got this chair for piggy so he could watch him,LOL too cute. So for those of you who have read the book A Friend Like Henry....well our book would be A Friend Like Piggy. For awhile Steven even stopped talking in the afternoons and would only talk to/with piggy it was quite frustrating and I was thinking i might have to get rid of piggy but he has started talking to me again so all is good as long as i remember his name is piggy and not hippo.

Stevens other focus at the moment is the caterpillars and how much they are eating and how big they are getting when they change and waiting for the butterflies to come. I just love this photo of him lying down on the deck watching the caterpillar eat, he said 'its eating lots of food cause he wants to be a beautiful butterfly'. I'm hoping when the butterfly does come out it will be when the boys are home and not at school, or when I'm home at least so I can get photos for them.

IM BACK

I's been about 3 weeks since my computer decided to die...lucky it was just the motherboard that was fried and not the hard drive. I was stressing there for a bit that i had lost 3years worth of photos that have not been saved to disk.......but they were okay and i have got some Cd's to back them up and will get more tomorrow so over the next few days i will be busy sorting photos onto CD. My brother gave me the use of his computer over that time while mine was getting sorted and then he came in yesterday and got mine up and running for me. So here I am...i do have a few photos to share but want to get photos and journalling for some layouts i have done finished. I have been reading every ones blogs but while on my brothers computer it wouldn't let me post comments for some reason.

Anyway enjoying today's lovely weather and was up nice and early this morning and managed to get a couple loads of washing done through the dishes into dishwasher and got them done(didn't do them last night cause i had INTERNET lol which i have not had computer or Internet since last Thursday...yes the Internet is an addiction just like scrapbooking).

Liam got sent home about 5 worksheets of maths to do for home work over this week....he only has to do one pages per night, but once he started he didn't want to stop, he really enjoys his maths. He surprised me a bit with how well he can do it and alot of the problems he just writes the answer down no problem at all. So he ended up doing nearly 3 pages of the 5 last night....and then you have Steven who would never do more homework than he needs too,LOL. Steven is back to bringing his school work home to do as he is refusing to do it at school. Its just story writing which he hates doing. Mondays they have to write about what they did in the weekend...I personally think for Steven he hates doing story writing because he knows what he did in the weekend so why would he need to write about it. And he sits there and he says i don't know what to write and you give him ideas and he says he not want to write that. And then when he does write something he makes the sentence as short as he can. One sentence was 'I got a Ben 10 book'. I said to him to write i got a Ben 10 book because.....(he got it for doing good homework last week), he replies with i already know that. So i have tried to explain to him that who ever is reading his story doesn't know that and you need to write it down so they know why you got that book. He can be so frustrating because I know he can do it he has written a whole page about his weekend before, hes just soooooo stubborn sometimes and flat out refuses to do the work. But then i think how frustrating our world must seem to him and he does do his best and he is doing well in all other areas at school so that's great.

Not sure if there are any fans of the programme House of Tiny Tearaways out there but i really enjoy this programme as Tanya has some really good ideas on it. This week there is a autistic boy on it with a younger brother and I'm hoping it might have some good ideas. With Steven most games/toys are played with in a totally different way that they are meant to be used, and so Steven will often want to line things up or play his rules and then you have Liam who wants to play with cars and crash them not just line them up and then you have two boys angry at each other cause they both have different ideas about hoe to play with things. The family in the house this week seem to have the same problem so hopefully there will be some good ideas today. More often than not i will say to Liam just let Steven do it the way he wants, but that's hardly fair on Liam is it?

Anyway off to do some more scrapbooking, hope everyone has the lovely warm sunny weather like we have here today.

Whoo hoot Wednesday

haven't done this for awhile so here is my list for this week
*The start of term 4.....YAY.

*Steven being extra happy this afternoon after school. he cam racing up to me with a certificate for taking part in the Dog "Do's" and "Don'ts" programme. Last year he didn't go anywhere near the dogs having a huge fear of them(or any animal that moves for that matter, he can get just as upset by a fly in his room as he can a dog...I believe its because he has no control over then and doesn't know what they are going to do next as with any living animal and he hates to not know whats going to happen next) anyway he was so happy and read out what was written on the certificate and showed mew the little booklet they good about the do's and don'ts of dogs...Well Done Steven.

*I have been getting back into scrapbooking and enjoying it again.

*Gotta be happy with this lovely weather we have been having and being able to put washing on the line instead of the airing rack.

*Steven might not be need to see his speech language therapist much longer, she sees him at school and I'm told is quite impressed with how well he is doing.

*Walking to school to save on the gas, and I have been enjoying the walks, this morning the kids pretty much ran to school, I don't know where they get all of their energy from.

*Sorting out Liam and his swimming problems at school. School start swimming this term and Liam is very stressed about it and has huge fear about getting in the pool. So have arrange for me to be there and get in the pool with him but if he not keen to get it then that is fine and I have been told they wont push him to get in, but he is still to get changed into his togs with the rest of the class which I'm happy for him to do so that when he is ready to get in he will be all set. Also will get a school pool key over the Xmas holidays and go up there everyday or second day and get him into the pool a bit.

My baby is 8 today

Well I guess hes not really my baby anymore since hes 8. The years have gone by so fast and I have been through alot more than i ever thought I would have to get through, but I wouldn't change the last 8years for the world.

