Mum

It was 24 years ago today (early this morning actually) that I woke up thinking something was amiss in the house and discovered that my mum had passed away suddenly from a cerebral aneurysm. She was 41, the same age I am now.

It’s weird, totally weird to think that in less than 12 months I will be older than my own mother. I went through a lot of anxiety about this last year – convinced that it was impossible that could even happen. I have been getting some counselling and have pretty much worked through that one and now I am just left again with that gaping chasm that is always there when you’re a motherless daughter.

I am blessed with a wonderful family and beautiful children and I think I have a pretty good life. I think I learnt to be strong early on – not having a mother for your whole adult life forces you do grow up pretty resilient.

The loss of my mother remains incomparable in terms of both shock and sorrow to anything that has ever happened to me in my life – including the terrible trauma of Satria’s birth. Because despite it all, despite everything that happened that day and has followed, he has LIVED. We are wonderfully and blissfully blessed with him in our lives every day.

Grief does strange things – catches you unawares when you least expect it, makes you cry and laugh and get angry at the world – but it also does heal you a little bit with every wave. Of course I will miss my mum for the rest of my life and wish so so much she was still here, but I reflect so much more on her life rather than her death these days and I am looking forward with excitement to my number one project of 2013 which is to compile a blog about her, gathering photos and anecdotes and memories from friends and family. I already know that blogging is an amazing therapeutic tool, but even more than that if I can put together a worthy record of my mum’s life then she will live on in a more real way to me AND to her grandchildren, who all occasionally ask questions about grandma Penny and who deserve to get to know her better.

This day where I am feeling sad will pass and I look forward with energy and enthusiasm to tomorrow where I slowly start to bring her back to life.

Coffee, energy and running out of puff.

It seems my failure to blog often coincides with a lack of caffeine. I have to give up coffee whenever my anxiety rears its ugly head. When I find myself in what I call the anxiety “zone” it has the opposite effect of giving me that much needed energy boost and instead leads to full scale panic attacks. But no caffeine also means I am even more tired than usual by evening time, far too tired to write a blog post that makes any sense at all.

So the fact I am blogging tonight tells you that anxiety has faded away to nothing (for now, hooray!) and I had a lovely latte in a cafe this afternoon before work. I am glad I could have the coffee hit because my work (English examining) requires concentration and energy and they are two things that aren’t coming too easily to me right now!

Energy levels have been waning all around in our house in recent weeks. We’re all tired. It’s been such a big year. My return to the world of early intervention with M started with a trickle of a few sessions with speech therapists and a bit of OT but by term 4 we’ve been doing weekly social skills group, weekly OT, fortnightly speech therapy, fortnightly autism parent education (for me obviously) and a few extra workshops as well. We’ve also got swimming lessons, and M and S have started doing yoga too (which they love!). Add into that mix the several school orientation sessions, kinder and then on top of that the appointments and therapy we have had for S…

It’s no wonder we are all so tired and that poor little A is showing us some attention seeking behaviour too. Clearly he is putting up his hand and saying, hey what about me?! I have loved our half hour spent together in the pool for his first term of swimming lessons but other than that, most of his time with me is spent focusing on something for his brothers. So looking forward to having some special time with just him and I next year!

As for the fatigue S has been experiencing since we got back from Indonesia, we had a paediatric review last week and at his naturopath’s suggestion she tested for glandular fever. And yep, turns out he has had it in the recent past (apparently test can’t be more specific than that). So that definitely explains why he’s struggled so much this term! But of all of us, he’s the one rallying on the energy front. We launched operation independence at school with him this week (more on that later!) and he’s definitely perking up and showing a new enthusiasm to do things on his own – including a lot more independence in the playground, hooray!

I am so relieved there’s only 3 weeks left of term. M has absolutely flourished with all the extra therapy and couldn’t be better prepared for starting school next year but he is worn out now and I am close to burn out and looking forward to lots of school holiday days of pyjamas and laziness.

And more immediately I am looking forward to doing a 10km fun run with my best friend tomorrow morning (going to try so hard to get under 55 minutes!) followed by brunch and also to having a Gold Class date night with my husband during the week. We both deserve a night off very much.

