I'm trying to be grateful......really I am!

 

The last couple of weeks have been pretty full on with sick kids, Hubby's work, my Stepson's Autism tantrums, my stepdaughter's moodiness and my own kid's homework/school hassles.  I am trying to be grateful for the small things but right now it's a little tough.  The above photos are of the basket of ironing that is waiting for me and my folding which I did this morning.  This bed you see pictured here is my stepson's.  The room is our old loungeroom.

Earlier this year we decided that our large family room was only really being used by my stepson and no one else really used it for much.  So we moved out of the smaller front lounge and into the family room.  Yes the extra space is nice but now our old lounge is rendered a vacant lot for the majority of the time because my stepson is the only one that uses it.  Now as you will see we have a strip of vinyl which runs from the front door though to a door which is barricaded off by his bed.  The horrible dirty looking concrete floor used to have carpet on it,,,,,,that is until Stepson moved into the room and proceeded to use it as a toilet :( (the joys of having an autistic child that sadly isn't toilet trained and after 8 years of attempts being made I am beginning to lose hope of it ever happening :(  I could go on about the amount of gross behaviours that this child exhibits but I think if I did, I would find my friendly followers would all fly the coop lol).  If I took another photo of the room I would show you the curtains, or what is left of them that Stepson has also destroyed.  The remnants  now sit at varying lengths along my nice big front window.

Right now I quite honestly don't know what to do about the whole room situation.  I hate having a room that looks like a war zone when he is here and this barren wasteland when he isn't.  I hate that he can't simply share a room with one of the boys, but sadly that would be a recipe for disaster and we would find that the boy's things would be destroyed very fast, not only that we have to barricade him into his room at night or he will be literally destroying the house, raiding the fridge and every light and piece of electronic equipment would be on.  When he is here keys have to be hidden and the house has to be locked up like a prison or he will go walk about.

Some days I find it hard to be grateful and today is one of them.

I guess one thing I am grateful for is the fact that he doesn't live here full time like he used to.  The stress one child can place on a family is immense.  His mother doesn't seem to bothered but the state of their  house I believe is totally atrocious, I simply can't live like that.  At Mum's house he is apparently left pretty much to do what he wants, there isn't much supervision.  We have heard from my Step Daughter that he got into the little kid's chocolates from easter and ate the lot in one sitting.  He destroyed her Nintendo DS.  They simply replaced it for her.  We can't do that and I believe that Autistic or not he has to be taught to fit in somehow.  Days like this I sit here and think about what the future holds for him and I guess for us too.  What happens when he is a teenager and bigger and stronger (he is very tall for his age as it is).  What happens when he finishes school, what future does he have.  

In his eyes, I am the Wicked Witch of the East.  When his Dad leaves the room he runs from me, not wanting to be near me.  If I go near him or into "his" room he screams, and I mean blood curdling screams that you would quite honestly think he was being belted within an inch of his life.  I quite honestly expect to have the police knock on my door one day during school holidays, when I have to care for him up to 10 hours a day by myself.  I am sure that the neighbours must think I am abusing him.  Out of those 10 hours he can sometimes scream for at least half of them.  School holidays can be very short on fun sometimes for our house.  The other kids spend way too much time on Xbox or Wii or generally in front of the TV as I simply can't go out when I have him.  My boys really look forward to the half of the school holidays when we don't have the stepkids here.  I hate that, it shouldn't be like that :(

OK enough of my ranting, I will go and do this basket of ironing, so at least the clothes can all be put away and the room looks a little less like a chinese laundromat.

Busy times - School holidays are upon us again.....

I have been missing in action yet again. This time I have school holidays to blame lol.

Last week it was just my boys and I but this week sees the step kids with us and also extra friends sleeping over.

Sunday night and yesterday I had 8 kids here, today I have 6. Tomorrow I will have 7 and Thursday 7 then back to 6 on Friday and yayyyyyyy, 0 for Saturday and most of Sunday. Lol I am longing for that at the moment!!!! We have to go to my nephews wedding on Saturday so my ex is having my kids and Hubby's guys go back to their mum on Friday night.

Last week was my youngest baby's 8th birthday....where on earth has that time gone??? (Photos to follow.....

I long for little people. I am so proud of the people my kids are turning into but oh how I long for the little baby giggles and the trials and tribulations of having toddlers in the house. I actually miss Barney the purple Dinosaur and the Wiggles and Hi-5 lol. I do still get snippets of them as Mr9 with autism watches dvds over and over the only problem being he constantly rewinds so you never get to see a whole song or segment and he constantly changes the dvds.

Yesterday the kids were all occupied playing various games and I have been laid up with a bad cold so I felt like doing nothing so I spent most of the day at the computer going through all my recipes.

I have had a file sitting on the computer for the last 9 years which I have been adding recipes to when I find ones that sound yummy. I still have my mum's recipe collection to go through and scan the ones that I want from that, but finally I have sorted my recipes that are on here into Savoury and Sweet. From that I discovered I have 709 savoury recipes and 815 sweet recipes, all waiting to be tried out by me!!! I could write books with that amount of recipes lol.

My plan is to start at the top and slowly work my way through. I still haven't decided what to do with the double, triple etc ups that I have accrued along the way. I think I counted 8 different versions of Apricot Chicken and about 9 recipes for Anzac Biscuits lol. I'm not sure whether to try each of them or just find the most frugal one and stick with that, decisions decisions.

