Blue, Blue...Old Blue Jeans (Uh-huh)

I have worn blue jeans for almost a bajillion years. True story. As the ’south side’ of me expanded sometime between Thing 1 and Thing 2 (and thereafter totally gave up the ghost after Thing 3), I’ve outgrown many a pair. Depressing. But because I have always worn my jeans all the way through the year - yep, even in summer - they have always been a staple item in my wardrobe and thus I was never really concerned with spending up to $80 per pair, as I knew I’d get tons of wear out of them.

However.

Now I can’t bear to throw those stacks of old jeans out. I must have at least ten full size adult pairs and a few children’s pairs to boot. Some I could donate (and still might) but other pairs have minor holes and are unsuitable for that, so I was thinking about recycling them into something in the new year, but I don’t know what. All the tutorials I can find online centre around the very, uh, trendy ‘back pocket change purse’ or ’seat of pants handbag (purse)‘ trains of thought. That might be fun under normal circumstances but I’m also completely useless with installing zippers. And I doubt I’m going to need more than one each of those.

So, I’m relying on you, oh fountains of knowledge, to help me come up with some ideas. I’ve considered a jean quilt but I know if I go to all the trouble of cutting out millions of squares of denim I’ll probably lose interest when I could have used all that fabric in one bigger piece to make something unique. So before I cut anything, I’m gathering the info. The only stipulation is that the project be relatively easy. I can normally fudge my way through the basic level tutorials but essentially, the easier the better :)

Help!

Something To Believe In (iPod Shuffle Meme)

Thanks to Rachel at Musings Of A Future Pastor’s Wife for this one!

The Rules:

1. Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from.


IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
Learning To Breathe- Switchfoot

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Bring Me Back To Life - Evanescence
What’s this supposed to mean? That I’m dead? The film clip freaks me out anyhow.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
I Need You Tonight- Backstreet Boys
Don’t judge me for having a little of the Boys on my iPod!

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
The Space In Between Us - Building 429
There are elements of hitting the nail on the head with this one.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Hold Me - Savage Garden
To be held? To sing in an unnaturally high voice?

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
The Woman With You- Kenny Chesney
Um? I think the YouTube poster meant ‘woman’, as in singular, not ‘women’ as in plural. That would make it an entirely different kind of song. Nice lyrics though.

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Not A Day Goes By- Lonestar
The rest of the chorus continues with “When I don’t think of you.” Of course my friends would think like this. I’d totally expect them to!

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
What If- Nichole Nordeman
Oh, snap! Snappity-snap-snap-SNAP!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Be With You- Enrique Iglesias
Now technically Talented Hubby is my best friend so the title does seem very appropriate. Except the lyrics actually go “Now that you’re gone, I just wanna be with you.” Um, I’d kind of like to keep him please.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR SPOUSE?
I Miss You - Darren Hayes
In light of the last song, I’m starting to get a bit scared…

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Crazy - Simple Plan
LOL - great title for my life, and actually decent lyrics.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
I’m Already There- Lonestar
I first heard this song a few years after 9-11 (was it written specifically for that? I’m not sure) so in my mind it’s a song about a father dying. The chorus is just beautiful though so I guess if I projected myself into the song I’d like to think I could influence and affect my children and husband in the same way - minus the death part though. Or something like that! (Did that make any sense?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE YOUR SPOUSE?
Your Grace Is Enough - Chris Tomlin
Sweet lyrics.

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Only Hope - Mandy Moore
What? I’m their only hope? LOL.

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
I Love The Way You Love Me- Boyzone
This is one of the appropriate songs, LOL. I always adored these lyrics (in reality, I walked down the aisle to Bryan Adams’ I’ll Always Be Right There. It has to be the live version from his Unplugged album though, LOL).

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Time Stands Still - All American Rejects
Why yes - yes it will!

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
So Long Jimmy - James Blunt
Um, okay? My hobby is to find random men on the street named Jimmy (or James?) and then tell them goodbye?

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Mr Mom- Lonestar
My biggest secret dream (that counts, right?) is to see Talented Hubby live out this song. For even a week. That would be awesome! Seriously though, this is one of my favourite ‘housework songs’, LOL.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Almost Here - Delta Goodrem & Brian McFadden
Apparently I have absentee friends. Well, there is the case of the unanswered text messages Chrissy! Not that I’m dwelling on that or anything. Nooooo… (LOL)

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
In Another’s Eyes - Trisha Yearwood & Garth Brooks
I both like and hate this song because of its subject. Which makes it an appropriate choice for this question. It really would be nearly the worst thing that could happen.

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
The Wonder - Alex Lloyd
People are going to wonder what happened? People will be amazed at my passing?

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Gotta Be Somebody- Nickelback
This is a song about searching for true love. Since I got mine, no regrets!

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
The Day You Went Away - Wendy Matthews
Oh, this one should have been for the next question! It’s soooo sad! It’s a bit older but one of those songs that seems to stand the test of time.

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Bop Bop Baby- Westlife
I’m told Westlife has that effect on some people. Namely Talented Hubby. Except in his case, the crying would be because his ears were bleeding. Pffft! Though I’ve more or less moved on from the ‘Life, I’ve still got a dedicated folder of the boys somewhere on the iPod.

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Cinderella - Steven Curtis Chapman
Oh, a stab to my heart, on two levels. First, because my daughter growing up scares me witless, and because of the subsequent events SCC went through which really would be soul-destroying. Losing a child is a paralysing thought.

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Something About You - Five For Fighting
I’m an enigma so hard to understand it’s not ultimately clear whether I have any friends or not?

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
How You Live - Point Of Grace
Isn’t this a great little song? It’s like a list of things to do to enrich your life. So if I haven’t done some, then I’d go back and tackle them. Reminds me of I Hope You Dance by Le Ann Womack.

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx
This is the first song I can ever remember loving with my whole being. Don’t mock me. You know you loved it too, LOL (and Oh My Gosh folks - THE HAIR!)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Something To Believe In- Bon Jovi
Not exactly the nicest song around despite the title.

