My birthday wish...

You’re invited to help celebrate Cecily’s birthday
in a very special way!

No presents please! Here’s why...

The best birthday present anyone could give Cecily would be healing for Bright Eyes from his anxiety and autism, so we’re inviting you to join with us for a prayer time. We’ll be specifically asking God for healing and neurological health for him.

If you're in the area, join us on Friday 1 August at our place at 6pm for a light dinner of soup and buns and birthday cake and pray from 7 to 7.45.

RSVP by the Tuesday 29th July for catering. If you can't come, you're welcome to join us 'in spirit' at the same time!

Feeling good

We've just returned from a week away with the family.

It was an interesting time. At the beginning of the week our relationship with bright eyes was seriously under strain. He just couldn't cope with the travel to Canberra and the touristy things we wanted to do.

I really felt depressed after this. It all just seemed too hard.

However once we settled down at a beach house things recovered. I even had one of the most exciting times ever with him. This was our conversation:

Him: "What are you feeling mum?"
Me: "I'm feeling a bit sad."
Him: "You cannot feel sad. You have to feel better."
Me: "I might feel better if I have a hug."
He comes over to give me a hug.

And if that wasn't enough, five minutes later he said again, "what are you feeling now mum?"

He has never before asked how I'm feeling or why or even seemed to notice what my emotional state is. Very exciting.

Sleepover

Bright Eyes had his first sleepover at his grandma's place this weekend - all by himself. He had a good time, ate bacon and chips, went to Sunday school with Grandma and played at the park.

Frankly, it was nice to have the break, although we did miss him.

We're working on a whole lot of new stage 4 RDI objectives. I've printed them out and will try to focus on them while we're away for our week's holiday.

A lot of it will be me and hubby modelling the fact that we have internal thoughts which govern our actions. So we'll be thinking 'out loud' for a few weeks.

Just up and down

I haven't been blogging much recently. Bright Eyes keeps making small gains, but then has bad days where he consistently scripts and runs videos through his head.

Right now he's in the bath with his sister. It's the first time he's been washed in at least three weeks. I tricked him into getting in and now he won't get out...

Church is not fun with him. He just can't sit still, he's not interested in the story and he'd rather be climbing in and out of cupboards or going through my bag to see what I have to eat. I do find Sundays hard.

I still think RDI is great. We watched another lecture by Dr. Gutstein on the RDI site the other day. We keep learning more about autism and about remediation. One day I'll be really organized and try to put a summary of some of this up.

Gorgeous

Oh, he is being so gorgeous this week. We had a lovely time tonight looking through a book of trains and commenting on them all. He's really starting to use head gestures - nodding for yes and shaking for no. It's wonderful.

I'm a happy mummy tonight.

Updates

Clothes
Unfortunately I wasn't able to take a picture of this, but Bright Eyes actually put on.... wait for it... a pair of jeans yesterday.

For two years he has refused to wear anything but track pants, even in summer. Getting him into undies was a tomasha. But here we are and he's happy to wear jeans!

His little baby brother proudly announced, "I got jeans!" to me yesterday. Not to be outdone, Bright Eyes said, "I want jeans too." It was handy that I happened to have a pair just his size in the cupboard.

Food
I decided I'd give him a go with some gluten as he's now been GF/CF for a year and a half. At first he was a little bit reluctant to try a sandwich ("it'll make me sick") but then he chowed it down. Unfortunately after two days with a lot of bread, he had quite a bad tummy ache and bowel movements, so we'll stick with the GF for now, with gluten allowed on special occasions like parties etc.

Scripts
Still scripting constantly and driving us all nuts. However, we are seriously embracing 'ipod therapy' on the advice of our consultant. It seems to have made a small difference after a couple of days.

Kisses

Up until this week, I have never had a kiss from my little boy. But that has changed and today we were playing 'kisses on cheeks' together. Gorgeous!