Yesterday I took Tigerlily to one of the best exhibits at the museum that we have ever been to! For the past 2 or so months Tigerlily has been very interested in ancient Rome, so when a mum organised this tour of the exhibit we jumped! There was not only inventions and machines, but armour and gladiator equipment.Perfect for my Rome fan!
Gladiator armour....I cant think of which gladiator this would be from.We have read so much and still i'm clueless!
A model of what the underneath of the Colosseum would look like.
Legion outfits.
Working a catapult
A roman shield.
Playing Calculi (we have to make a copy of this!
Above is a working model of an Archimedes screw.
Trying to build an arch
Playing with different pulleys to see which was the easiest to use.
A Roman crane.
We came away with a textbook for kids called primary physics, it has loads of experiments to show how roman architecture and inventions worked, and though we wont use it as a textbook we are going to be making a lot of things from it:) And i think we will be getting grandpa Silver involved too, seeing as he is brilliant at making things!
Well this has been a week of ups and downs here!!! And some of the downs have been awful, but they have made me evaluated my parenting paradigm and stand fast for what I believe in. I have come to see that some people with a uni degree really have not a clue (like I didn't know that) but the fact I'm paying them to be clueless in my life, well that makes me the fool.But we have had some good things happen this week.
Rosemary has been having a load of trouble sleeping lately.By the time she gets to sleep (about 12 to 1am or there abouts) she has only been sleeping till about 5am before being up and finding it hard to settle.This is not a child who needs just a little sleep.Its been impacting on her daily life and upsetting here a great deal. On Tuesday my grandpa brought her a new pillow top mattress to try and help.She is in love with it....it hasn't helped her sleep through the night though, but she really loves her new mattress.Its not one we could afford so i am so grateful for her having it.Two nights ago Rosemary also started taking some herbal medicine to help her sleep, as i said it upsets her so much, and since taking it she has slept through both nights, felt happier and relaxed and bright the next day. So I think we are on the up there for her!!!
Wednesday we finally got our lounge back!!!Its been at the repairer for almost a month.Being under warranty was good, we were sick to death of getting springs in our bum, esp as the lounge is only 6 mths old. It was meant to be fixed in a week to MAYBE two, which stretched out to 4 weeks. I got sick of dealing with them so my grandfather rang them, and its true what they say, sometimes men get listened to more:/ He got told they were waiting on lining and god knows what else and we would be waiting another 2 weeks....funny though we got a call about 30 mins later saying it was ready and could be returned....waiting on parts my butt!! The guys at the warehouse were lovely though, the silly (mean/nasty/rude/uncaring) woman in customer service told me Wednesday and put down Thursday.But they got it out here within 20 mins of me ringing them Wednesday!!!And she is in trouble, the warehouse guy said they have had other complaints about her!Lets hope she gets some people skills lessons, maybe then she will be nice and not scream "what do you want me to do about it" ect to customers over the phone. (We had the unpleasant experience of watching her at her work one day when we returned a faulty bit of Hibiscus' bed!)
Thursday Rosemary had an OT appointment for her SPD. I tell you this woman went from nice on our first appointment to horrid and cruel this time.Firstly she seemed very annoyed we couldn't get there more then we have, lectured me about it.Well we try BUT my menorrhagia makes it hard for 2 weeks of the month, AND its summer and Rosemary cant stand the heat and I'm not making her get in a hot car on a 30 min drive to scream and cry and be unhappy, third getting $120 a week on our budget is impossible. We don't get a lot of money, but we make do and make things stretch.
Then she proceeded to knock apart my peaceful parenting with Rosemary and my relating to her "Its like training a dog", "No is no, that's it, don't engage her", "Be sarcastic or she will never be independent".(Sarcastic was the EXACT word she used) And so it went.I was so pissed when we got out of there. I am not going to treat my HUMAN child like she is a dog, I'm NOT going to be mean and nasty and to be honest a total bitch to my child, I'm not going to be THAT mother.I'm not perfect, but I will not be psychologically abusive to my daughter!And what she wants people to do is psychologically abusive IMO. He authoritarian bull can stay there, she needs to work with our paradigm, not from hers, she can use her ideas with her kids (And i will feel sorry for them!).The only reason we are going to the OT is to help Rosemary learn coping mechanisms for her SPD, not for her to be bullied!!!And this woman is a bully.A lady on one of my unschooling boards said "she works for you, fire her", yeah well I'm getting to that point!It broke my heart how she was treating my daughter!She needs to get some background in psychology and an even better background on attachment and peaceful parenting. We will do the sensory diet of brushing and "bone bumping" but i will not be a bitch to my child!
On the upside we went and picked Rosemary's prize up from the library, it wasn't for reading, I was wrong, it was for colouring in.This is even better actually as Rosemary has trouble with pens and pencils and hates to colour, she only did it cause her sister did.This is an amazing prize pack!