That was fun! Plenty are not-so-accurate (just listen to the opening lyrics of that last one!) but there are enough totally apt ones to make this a cool exercise!

Oh, and what is up with all the country songs coming up? Out of 700+ songs on my iPod I managed to score three by Lonestar. The universe is trying to tell me something perhaps?

I tag everyone!

They've Got Jam In Them, Thanks For Asking

I’m not the only mother who has ever put a batch of muffins into the oven at 11:30 at night, am I? Anyone?

Time management issues strike again!

I’m so going to bed. No, really.

Lemme just read these here blogs for an hour twenty five minutes…

In other news…has anyone noticed that there’s a MERE MONTH UNTIL CHRISTMAS DAY? I have not shopped. At all. This is terribly unlike me. But this year I just realised buying stuff simply for the sake of ’tallying up’ over the holiday period is a complete and utter waste of money. I know. I’m a slow learner. This year, the only things on my ideas list for the Piglets were bikes, desks for their rooms (one each) and a puppy - and even then, the bike idea will probably be passed on as an idea for the grandparents. This puppy will cost a bomb, some of which will of course have come out of our usual Christmas budget, but it’s more about the simplifying this year. I must admit, it’s rather liberating not to have a ‘wish list’ from each kid in my purse at all times (in case I see ‘the’ present while I’m out and about), or to be rushing around getting to this or that sale. I’m not completely off the hook - there are still extended family presents and stocking stuffers to get, but we take it pretty laid back in that department around here :)

Raindrops And Respite

I have a confession to make. I’m no martyr. In fact, there are days when the absolute last thing I want to do is to be a parent - shhh, don’t tell anyone!

Whilst I love my kids to bits, the reality of having a special needs child is that it’s exhausting work. You have to think ten steps ahead at all times. You can’t do as many things together as a family. Cinemas are out, restaurants that don’t include cookies on the menu or plastic play equipment are a no-go and a ‘real’ holiday, one where you go a bit further afield than Grandma’s, seems impossible.

Before long, the wonderful ‘challenged-but-enjoying-it’ attitude you’ve worked so hard to show the world begins to crack. Suddenly you’re raising your voice to the kids. You’re hard-pressed to find the enthusiasm to eat a sandwich, let along prepare meals for the family. Housework is a distant memory.

My husband once mentioned to me a fantastic analogy for stress which I’ll share with you now: Imagine your life as a bucket, and the everyday stresses as the raindrops which fill it.

Every day, even if you don’t realise it, the raindrops add up. Some days a lot - perhaps Junior had one of his world-famous meltdowns in the middle of the supermarket - and some days hardly anything at all. Suddenly you come to the realisation that your bucket is almost full. You’re almost at your limit. Even just one extra drop and you’re going to overflow.

This is where respite care is worth its weight in gold.

Initially I was quite apprehensive about the whole idea of respite care. I didn’t much like the idea that I would be handing over my children into the care of a relative stranger. I was used to our son’s unique personality and worried about the poor respite worker being lumped with his difficult behaviour.

I needn’t have worried. Our respite worker Rose came for a ‘meet-and-greet’ before our first real respite night and she and the kids hit it off immediately. A huge plus for us was also that all workers contracted to our respite program carry a senior first aid certificate and other qualifications such as a manual handling certificate. Not to mention having specific special needs care experience in spades.

Some folks choose to use their allocated respite hours to run errands which they might not otherwise be able to fit in around caring for a loved one twenty-four hours a day. My husband and I have been quite lucky in that regard - we’ve always had various combinations of childcare, kindergarten and now school to give us that break during the day to get the basics done. What we were lacking, however, was time alone in the evenings. So we use our time on ourselves, often going out to dinner and a movie. It’s a wonderful time. Without the use of this respite service, we would have to give most of this up - it’s a rare thing indeed to find a regular babysitter who is both trustworthy and infinitely patient and we live too far from relatives to impose on them very often.

I once read a statistic that said parents of a special needs child have a much greater risk of divorce than the national average of about one in two marriages. Technically speaking, the odds are stacked against us. Having the ability to spend time together, without the added pressure of having our brains on auto-pilot, has been a godsend.

We think of it as ‘emptying our bucket’.

* This is the second in a series I’m calling The Mama Bear Files. Originally written 2005.

Postscript ~ Clearly, a lot has changed since this was originally written. We are still accessing respite care but a lot of the issues that were once prevalent concerning what we could do as a family no longer stand (thank goodness!) J was only 6½ when this was first written and now, at age 10, we’re blessed to have a lovely - and mostly agreeable! - child :)

Miracles In The Flaws

When I was nineteen years old, I found myself taking a front-row seat in an honest-to-God, wish-I-could-bottle-that-feeling miracle.

After a twenty-eight hour labour, an ugly, red, scrawny mess of arms and legs was twisted from my body, four weeks before his due date. The conehead my son sported from his prolonged journey down the birth canal was very pronounced and truly awesome to behold. His Apgar scores were low. He was whisked away for some oxygen.

At that point, I didn’t care where he went, as long as he was being cared for appropriately and I could cover up the bits of my person that in any other circumstance would never be displayed. It is amazing how the most prudish of women can become the most liberal when in the throes of childbirth. There were bits of me that were irreversibly altered by the birthing process but in the end those particular battle scars would fade, and new ones would take their place.

On the second day after his birth, J turned an alarming shade of buttercup yellow which had the doctors scrambling for the big scary humidicrib with fancy lights and cords. You know, the type with holes in the side where distraught parents are permitted to insert only their hands to stroke babies they should, by rights, be cradling in their arms.

My little six-pound-nothing imp modelled a hastily cut blindfold of black vinyl almost every moment of the first week of his life. We were allowed to remove him from the phototherapy unit for feedings and changes only. The rest of the time he was to lay naked and sunbathing, save for his Zorro mask, under special lights designed to speed up the expulsion of the bilirubin from his blood. There’s a reason why babies are meant to be covered up. Meconium poops are legendary, and more so for babies undergoing phototherapy. We didn’t even have the luxury of a nappy to contain it. Every time J wet or soiled, his entire bedding arrangement had to be changed and sometimes, there needed to be a thorough disinfecting of his crib. But this was a good sign – the more explosive the soilings, the less yellow he appeared and the faster he got better.