Literal Japanese

M has been doing exceptionally well at his school orientation sessions. I am worrying less and less about how he is going to make the transition to school and getting more excited for him (and me!) about the big year ahead.

He loves going to the sessions and we’re lucky that the school has a very good program so he’s getting lots of opportunities to be in the classroom.

I barely get a goodbye and there’s no backwards glance from him as I leave. He’s always paying close attention to the teacher. I’ve got every finger (and toe!) crossed that his enthusiasm stays this way!

This week it was a Japanese session. When I returned to pick him up he was so excited to proudly show me the little book he had made, learning how to count in Japanese.

On the front of the book it had written “ichi, ni, san book”. The numbers were inside with space to draw a little picture for each of those numbers (ichi, ni, san is 1,2,3 in Japanese).

Proudly he told me “guess what mum! I can count to 4 in Japanese!”.

“Go on then” I told him (thinking what an overachiever he was!).

He quickly replied “ichi, ni, san, book”…

Yep, literal Japanese for you. Love my boy .

Thankful

A few of my lovely friends have been writing daily thankful posts this month. I love the idea but they are way more organized than me. However seeing as today is Remembrance Day, I thought I would share a few of my own thankful thoughts.

My boys of course, so thankful for them every day.

In particular – for M growing into such a sensible caring boy who has far fewer meltdowns and for more great days these days. He is becoming more and more independent, has such better language, a best friend at kinder and is so ready to start school next year. He even says things like “I used to be a cheeky chops but now I am a good boy”

For S doing so well at school, despite being so very tired and for keeping me entertained with his travel dreams – a constant stream of questions about different destinations and travel options. I especially love how he queries accessibility as he explores places on the Internet. (“do you think they have a lift?”).

For my little baby A who alas is no longer a baby at all – no longer breast feeding and very recently toilet trained too. He is incredibly sociable and inquisitive, especially about all things related to animals (especially his favourite, elephants). Apparently he’s wearing undies now because “elephants don’t wear nappies” (don’t want to point out to him that they don’t wear undies either ).

And for me – for exercise, especially running which has become my safety net from anxiety and a really enjoyable activity. Going to try for a half marathon next year. I even got to go out for a ride on my bicycle this afternoon. I bought it about 6 months ago and this was the first ride! Loved it.

Also thankful to my vegetable garden which is so clever at actually growing whatever I haphazardly plant in it (I often have to wait for the actual vegetable to appear to be reminded what seeds I planted)…

And very grateful to the random kite selling guy who I contacted this evening. We bought an Angry birds kite from him at a local festival today which was set free on its maiden journey in our local park. It’s still up there in the sky, a lost little angry bird with the string wrapped around a powerline…the random kite seller is delivering us new ones this evening (yes plural, not going to risk the same sad scenes as today!). We will pay for the kites of course but He’s not even charging delivery. Nice!

Also grateful to my husband for being the chief kite flyer. I was rubbish at it as a kid and remain so now. Glad he’s happy to take it on as an official duty.

And on a more serious note, of course I am very thankful that we live in a country that is free from war and many other perils. I wish all countries in the world could be as lucky.

Fatigue

This may sound like an odd post after my last post was all about S’s brilliant effort at the marathon but S is tired. Ridiculously tired all the time. I am taking him to school at 9.30 most days and picking him up at 1.30 but still, he’s exhausted and his teacher and aides tell me that when he is at school he’s struggling to concentrate and not getting much done. It took him days to recover from our day out at the marathon and whereas he used to use his wheelchair maybe once or twice a week, it’s his preferred choice now pretty much all the time. He has barely used his walker since school went back (thank God for his new wheelchair!!)

I know it’s term 4 so a bit of tiredness is to be expected but he’s so tired at the moment – and therefore more emotional and easily upset – that I am wondering whether we should be just calling it quits on the school year now and staying at home!

He is still battling with skin issues and hay fever and therefore not always getting great sleep and most of the time at the moment he is not his usual chirpy happy self.