Today started at 5.30...yip that's right Steven was up at 5.30 asking if i had any presents for him,LOL. then once all the presents were opened he then played every game he got read every book he got and did a puzzle or word search in every book he got....he got lots of Wheres wally books and a Wheres Wally poster and lots of I Spy books which he has taken with him tonight to his dads house. So we had a very small afternoon tea to celebrate Stevens 8 years and now I'm about ready to fall into bed...but not before i do a bit of scrapbooking...so here are a few of my favourite photos of Steven.

Bits and pieces, catch up

What a lovely day nice to finally get some fine weather...nearly warm enough to get the 3/4pants and skirts out but not quite yet.

So Steven had last Friday of school, his teacher was away Thursday and Friday and after Thursday with a reliever which he has never had before and a male teacher too he was so stressed out and unhappy so I decided to keep him at home. We did some of his reading and he did some writing as well. I also noticed that when he wears his hooded tops he loves wear the hoods(he went through a stage of not liking anything on his head at all) but notice his right ear sticking out...Steven is deaf in his left ear so i figure this is why that ear is covered up and his right ear sticking out so he can still hear things,lol. And the photo is Steven and his groupings of coloured jacks he calls them. They belong with a set of straws that you connect up and make different things and Steven loves the connectors.

Layout i have done just because...not a challenge or sketch just one that i did to get another page done. Quite like how it came out

Okay so the story behind farm fun is that I really do hate this layout, it needs something else but I'm not sure what. So this is how the layout started and then i didn't like it and ripped the photos of it to start over again, but then i didn't like where that was going so for now the photos are back on this layout but I really don't like it and will re do it again at some stage, but thought I would share anyway...maybe someone has some ideas of what i can do to it

Also I got this little bundle of goodies in the post the other day from Vicki....a just cos envelope so a big thank you Vicki its nice getting that sort of mail and im really loving the swirls well I love the whole lot might have to invest in a machine like yours and have a play around(oneday,LOL).

WELL DONE STEVEN

One very proud mum here and one proud boy of himself too....

YAY its Friday, boys have gone to their dads early today. We are getting back into the habit of walking to and from school which is good the boys enjoy walking as do but I need more motivation than what they do and it only has to be a bit cold to put me off walking. Have a friend coming over for a scrapbooking night tonight...will be good to have a scrapbook catch up as we haven't had one for some time now.

Im Back.....

So I haven't been around much....there has been alot happening and alot not that great and I don't want this blog to be negative so decided to just not post. But I'm feeling better today, had our monthly Autism meeting which was great. I get such a great feeling being in a room full of mothers\grandparents/support people who understand what its like living with autism as part of your daily life. Every time i go along with this list of things in my head that I want to talk about and mention the good and the bad just to get it of my chest and hopefully get some answers as to how to get help to get through the bad parts....but then i start talking and then next thing you know the tears come flowing out, LOL.....and i say hardly any of what i wanted to say...but its good to know I'm with others that are understanding....and when I'm tired and feeling down I'm more emotional and tears come more often, here's hoping for more talking at the next meeting. I found this book-Making Peace With Autism of trade me so have got stuck into reading this and really enjoying it.

With Stevens birthday just around the corner I have been on the hunt for some presents for him and found these Wheres Wally books.

Cant remember if i have posted about the wheres wally puzzle I got of trade me(I love trade me so much such a great place to find bargins) ski slopes wheres wally now lives on our coffee table. And I must say Steven is getter faster and faster at putting this together but doesn't want it put away completely.

And when i got back from my autism meeting nothing like a parcel sitting on the front door step to give me a lift and look what was inside.....

A treat for me from me...as mothers we are allowed to treat ourselves ah????LOL...good glad you all say YES.
And to finish off a couple of layout that I have done...this first one i did just for the sake of creating a layout for Stevens album...it wasn't a challenge or sketch it was done just because I wanted to,LOL. Since doing this layout Steven has lost another tooth, just last night he was mucking around at bed time and said to me'I just need to do something in the bathroom okay mum' so off he went and I could see him looking in the mirror wiggling his tooth madly trying to get it out....about 10 minutes later he comes our and says'look my tooth just popped out' followed with'im so glad I will get another $2'. So the tooth fairy did come but between Steven going to sleep and the tooth fairy going to get the tooth the tooth is yet to be found as Steven took it out of the bag and has misplaced it somewhere( I hope he didn't swallow it or anything like that).

This was a challenge for over at the Sketch Book...I really do love how this layout came together. The challenge was to use pattern paper with dots/circles and to use circle embellishments. And what better photos to use than the ones of Steven spinning the wheels on this bath toys, one of his many addictions.

Had good talk with Steven teacher and he is doing so well at school, and she did some maths worksheets with him the other day and is quite amazed at what he is doing. he loves his times tables but is also great at most maths and is adding BIG numbers together in his head and giving answers...he really does amaze me some days. Liam has been off school all of this week and today on the way to school Steven just started to cry and when i asked him what was wrong he said he missed playing with Liam at school...aww he so sweet. Liam will be back at school tomorrow so it will be interesting to see if they play together or not. So there we are all updated.....see you all again in a few weeks, just kidding I will try and get back into blogging more often again and also commenting on every ones blogs.

Whoo Hoot Wednesday

Well this week it would have to be that Steven wrote 14 sentences at school yesterday all by himself. For a not so keen writer this is great for Steven and he was so proud with himself telling me that he did it all by himself...WELL DONE STEVEN.

The boys have both settled back into the school routine, although Stevens sleep routine could do with a bit of work. Not much to catch up on will post some photos of my cards that I have been making tomorrow as the light is no good anymore today.