My then-fiancé and I finally took this tiny creature home one week after the birth. To say we were unprepared for life as parents was strikingly apparent about four hours into our first night at home. J did not sleep. Breastfeeding was difficult. We had borne this child smack dab into the middle of a heat wave in a South Australian town noted for its perpetual red hue and blisteringly hot summers. Sleep deprived, emotionally exhausted and just plain stupid, I managed to convince myself that bottle feeding was the far better option and so J was slurping down artificial sustenance even before his official due date rolled around.

The next two years were surprisingly ordinary. We conceived another son, ran away to Bali to get married, saw Kuta in all its muddy wet season glory – not what wedding dreams are made of! - and consequently came home unmarried. Our second son was born in due time and the wedding eventually occurred on home soil, much to the delight of the parents. Later that same year we had a daughter, rounding out the scorecard to three children in three years.

I was barely 22 years old.

Autism snuck into our lives quietly, set up shop without us realising it, and eventually manifested itself in physical symptoms in our son, whom we had diagnosed by a child assessment team at age 3½.

Those first few years were excruciating. We agonised over every small decision concerning our J’s welfare. Every single behaviour, word spoken, instruction performed, everything. At diagnosis, J was developmentally on par with fourteen month old children. Essentially, his two year old brother had overtaken him months beforehand.

But we got through it.

When the Department of Education psychologically assessed him during his kindergarten year at age four, his report was prefaced by the following ‘encouraging’ information:

Half of all students will score in the Average range. Thirty percent of children will either fall in the Low Average or High Average range. Eight percent will score in the Well Below Average or Extremely Low range. We also calculate a child’s percentile rank – if your child scores in the 24th percentile, it means that if we tested 100 children of the same age 24 would test lower than your child.

Our son had an overall score on the first percentile.

When he started primary school several months later and a government grant had to be secured in order to buy the hydraulic ‘doctor’s bed’ needed to create a changing area in a female staff toilet, I swung wildly between despair and indifference. In public, I was a hardened special needs advocate, but in private, I sobbed at the thought of my five year old son still needing nappies in the playground. He would be six years old before we were finally rid of that particular curse.

But we got through it.

Also at the age of five, a speech assessment saw J score between just the first and the fifth percentile for communication – and that was after two years of extensive speech therapy.

But we got through it.

We waded through all the NEP meetings and the special ed classroom tours and the birthday parties comprised solely of children who by no fault of their own, have problems being social. We dealt with the misunderstandings of the condition, the stares, the meltdowns, the accusations, the generalisations. We learned not to take to heart the sixth party or event in a row that we hadn’t been invited to. We dabbled in dietary intervention but forewent medications or strict behaviour programs. We cried and cried until no more tears came.

And then something miraculous happened.

One day, many years into our journey, it suddenly occurred to me that autism was not the first thought that popped into my head when I woke up each morning. I no longer introduced my son to strangers and then, when he was out of earshot, hastily added the “he’s autistic” explanation because I felt as though I should apologize for his indifferent gaze or funny hand flapping. I no longer saw the autism before I saw him.

People are a bit hesitant to talk about miracles these days. We only have to look around us to find all evidence in the world that miracles don’t exist. Children die from cancer. Others are abused. Still others are stricken by horrible disfigurements and left in orphanages to suffer out the rest of their days. Yes, life is unfair.

Most of us prefer logic over faith. If we can’t prove it, they don’t want to know about it. It is no miracle that my son was born. Millions came before him and millions are yet to be created. People endure far, far worse illnesses, conditions, or situations than we have ever had to cope with. There are no miracles in my son’s frustrated howls or in his catch-it-when-you-can affections. People often ask me how, after all the struggles we’ve been through and are yet to face with J, how I can still consider this flawed child, his wonderful yet slightly altered existence, miraculous.

But the miracle doesn’t reside in him.

It’s that I am proud to have been the vessel that bore him.

And the miracle is in that pride.

* This is the first in a series I’m calling The Mama Bear Files. Originally written January 2008.

Lizzie's Link Love ~ November 22

I’m procrastinating about cleaning my kitchen. And because I love my readers so much, here are some distractions so you can procrastinate too!

Summer Sit-Upons: Placemats For Your Rear - Plum Pudding (this is one of those occasions where you think to yourself “Now why didn’t I think of that?”)

Dishtowel Aprons - Skip To My Lou (aren’t these just the cutest things you’ve ever seen?)

Mint Printables - free printable lists, recipe cards, greeting cards, stationery and tags.

Hanging Bed Organizer - Sew Mama Sew (if you could see the various toys and books clipped to my kids’ beds, or stashed under their pillows (ouch!), you’ll understand why I’m so excited to see this tutorial, LOL)

Domestically Challenged - Harriet Archer: Girl Reporter (hands up - who’s felt like this before?)

The Princess And The Pea - June Cleaver After A Six-Pack (this made me laugh so hard I snorted Coke - the cola beverage folks! - clear across the kitchen table!)

Rinse And Repeat - This Is My Life (I have an obsession with other people’s laundry methods. All those nearly-empty laundry baskets are making me swoon)

Charting Our Chores - Daring Young Mom (I am so going to do this…)

Sigh. The kitchen awaits. Where’s my iPod?

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks...And Mr Pink Whistle

As expected, The Teachers’ Strike That Wasn’t created mass chaos. Parents were turning up to drop their kids off to school this morning and finding the place virtually deserted of children, despite school being officially ‘on’. I think - and I personally hold this opinion myself - a lot of parents just thought, why bother? There were also lots of parents who, having heard the strike was going to happen earlier in the week (via notes from the teachers themselves) had arranged emergency childcare or to take the day off themselves. Even hearing that school was back on late yesterday evening, many couldn’t re-change their plans - especially in regards to childcare centres, who generally require a couple of weeks notice for cancellations. Like I said, chaos.