One idea I took from the OT was to create a visual board with things she can choose to do, that part I didn't take was the "5 choices that's it, pick one and nothing else" FFS that's bullshit. This board has helped, and if there is nothing there she is free to help me find something else and I will keep suggesting too (the OT says not to do that, don't engage here but how is she meant to know exactly what could be done if she doesn't have choices?If parents don't tell her of other ideas!)
This has been working and I'm glad we did it.Yesterday Rosemary saw the balloon on here and wanted to play with some, so Nanna brought some from the shop which lead to.........
The girls created a balloon ride for their kinzclips:) They experimented and found that 3 balloons makes the toys go higher.They came up with this all on their own last night:)
We have also had Foxtel (cable) reinstalled.Its good to have the kids and doco stations again...and cue eye rolling from OT who lectured about using the computer and tv only to bribe the kids behaviour!!!!!So an up and down week, lets cross our fingers there will be more ups then downs next week!
Where on Earth is time flying to these days? Every time I get a moment to actually update here weeks have gone by since the last time I was able to. We haven't really been up to all that much really, its more that the girls have been using the computer a lot and by the time they are organised and in bed, that is exactly where I would like to be as well! So rather then spending a lot of time on here at night, I have been hitting the hay attempting to get a good nights sleep, which isn't easy when your 8 yr old is having trouble sleeping all night and is getting up at about 5am after not settling till about 1am. Hopefully the new mattress that grandpa brought her will start helping soon!
We have had loads of trips to the library. Everyone in this house loves to read or have stories read to them, and we do our best to keep the local library on its toes!!!Rosemary was lucky enough to actually win a prize from the Summer Reading Club as well, we are not sure what it is and will pick it up on Friday!She can not wait and had to ring her Grandpa Silver just to let him know!
Tigerlily has discovered the fun of Flip note studio on the DSi, and thanks to an unschooling mumma on Fb I have discovered diy.org for kids and am working on uploading their projects so they can earn badges.Its a great homeschooling/ unschooling resource!
Its side on but this is one of the mythological creatures created by hibiscus, she is very interested in mythology right now:)
Water fireworks experiment, it will probably work better with normal food colour and not natural stuff (which tastes yuck by the way and I would love to know where they get the green from!)
Not a great pic, but we have been spending a lot of hot nights outside trying to keep cool.Luckily the last week or so has been wonderful, cold even!!!But we are back to hot right now...can not wait for winter here!
This is the large sun weaving Hibiscus made.I am thinking of trying to set up a tree of life one for her as well.She is very into making things at the moment.
Homemade duct tape and cardboard swords, these were actually pretty heavy and I am happy to say the girls have listened to the safety talk and not hurt each other accidentally!!!We are going to be making some shields too soon.
Brown paper ancient Greek vases. One book the girls like is Story of the World. We come up with some pretty cool craft ideas after reading or find them if we cant think of anything.
Hibiscus's Celestial Dragon made with yarn and oil pastels.
Tigerlily created this map for the animal game that her and Rosemary like to play!
Hibiscus created this Loch Ness toy, She turned out pretty darn good I think!
Experimenting with sound and the air column in glasses with different levels of water.I almost wished we hadn't done this experiment, it was so very loud!I wasn't expecting so much noise!
Leprechaun pudding, would have been much nicer with normal food colour and not the natural stuff...seriously the green is so disgusting in taste i wonder where it came from!Hibiscus made this herself, I just poured it in the glass:)
There was a really nasty fire near here the other day.We actually thought the smell was coming from our air con unit and panicked a bit but on further investigation we could see the smoke from our front yard, the girls wanted to go investigate. I kind of felt like I was being very nosy, but it did spark some very good discussion on fire safety and the work firemen do.
I couldn't resist adding this picture of the cute Mr Peace man!
I really hope to be able to get on here more often?But who knows, till I can I will just have to keep doing little update posts every now and then.
2013 has been a really nasty and not nice year to us.In the last 2 weeks we have been dealing with some not so nice business. On the 7th we had to make the choice to let our beautiful 11 yr 9mth old Dalmatian pass away peacefully at our vet.For the past 4 or so months her dementia had progressively got worse.For a while we thought it was just a phantom pregnancy, and after 10 weeks of it and with no change in sight, our vet advised us to try desexing her, which we did, but to no avail.She had been on Lovan, Xanax and Clonicalm, finally the xanax stopped working and she wouldn't settle at night at all, so we were out of options. For 4 mths my husband had slept in the kitchen so he could get to her ASAP, but even that wasn't helping.We have an amazing vet who even sent us flowers the next day for Jasmine. We are still hurting and I feel it is going to be quiet a while before we ever get another puppy, but when the time comes it will be one who needs us as much as we need it.
How beautiful are there flowers?They are as beautiful as our vets heart is!