If they are successful recipes I will post them on my blog to share. I am pretty slack at taking photos of my creations and in the past I have tried recipes and forgotten to photograph the results so never bother to post them. From now on I will aim to improve. I don't think I will be doing the step by step pictures but I will definitely do the end results!!!

I have been so slack!!!!!

How is everyone going???

It has been school holidays here and life has been very very hectic lol. I have been trying to get to post something for weeks but can't seem to tie myself down long enough!!

During the school holidays I had my step kids the first week and Mr9(autistic) was a challenge to say the least.

I was watching Today Tonight or Current Affair (can't remember which one lol) last night and there was a single mum with a 6 year old autistic son and she showed her house which was a series of locks on everything from the oven to the fridge to the taps. I felt like crying for her.

My step son is very similar to her little boy although not quite to the same extreme. But basically our life works on his demands and we have to lock the fridge and freezer, otherwise he steals food and it is not uncommon for him to take a full 3 litre bottle of juice, get the lid off and basically drink and/or destroy the contents before anyone has noticed. I remember earlier this year when I had taken two packets of sausages out of the freezer and left them in the fridge to defrost over night. Well he got up in the morning and managed to sneak out to the fridge without any of us hearing and take the sausages. We came out when we heard the back door being opened to find sausages mushed into the carpet, all over the tv and dvd player, smeared over the cupboards and there he was sitting out side covered in sausage mince with the dog eagerly licking it off him. Believe me when I say that raw sausages don't come off appliances or carpet very easily!!!! My heart went out to this lady who deals with her son on her own full time. We did have my step son full time and now that we have had that break due to his mother and we now have him on a part time basis, I don't think we could go back to having him full time, I just don't think we would cope. It sounds horrible to say that but the stress that is in the house when we have him and the constantness of his demands places alot of pressure on us and also on the other kids. The other kids don't like having their friends over when we have him because of some of his behaviours (smearing of poo being the worst). You feel like you are on a constant seesaw swaying between loving him to bits and wanting to help him as much as you can to wanting to just scream at him which does no good anyway. He has you feeling so many emotions on any given day it is just unbelievable.

Anyway as usual I have gotten sidetracked lol,,,,,,our little business is slowly getting organised and I am trying to stay positive. I am not the most optimistic person when it comes to spending money to make money and I keep having doubts, mainly due to the fact that we don't have much to start with lol,,,,,thankfully Hubby is the opposite and is determined that we can make it work, so we will see. I'm not going to give up, I will keep going until I can prove either way whether or not we can make it work. Time will tell and we have only just begun, so stay tuned!!!!

I Hate Autism!!!

This week has been a very trying one for me.....it is school holidays, that is always trying but this week I have had my step daughter and step son who is autistic here as well.

He loved me to bits when I first met his dad when he was just over 5 years old. He would let me do anything for him and liked to be with me. Now he is 9, he hates me, well he hates me when it is me by myself, I am fine when there are other people around, which is what makes me feel the worst of all,,,,,I feel like a child basher!

To give a brief history, his dad had virtually full time custody of him for the first 15 months after I met him, his mother wanted little to do with him. After 15 months of constant breakages in my house, literally cleaning shit off walls and off the child (he even will eat the stuff!!) I was reaching breaking point and confronted the mother saying that she needed to take responsibility for her son and not just her other son and daughter. At this point she had her other son (my hubby's stepson) and her daughter 50% of the time but the son with autism only when hubby had to travel for work. After confronting her she began to have him for 10 days each month. Last year she decided...due to the new laws relating to family tax benefits/child support etc that she would take all the children and not let us have any contact with them at all. We went through hell and ended up having to take her to court to get some visitation rights. Now over a year later we are due to return to court for final orders in two weeks time and we have hubby's son and daughter half of school holidays and every second weekend but don't see his stepson at all. Well since this visitation started back in November last year I have been going through hell.

I live in dread of school holidays when hubby has to go to work because I can get Mr9 to do absolutely nothing for me. I end up avoiding him as much as I can, but that is hard when I have to take him to the toilet every half an hour or so as he is toilet timed not toilet trained. He starts to cry as soon as I tell him to go to the toilet. He will then shut up and sit on the toilet....I have to stand there and watch him otherwise he will just run off and not go. He will sit/stand there and then as soon as I tell him to pull his pants up he does so and then drops to the floor and screams. By screaming I mean ear piercing screaming that sounds as though he is being murdered. I then have to get behind him and hoist him up which can often take 3 attempts as he has learnt to make it harder by raising his arms above his head so I can't get a grip. I then get him into the bathroom to wash his hands where I have to prompt him every step of the way. He knows how to wash his hands perfectly well but for me he won't do it. I tell him to turn the tap on, he does so and just holds his hands under the water, I tell him to use soap, he picks up the soap. I tell him to rub his hands, he does it, I tell him to rinse his hands off and he will just stand there with the water running over his hands refusing to turn the tap off. I tell him to turn off the tap and he just drops to the floor and screams again with the tap still running. I go in there and turn off the tap and then once again have to hoist him up. Finally I get him back up and he will refuse to dry his hands, so I have to do it for him which makes him once again drop to the floor, pulling the towel off the rail with him. I am at my wits end....thanks for listening I just needed to vent,,,,thank goodness school is now back and he has returned to his mother for the next 10 days!!!!!