Tonight, I have puppies on the brain. After seeing Moo’s classmate’s Maltese/Poodle cross pups (just can’t bring myself to call them Maltipoos, LOL) yesterday and doing a bit of research, I’m back thinking the original plan of a purebred Cavalier King Charles Spaniel might be better. So off I troddled to a breeder’s directory website and fired off 3 or 4 emails and copied down 3 more numbers to call next week. Those EYES folks. The eyes do me in every time :)

But I’m finding it really interesting - the couple of responses I got back to initial inquiries about a week and a half ago are making me think breeders are a class all of their own. I was basically told in one response that puppies only went to other breeders or to those intending them to be show dogs and were most definitely NOT pet stock. Well, lah-di-dah! Those that did “occasionally” offer pups for sale as family pets did so because they were show-dog rejects. One reason given (on a website) for not being of show material was because a couple of the dog’s teeth were out of alignment.

Okaaaaay.

I’m hoping I get some bites though. I’ve loved Cavaliers for ages and secretly coveted them all the years we were unable to have a pet. Whether a pup becomes available through a breeder is a bit hit and miss in my state. I have only come up with a list of 6 registered breeders and of the websites I’ve seen, they seem not to breed more than once, or at best twice, per year (most kennels appear to have multiple breeding females). But you never know. We could get lucky :)

Tomorrow I have set myself some housekeeping tasks that I’m hoping desperately to get completed. Namely, Mt Washmore. I am almost tempted to cull everyone to four outfits and be done with the whole blasted enterprise.

One of my favourite childhood authors, Enid Blyton, created a magical character called Mr Pink Whistle and I remember one of his stories being about family with four children who had one set of clothing each. One day they get invited to a class party but they don’t have any nice clothes so Mum sends them all to bed in the early afternoon (no other clothes you see) and drags out the washtub to brighten things up a bit. The clothes fall in the mud, then some dogs run over them, then the fireplace hacks up some soot onto them. Mum gives up. Mr Pink Whistle, who by all accounts seems to be a rather decent and obliging fellow, comes along, decides to pull a bit of an Extreme Makeover on the little cherubs, and goes shopping. Bibbity-bobbity-boo, the kids get to go to the party after all.

One set of clothes huh?

Do you think Talented Hubby and the Piglets would go for it?

You’d always match, you’d be able to wash your entire wardrobe - and everyone else’s in the family - in one load, you could get dressed in ten seconds flat and you’d never need to store any clothing because you’d be wearing it. Surely I’m not the only mother drowing in laundry who can understand the allure of this idea!

If They Mark My Kids Absent Tomorrow, I Think I'll Scream

Technically speaking, my state’s Education Department never officially signed off on the planned teachers’ strike tomorrow. In fact, they’re ordering the teachers to go to work. The teachers, in turn, are thumbing their noses at the Dept. But for the last few days they’ve had daily meetings to resolve the issue, including a last minute effort this evening, and now the news tonight is saying school IS on tomorrow. Two days ago both of the kids’ schools sent home notices saying they were striking and therefore closed. What the?

It would be positively delightful if they’d work it all out before they sent home notices! Or better yet, Government People - give them their money!

So even though the Ed. Dept. is saying school is on, our kids won’t be going. Instead - but only if they can manage to behave themselves for an hour straight at the very least, please! - we’re probably going to go for a ‘Mum and Kids Day Out’. Boof desperately wants to go to the games arcade. Is it mean that I said they had to pay for it themselves? LOL.

In other news, Moo’s classmate brought a set of three Maltese/Poodle cross puppies for show and tell this morning. Good golly, they were only four weeks old and perfect little puffballs of joy. As we are considering a puppy for the kids I cornered the mother of the child and gave her my phone number. Then I came home and researched those particular breeds - good with kids, small, relatively easy to train, short hair that doesn’t (or at least minimally) sheds and the Poodle part in particular is meant to be highly intelligent. Still thinking hard about it though. A ‘fluffball’ isn’t what I really had in mind, but there are plus points to this arrangement - namely, we know where the puppy is coming from (and it has been raised in a family environment with children around) and even though this isn’t a deciding factor, we would be able to purchase it for much cheaper than what we were looking at for a purebreed. Even these types of cross-breeds go for hundreds of dollars in pet stores in my area. Not that it matters. I suspect we’ll need a second mortgage in order to purchase the equipment it needs and get all its shots done, regardless :P

We were planning a January timeline, as we are travelling over the Christmas break (new pup in car = not a smart move), and the family is fine with leaving the pup with its mother for a couple of weeks longer than usual to accommodate us. Still…big step. Funny to see Moo with one of the pups - who are all boys - this morning in the classroom though. She fell in love instantly (she’s 6, so of course she did) and would positively DIE if we got to take one home. One of them is a gorgeous apricot colour.

Sigh. I am such a sucker for The Cute.

Where Teachers And The Government Need A Big Ol' Group Hug

So apparently teachers in my state are amongst the lowest paid in Australia. And they’re not that happy about it.

Their union has been dueling with the government over a pay increase for the last couple of months. End result? Strike action. I love my kids’ teachers - every stinkin’ one any of them have ever had (well minus earlier this year in Moo’s classroom…she was horrible) - but geez. Strikes throw a seriously large, rusty spanner in the works for us parents. And I’ve got it easy - I’m a stay at home mum. I don’t have to rearrange childcare or scramble with other arrangements!

This will be the fourth strike in recent months, with the last three being half day stoppages and this Friday’s being the first full-day one. I don’t know why our state government can’t just give the teachers the money they deserve and be done with it already - we all know they’ve earned it!

This time of the year is really the worst for strike action, what with all the end-of-school-year (we break mid-December and restart after summer holidays in the last week of January) and Christmas activities. Lots of classrooms have planned excursions as treats to cap off the year, Master J’s class included, which happened to be scheduled for this Friday, strike day. I still don’t know what’s going to happen with that.