Then to make things harder on Wednesday Hibiscus work up with a sore gum near her broken tooth (the weekend before the cap had come off and we ended up at the dentist on the same day we had Jassie put to sleep) turns out she had developed a root canal infection. I have never seen my poor girl in so much pain, for 4 days she was crying almost no stop, all day and all night. The Dr's had her on antibiotics and codine, then when that wasn't working she was put on tramadol 4 times a day and 2 paracetamol/ 2 ibuprofen in between to try and give coverage and give her some relief. Thank god that was getting better by Monday this week, but for 4 days straight we were at the Dr, and we had 4 days in with the dentist!
Dean the dentist who fixed the cap up on Monday morning actually put on a crown, then spent over an hour sculpting (literally sculpting like an artist) her tooth to look like a real one, even adding tiny striations on the tooth.This is amazing for a government dentist....something you would expect from a private dentist.
Just a few days later she was laid out sick as anything with a root canal infection that went up to her nose, we were worried for a while about it going to her eye. And of course Cleo was there, the ever constant feline companion!
This was the massive amount of medication that poor Hibiscus ended up on!Poor little girl.
As if that wasn't enough Fate decided that my mum should break her foot last night. Yep well all needed that, mum especially.Her knee still plays up a lot from her accident and it slipped out and put her down on the back steps at her place.Seriously she is lucky she didn't crack her head on the concrete or break it bad enough to need a pin put in!! This has to be the worst start to a year ever in our family!!!Surely its going to get better from here on in....right???
Needless to say we have done very little over the past few weeks outside of watching TV and the occasional craft. And apart from shopping we have not been anywhere of interest, that is shopping, doctors, dentist, doctors, shopping etc.Such a boring existence!!!We are all itching to get out and have a load of fun! In fact Hibiscus and I had planned to go star watching, in the hopes of catching Robert Pattinson as he is going to be here filming!Now we are not sure we will be able to get into the city!Oh well, I am sure there will be other times!
A few of the tiny little crafty things the kids have been doing....
Tigerlily's globe, we cut out and stuck the continents onto a chinese paper lantern.
Making stone (clay) tablets like the people of ancient times would have.
Cowboy fashion design.
The next few weeks will be fairly quiet while we wait for people to fully heal here. Hopefully then we will be able to get out a bit more (and hopefully there will be cool days).Hibiscus is hoping to do some acting classes which we will need to sign up for, we have been looking at the best acting school in the state and I think she is ready now.And Tigerlily will be taking swimming lessons. Rosemary will be continuing on with her OT, she isn't interested in lessons at the moment, and I am not sure they would really help her.If she wants I know the pool near us do one on one lessons but her grandpa has also offered, so we might go that way :) Guess we are not getting any less busy, but this life is like that, sometimes we are quiet and restful and taking in everything we have done and sometimes we are on the go gathering new experiences and with it new information!Even thought its mostly Dr's and dentists right now we are gathering a lot of new info!
I can not believe the holiday season is almost over! Christmas eve and Christmas day down and just NYE to go before we hit 2013.Is it just me or did the past year go very fast?To me it seems like time has flown by, must have been a very busy year here:) I hope everyone reading this had a great Christmas with lots of love and company and peace thrown into the mix.
Our Xmas eve was pretty hectic, the lead up to Xmas, the anticipation didn't help Rosemary much.The morning was fine but as the day wore on she had tactile issues and Food issues and then auditory issues.Even the Xmas stocking didn't help.Eventually we managed to settle and watch the carols as a family, but for a while there we thought it might not happen!
(This was taken on the sat before the Xmas eve carols.....the first set were definitely the best:) )
This was the first year we actually put presents under the tree BEFORE Xmas eve, we had some there for two weeks and the kids were adding more there each night for the week before Xmas. Yep, that's the girls stacking:)
On Xmas eve we gave the girls their stockings before we watched the carols, well tried to watch the carols, that's a sore point as they were annoying Rosemary's ears a bit at first.
Then the girls finished stacking the presents for Xmas day before an early night, well early to bed, not to sleep anyway!
On Xmas day we tried to keep everything nice and calm and simple.We only had Uncle Illusion over and my mum.Uncle Illusion is so laid back he is wonderful. We had a simple cold lunch with Eaton mess for dessert:)
Hibiscus with one of her favourite presents.....Spartan the horse!Yes she may be 13 but she LOVES her toys:)
Tigerlily with her Mummy book, I think we might be looking at Egypt next year!
This moon dough has to be the worst present (and I brought it!).The texture was awful and it got everywhere!We have decided to make play dough again instead!
This gear set is pretty cool but at the moment Rosemary isn't too happy with it.I am hoping she might come to it later!
The best presents were the Furbies from Nanna and the DSi's from mum and dad.
All in all we had a great Xmas day, it wasn't even hot like they had been predicting (Thank goodness!).Boxing day was relaxed and we took down the tree and put away all our Xmas things. Lesson to self...don't get a real tree a month out because A) it dies and B)the water goes awfully foul! Next year, if Peace is going to insist on climbing the tree and we have to get a real one it will be two weeks out!
Now all I have to do is start planning the new year.Does anyone else have plans for 2013 yet?