It’s awful to watch and frustrating for him. He didn’t go to school yesterday and is taking today off (school aths) and Thursday (teacher strike) and I am just hoping that with all this rest he will be a little recharged. But it’s a long term! So we will just have to see.

Problem with him staying at home from school also is that he often has to tag along to all the therapy and appointments we have going on for M at the moment. So it’s not true rest time.

To be honest, I am exhausted too. Need a break and wishing were just a little closer to those Christmas hols .

Sorry for the whine, but feel better for getting it off my chest!

Marathon effort

Today was the fourth Melbourne marathon event we have taken part in to support the Cerebral Palsy Education Centre which S attends.

The weather was amazing – a beautiful spring day.

I left the house at 5.30 to make it in to the city for my 10km run. It was a fabulous course and I really enjoyed the run. I am finding the distance a little easier now, though I am still yet to sneak below that elusive 55 minute mark!

After the run I walked to the Richmond station to meet the rest of the family – pushing S’s empty adapted trike along with me. Too hard for DH to have 3 kids, a pram and a trike on the train so I had brought the trike in my car. We then walked to the Tennis Centre for a photo with the rest of the CPEC team – amidst a wonderful sea of blue and yellow balloons and streamers. I always get a tad emotional (in a very good way!) seeing all those wheelchairs, trikes, walkers, sticks and all those amazing families who are along for the roller coaster ride of life with a CP connection. And I love that this is an event that is so inclusive and welcoming, challenging all to achieve their best whether that’s walking – either independently or with assistance, running, pedaling, wheeling – or a combination of all of the above!

As always, it was a good chance to catch up with people at haven’t seen for a while, to meet a few new people, including those I have only ‘met’ online and also to see the commitment of the staff from CPEC, many of whom gave up their Sunday to attend.

This year S chose to ride his new adapted trike. And we were blessed that his wonderful physio chose to walk alongside us for much of the 3km. This was so special for S!

He powered along for much of the 3km needing only a little assistance steering now and then and a bit of reining in so he didn’t go downhill too fast .

When we approached the G, he got off his trike (much to M’s pleasure as he was dying for a turn!) and then he walked independently for the last 400m lap of the G (with a stop half way for a photo or 2).

I still remember the first time we took part in this event – I had to coax S across the finish line in his walker with the promise of a chocolate frog . He has come so very far since then and he told me afterwards that the 3 kms wasn’t very long at all.

I love how an event like this brings out the best in my big boy as he strives to do his best. He is always keen to give things a go and doesn’t let much phase him.

M was rather overwhelmed by the crowds and the noise and most excited as we approached the MCG because we walked alongside the train track for a while and saw several passing trains. But before the event, when we were getting the big group photo, he sat next to S, held his hand, helped him get up and walked with him congratulated him after the walk in his great walking and riding. I am also very proud of him for being such a champ about being a part of something which he does find all a bit too much.

It was a beautiful day out with the family and we are lucky to be part of such a wonderful CP community.

A milestone (for me!)

A milestone for me today that I just had to share.

Today is the first day in 8 years that I have not been either pregnant or breast feeding!

It makes me a little sad to wean my boy (Must stop calling him my baby seeing as he will be 3 in January!), but also really excited to be seeing the end of baby days and the beginning of a new era with my 3 big boys who not only look alike (seriously had someone ask me if they were triplets the other day!?!) but who also are developing into great buddies too. I love watching them grow into their sibling roles and look out for each other so much!

A wasn’t too keen on not having booby before bed – until I offered him chocolate milk instead. He was still wavering, until I told him he could make it himself. Apparently a turn with the stick blender and then yummy chocolate milk (the divine Loving Earth drinking chocolate made with Oat milk) wins out over mummy’s milk.

He went to bed without any fuss and Is now sharing the big bottom bunk bed with his brothers – though he is still in my bed most of the time! But that’s OK. One challenge at a time. And I am not quite ready to give up all those delicious night time cuddles just yet

Nb: it’s just occurred to me that it’s really A’s milestone more than mine. Now wracked with the unrelenting mummy guilt of not celebrating my 3rd child as much as I should. Sigh!