P.S. Even though the kids know Mummy blogs, they don’t know the URL, so I think I’m pretty safe to mention the fact that we picked up Guitar Hero World Tour this week for their Christmas present (also combined with Dad’s). We are totally going to kick some serious fake-concert booty! Although what I’m DYING to hear is any one of my children trying to hit the right pitch with the microphone thingy. Not a single soul in my family can sing - on any level. I fear the poor children will have inherited this awesome family gene, LOL.

The Perils Of Living In Australia

Some schools send home chicken pox notices. Sometimes lice notes if you’re really unlucky.

Today, my kids’ school sent home a SNAKE NOTICE.

Apparently, one of the parents noticed a baby brown snake in the grounds while supervising at a school disco on Friday night. They informed the staff this morning, and the ’snake people’ (Moo’s words) came to do what they do (spray poison? beat the bushes with sticks? wave live mice around?). There was a second sighting at some point and they were concerned the warmer weather may have brought the snakes out of hibernation and into a breeding pattern, meaning a nest could be somewhere on the school grounds. The note assured parents the whole school had been drenched with Snake Be-Gone (or whatever snake poison is called).

Interesting to note: The nearest classroom to the garden bed where the snakes were spotted? Moo’s.

*SHUDDER*

Seriously, I’m in a cold sweat just thinking about it.

God….snakes….geez….

Credit Cards - Not Always Evil If You Know What You're Doing

Cash is King. Frugal circles are absolutely 100% right in celebrating this fact because - hello? - it’s totally true. Paying with cash at the register lends a very real and finite quality to the act of spending money.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about folk who, through one set of circumstances or another, have ended up with multiple (and large!) credit card debt. Once you’re in that hole, it’s a long, hard slog until you can claw your way out. But here in the Lizzie’s Home family, we’ve never viewed credit cards as completely evil either. Let me explain why.

Talented Hubby and I have only ever had ONE credit card. I’ve never applied for one in my own name, and I was only added to TH’s account as a second cardholder two full years after we were married. Before that, there was no point to having a credit card under my own steam - everything we couldn’t pay cash for was either discussed between the two of us anyway (in which case if it was deemed a necessary purhase, TH would go ahead and organize payment with his card) or not bought at all.

Over the years, we’ve been offered credit limit increases - and refused. It can be fantastically tempting to see those ‘extra’ dollars down on paper, but it’s the road to destruction my friend. Rip up the bank’s letter. You won’t explode, I promise.

We cycle a lot of our household expenditure through our credit card each month, but only because our mortgage - our only major debt - is attached to our savings/offset account. Every day our dollars are kept in this account, the less interest (calculated daily and based on our total mortgage debt LESS whatever our savings/offset balance may be - for example, if we had a $100,000 home loan (we don’t) and our savings/offset account stood at $16,000 (it doesn’t) we effectively only pay interest on the remaining $84,000) we pay on our home loan overall. Even though our savings balance takes a large-ish hit at the end of the month when we pay our credit card bill, you can see why keeping the savings account average as high as we can, for as long as we can (ie, not using the ATM to withdraw small amounts of cash throughout the month, which lowers our overall balance), works for us.

We pay our card off in full every single month. Sometimes it is painful to see such a large bill at the end of the month, but we console ourselves with the fact that we never carry a balance over into the next month. I can’t stress this point enough - never, ever pay just the minimum monthly payment. You’re digging that hole deeper every single day you don’t throw an extra few bucks at the debt.

TH and I don’t have extravagant tastes. I am one of those people who own four pairs of shoes at any given time and only generally wear two pair with any regularity. Neither TH or I have expensive hobbies (although TH is a wonderful photographer and owns a few key pieces of equipment, they were bought smartly - see below). A couple of years ago I went through a phase where I seriously considered ’big time’ scrapbooking - I bought all sorts of little gadgets and papers and stickers only to discover the ongoing expense to create each album was going to be more than I was comfortable paying. Those extra items formed the basis for my last two Bloggy Giveaways. I shudder to think of the money I wasted buying those items, most of which I never used. We get takeout every third Sunday as a family and make it special (eating in at family restaurants rather than zooming through the drive-thru). Every few months when we get itchy feet we’ll spend a few days at Nana and Poppa’s house - the kids have a riot, we get to relax, and apart from the petrol and a few groceries, we’re ahead financially when comparing those same few days break to a holiday resort stay. We rent movies. I don’t own a lot of jewellery or purses. I am more than cool with that :)

We save for new household appliances and other luxury items just as though we were working from a ‘zero balance’, even if we’re not. We treat the money in our savings/offset account like a mirage - there, but not really there. Within that money we have several ‘layers’ - an emergency fund (like if we suddenly needed a brand new hot water system), kids fund, true savings, an amount equal to our expenses for a few months (including bills, food, mortgage and so on) and then a healthy buffer on top of that ‘just in case’ (there’s little point in us holding several different accounts for all of this stuff, given the above example regarding our mortgage interest). We hate to see the figure drop, though sometimes it has to. When this happens, we pare back our discretionary spending until it’s back up to the figure we deem appropriate. And we’ve not done without - we’ve bought some bigger-ticket items in the past 12 months (a big screen TV, a new gaming system, a new computer) but each time we applied the ‘zero balance’ principle and didn’t purchase the item until our savings account had increased by at least that same amount, usually more. We had the money for all of this, even to pay cash and not incur any debt, but we chose not to. And we’ve said no to just as many things as we’ve said yes to. We have a rotating list of household items to replace and tackle them in order of importance. If it can wait, it generally does. We’re so used to this way of budgeting now that before we drag out the plastic - even for the necessary stuff - we imagine that same amount being shaved off our savings account and cringe it pain. It helps to keep things in perspective folks, LOL.

We either retained, or learned from, the financial grounding our parents gave us. It helps if you got good money advice growing up. Me? I didn’t get that. We never had a lot of money around, so there wasn’t all that much to waste, but it still influenced my attitude to money in a negative way. As a teen and young adult, if I had money, I spent money. Thank goodness I met and subsequently married TH young otherwise I’d probably be up to my eyeballs in debt by now! But we’ve watched family members mismanage their finances to the point where they will never, ever be rid of credit card debt, and it’s heartbreaking. What saddens me even more is to witness their attitude of ’so what?’ To them, a $4000 credit card limit is like money in the bank, and they’ll spend right up to the limit, pay off the bare minimum, and generally live month to month without ever gaining ground.

After watching them go through all this, TH and I both agree we never want to end up in that situation. We are careful in all of the ways described above, in order that our kids can go on that school camp, can wear new school uniforms (purchased on sale of course!), can get the occasional canteen lunch as a treat, and never have to worry about whether we can afford to buy this or that (that’s our job as the parents). Whether we actually DO buy something is another matter entirely, and we’ve had many, many conversations with the kids detailing how Mummy and Daddy take care of our family’s money. I think most of it has sufficiently sunk in with them, LOL.

But here’s the point I’m trying to make:

In the right hands and used correctly, a credit card (singular!) can be made to work for you, not against.

TH and I both have very clear ideas about what’s okay and what’s not in terms of credit card spending. A general financial rule we hold - true of cash or credit - is to always, always discuss purchases before shelling out. As the homemaker I do tend to have more money filtering through my hands than TH - not only the grocery money but also money for clothing, shoes, bills etc as they crop up. Certain things would be impractical to discuss with TH beforehand, such as the $2 I sometimes have to spend replacing Moo’s school hair clips, LOL. But I would say we talk about 95% of our expenses before they occur, and it works really well for us.

And I’m blessed to have the kind of husband who leaves the nitty gritty of the household up to me and trusts that I’ll come to him - which I do - with the important stuff.

Sandwiches? Schmamwiches!

After the third day in a row where my daughter’s peanut butter sandwich has been returned home uneaten, I finally got the message.

I make boring lunches.

Actually, I was the Fun Mummy this week because (at considerable expense, sigh, but I promised Moo, so…) I bought the ingredients and made my own Munchables. Mind you, the money I spent on a sliver of cheese could have paid off a small country’s foreign debt, but hey. I threw something together using water crackers, thiiiiiiinly sliced cheese, Fruity Bites (shredded wheat pillowy cereal things with fruit paste inside…they’re actually really nice to snack on) and a fun pack of Smarties (with, like, 9 Smarties in it). The next day the Smarties were replaced with a piece (very small) of homemade Rocky Road, made because Talented Hubby needed something to take to his shift to impress his work team and - hello? - my Rocky Road is legendary. And super-ridiculously-embarrassingly-easy, but lemme bask a while, ‘kay?

But I’m sticking to my ‘no commercial snackfood‘ rule. Oh hang on, darn it - I bought the water crackers yesterday and I said I was going to try to make my own, didn’t I? No matter, I’m still doing okay. I haven’t succumbed to the (very strong) temptation to just pick up a stack of boxed snacks and be done with it. I baked. One day it was Ham and Corn Mini Muffins (meh), another day some homemade Snack Bars (muesli bars/granola bars). Kind of got put off by that recipe when the honeyed bowl containing the leftover batter attracted the ants. And the ingredients for those were fairly expensive. I’m sure I can work at the recipe and make it cheaper though. Then of course the Rocky Road. Onward!

I’m really glad it’s Friday. It’s been a long week. So I really need your suggestions on the lunch front. Here are the parametres:

none of the kids’ classrooms have access to a microwave
no access to fridge either, although I can substitute ice bricks (would prefer not to send yoghurt etc though. As we’re heading into the hot Aussie summer, nothing that is going to spoil or wilt very easily. Even though we have our end of school year break coming up in a few weeks, I’ll need these ideas for the new school year in late January).
need ’sandwich alternatives’ ideas (I have many, many Tupperware-type containers that are good for ‘bits’. I also have mini ‘dressing’ and ‘dip’ containers. Some of my containers even have purdy forks and everything!)
made-from-scratch-ability (see above challenge)
kid friendly
extra points for freezer-friendly meals (or anything I can prepare the night before, refrigerate and just toss in their lunchboxes during the rush the next morning).
So, any ideas? About the only thing I can come up with is ’smorgasbord’ style, or what we call Kids Bits. We do this pretty often at home on the weekends - just cut up a whole bunch of stuff - deli meat, crackers, fruit, dips, vegetables etc. After that, I run out of ideas.

I need you!

So This Oscar Winners Thing? Totally A Walk Through My Adolescence

Today I researched and then compiled my list of films in order to tackle No. 15 on my Thirty By Thirty list - Watch all of the Best Picture Oscar winners, 1979-2009. Silly me assumed 1979-2009 meant exactly what it seems to mean but no, an award ceremony covers films released in the year prior (I know…seems obvious to me now too, LOL). So my 1979 to 2009 film list has become my 1978 to 2008 winners list. Which means I now have to watch The Deer Hunter. My Dad (a Vietnam veteran) is totally laughing at his very ‘Jane Austen-y taste in movies’ daughter right about now. Especially considering Platoon comes into play as the 1986 winner, LOL.

Clearly, this little challenge isn’t for everyone. Some of the films aren’t exactly of the ‘roses and chocolates’ variety. But I’m genuinely interested in this task - there are some movies I’ve grown up hearing (by name) but have never seen - although I have seen the majority from the last twenty years. Some of the earlier films might be a bit harder to get my hands on when the time comes but I have a few contacts I can lean on if necessary.

In case you were wondering, here’s the full list of 31 films:

BEST PICTURE OSCAR WINNERS
1978 (ceremony 1979) to 2008 (ceremony 2009)

2008 – Slumdog Millionaire (watched 24-Feb-09)
2007 – No Country For Old Men
2006 – The Departed (watched 19-Nov-08)
2005 – Crash
2004 – Million Dollar Baby
2003 – The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
2002 – Chicago
2001 – A Beautiful Mind
2000 – Gladiator
1999 – American Beauty
1998 – Shakespeare In Love
1997 – Titanic
1996 – The English Patient
1995 – Braveheart
1994 – Forrest Gump
1993 – Schindler’s List
1992 – Unforgiven
1991 – The Silence Of The Lambs
1990 – Dances With Wolves (watched 22-Nov-08)
1989 – Driving Miss Daisy
1988 – Rain Man
1987 – The Last Emperor
1986 – Platoon (watched 26-Nov-09)
1985 – Out Of Africa
1984 – Amadeus
1983 – Terms Of Endearment
1982 – Gandhi
1981 – Chariots Of Fire
1980 – Ordinary People
1979 – Kramer vs Kramer
1978 – The Deer Hunter

I totally find it interesting that many of the titles hit a bit close to home. Obviously the Vietnam thing with my Dad, but also Rain Man, Forrest Gump and A Beautiful Mind with J. I loved Forrest Gump for years and then once J was diagnosed I couldn’t bring myself to watch it for the longest time (eventually came to my senses but cried most of the way through). Come to think of it….Forrest goes to Vietnam too, LOL.

Okay, game face on. The DVD player awaits… :P

Snore. Or In Other Words, Snarfle Snarfle Snort Snort

I can’t sleep.

Not just tonight. I mean in general. And the irony? My body tells me I desperately need to.

This week I managed to hit the sheets at 3:30 am and 4:15 am on two separate nights. In my defence, this latter one was because I was taking myself off to bed at 1:30 - late, but reasonably so for me - and noticed a few ants on the kitchen bench. Then few more. Then a goshdarn avalanche. Let’s just say the kitchen wasn’t in a pristine state to begin with, so everything had to be moved, de-ant-ed, and set aside on the dining room table before sweeping sponge-fuls of Satan’s Little Minions to their deaths under the running kitchen tap. I thought about fumigating them with surface spray but didn’t fancy the thought of having to disinfect the benchtops as well, so it was the ‘au naturel’ method of drowning and Finger of Death (squishing) until the stream finally stopped. The whole debacle took me TWO AND A HALF HOURS. The object of their desire? An unwashed bowl I’d used earlier in the evening to make homemade muesli (granola) bars. The bars were held together with honey. Lesson learned. ‘Nuff said.

So I’m not sleeping properly. And because I’m tired all the time I’m relying on artificial (yet curiously delicious) sustenance to get me through the day. Today, I had half an hour to spare before walking up to the school to pick up the kids so I sat down on the couch with a magazine to read. I was tired but I didn’t think that tired. Next thing I know the phone is ringing.

“Um, hello?”

“Hello Mrs Lizzie’s Home. Your children are waiting in the front office. They’re sobbing and petrified you’ve abandoned them. You’re a horrible mother.”

Well, okay, she didn’t say that, and they weren’t. I’m sure she was thinking it though. But I swear, I’ve never had my heart jump into my throat with as much force as it did today (even that time the doctor took one look (well, okay, feel) at my newly-nineteen year old cervix and promptly told me to “get up to the hospital immediately because that baby of yours will fall out any minute - but be prepared, because our hospital doesn’t have the facillities to handle premature births.” Phooey on him - I lasted another two weeks and J was born at 36 weeks). Complicating matters today was the fact that J, who normally travels home via taxi each day, was still en route home - with no-one else at home to greet him - so I had to call up the taxi driver (thank God for mobile phones) to ask him to drop him in front of the local school (where Boof and Moo go) instead. J was none too pleased at the last minute schedule change and as for the younger two - well let’s just say I won’t be winning Mother of the Year anytime soon for being 20 minutes late.

Now if you’d done something horrible like this you’d totally bribe them too, right? Mama’s poison-de-jour was a chocolate Paddle Pop (like a big Popsicle/Fudgsicle? - again, thank God for a morning grocery run earlier in the day) Totally worth it.

It was while they were eating them that I noticed another ant infestation.

Did I also mention that it was like 36ºC (close to 100ºF) today? I am NOT a warm-weather kind of girl. In fact, I’d rather slowly poke my eyeball with a rusty fork. I was just about sobbing by the time Talented Hubby arrived home to find me de-ant-ing OUR FURNITURE. Now, credit to the man for taking one look at me and keeping his mouth shut about the missed school pickup - ignoring my failings is one of the reasons why I love him so much :)

But this heat? I want to move to Canada. Seriously. Laura will put up with a crazy Australian gal, right? Laura? Hello? LOL.

* written in the late evening and scheduled for the next day. I heart scheduled posting…

The Mama Bear Files

In the first few months of Lizzie’s Home, way back in Autumn (Spring for you Northern Hemispherians!) 2007, I would post occasionally about the challenges we faced as special needs parents. As the blog took off, it continued to include a cacophony of random tidbits about the Lizzie’s Home family, but it’s focus morphed mainly toward my horrible ineffectiveness at homemaking (*smile*).

Without realising it, over time I began phasing out references to autism in my new posts. Master J is, of course, mentioned frequently and with much frustration and hilarity by his mother - but as for the emotional side of being an ‘autism mama’? I’ve kept things pretty close to my chest. It’s a coping mechanism, sure, but I think I stopped including the more obvious references because I didn’t want to be ‘the autism blogger’. As you will see, my attitude towards autism over the years has matured and now I do not necessarily believe I’d have been pigeon-holed back then, but subconciously, this was a real concern for me at the time.

Some of you may have noticed posts from 2007 referencing a four year advanced diploma writing course I was involved in. As brow-furrowing and downright hellish as that experience was at times, I learned an awful lot. In January of this year, I submitted my final assignment - a portfolio of pieces I’d written on the subject of autism, special needs and our experiences and challenges with J.

With much exhalation of breath and warranted celebration, that assignment was returned with the highest mark possible.

I have often thought about including some of those pieces here on Lizzie’s Home. This teeny blog of mine may be a drop in the ocean in Bloggityville but it represents most parts of who I am, what I’m interested in, what frustrates me, who I love - and yet somehow, with the omission of some of the more emotional pieces I’ve written, it feels slightly false somehow, like a half-truth. This boy of ours (who turned ten last Saturday, November 8th - good golly!) is as much as focus of our lives as all the other ‘trivial’ stuff - clearly more so. I am not the best writer in the world. In fact, as the Greats go, I’m like the speck of dirt on Dickens’ boot. Just adding that as a disclaimer in case you’re expecting literary brilliance, LOL.

I keep it light here for a reason. This will sound all dramatic (it’s really not, LOL) but one day this blog will be read by my children, as a record of our days in different seasons of life. I would never want it thought by J - or anyone for that matter - that an absence of ‘autism talk’ meant we were ashamed. Truthfully, it has more to do with autism remaining in the background these days, rather than the “front and centre” spot it occupied in the early years after diagnosis. I used to spell autism with a capital “A”. I stopped doing that years ago :) Life can still be incredibly frustrating and I have regular moments where I’m heartsore for J’s future, but I adore this bundle of firecrackers I was given and no, I don’t think I would change things if given the chance.
So, if you will indulge me, I thought I would set up a new page here on Lizzie’s Home. You can access it in the navbar above and it will be eventually filled with our experiences with special needs, as time and inspiration allows. It’s called The Mama Bear Files because quite frankly, I’ve had to get all Scary Advocate Mama on more occasions than I could count. I cannot guarantee it will remain a permanent fixture, but I do hope that it helps others in some way while it is up. I also can’t say how often it will be updated, LOL. I go with my heart on these pieces and if things are going along sort of ‘vanilla’, then life is grand and I see no need to stress about the “what ifs” :)

Where Would We Be Without The Humble Crockpot?

God bless the man - are we sure it was a man? A crockpot seems like such a womanly appliance - who invented these wonderful machines.

It’s nearly 11:00 am and I have some Corned Beef (Americans = brisket?) simmering away with a hastily chopped onion, a couple teaspoons of minced garlic (the recipe I found on allrecipes.com used a whole bulb of garlic, but we only ever have the minced stuff on hand) and a couple of bay leaves. Sometime several hours from now (yay) I’ll toss some potatoes and carrots into the pot and steam some broccoli in the microwave. It smells like Ireland in here.

Or does Ireland smell like Guiness and ‘green, green grass’? I’ve never been to Ireland so I’m guesstimating, LOL.

I haven’t had the greatest track record with slow cooker recipes. After a few disasterous attempts at cooking pieces of chicken when I first bought it a few years back, I kind of gave up on the ’solid food’ concept of crock-pottery and stuck with the soups. Then on a whim one day I threw in an old piece of corned beef (well not OLD, as in decomposed and flyblown - old as in ‘two more days and the freezer burn will ruin it’) and it turned out surprisingly well. I mean, it looked like a hunk of grey, lifeless flesh when it was done (which technically it was), but once carved and taste-tested, melted into deliciousness.

We don’t have corned beef all that often around here. Talented Hubby’s mother served this up to him often as a child but to hear TH talk about it now, she served it up with Arsenic-Laden Poison Sauce, otherwise known as ‘gravy’. I must admit, I shook my head at the thought of corned beef with gravy too. It’s just wrong when the sauce is brown instead of the traditional white. These days, as long as I don’t go The Way of the Stirfry (a very common meal in our house - so common TH eventually shouted ‘UNCLE!’ and begged me not to make it more than once a month, and even then, he grumbles), he’s fine with corned beef.

But if I so much as glance at the gravy powder (yes, I use powder. I’ll hand in my Wife Badge and Icing Gun as soon as the corned beef is about done, ‘kay?) he shoots his Eyes of Death at me and I realise he means business on the corned-beef-and-gravy issue. It’s fun to play with him though :P

Since I’m so horribly inept at crockpotting, I thought I’d open up the comments for recipes, suggestions etc. Fire away folks! What do you cook in the crock that tastes amazing and is foolproof? Special bonus points to anyone whose recipe sounds so appealing it makes it on to my menu for next week :)

One Whole Decade, Huh?

Master J’s tenth birthday on Saturday went off without a hitch. My favourite kind of birthday :)

Oh, he was the most excited I’ve ever seen him, I think. We’d planned a big day. Nana and Poppa came down to visit, which was one big thing, but we also filled the day with family activities in lieu of a party with his classmates. I like it when the kidlets agree to those. Though there might have even been a sliiiiiight bit of influencing from Mum and Dad, LOL.

Birthday kids in our house always get to choose a treat cereal for breakfast. We don’t usually go for the high-sugar stuff so clearly, on a birthday one really does deserve a sugar-rush first thing in the morning, right? J chose Froot Loops, just about the worst thing on the shelf.

I kept my mouth shut.

Present time netted the boy a Geelong football (Aussie Rules!) guernsey from Nana and Poppa, and a Ripley’s Believe it Or Not book, a Yo Ho Diablo whatsit, and a new game for the PS3 from Mum, Dad and Siblings. We’re all still trying to work out that Diablo thing. None of us can do any tricks. J’s favourite part? The instructional DVD that accompanied it, LOL.

Then we hit a local play arcade down at the beach. I was surprised Talented Hubby agreed to this - at $35 per child (for 2 hours unlimited water slides, games, bumper cars etc), we dropped over a hundred bucks just on this one activity. This is way extravagant for us. Smooches TH, because the kids had an absolute riot. Because it’s so expensive we usually avoid places like this, and Saturday was the first time the kids had done the water slide, which they LOVED. They probably got their money’s worth just on that alone.

Afterwards, we did something really simple and fun for lunch. We don’t live too far away from the beach so we bought a couple of large bags of hot chips (thick fries to you Americans, LOL) and a tub of gravy from a local takeaway place and sat next to the beach and gobbled them up. The seven of us - our family of five plus the grandfolk - had nice full tummies for only a few bucks, instead of the $50 we would have forked over at McDonald’s. Which is just as well, considering how much we’d just spent at the arcade, LOL.

We were exhausted when we returned home. Moo ended up taking a nap for three hours, which, for a nearly-7 year old, hasn’t been a common occurrence in our house for years. MIL and I hit Spotlight (like the US’s Joanne’s?) to buy some supplies - her for a project she needed to complete for her workplace and I bought some bits and pieces for a Super Top Secret Project I have in the works (keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks :) I love Spotlight. I wish I could live there, right on the half size beds made up with their range of sheets. Which is odd, because once the fabric and notions get home, they remain in the shop bags for weeks and weeks, if not forever. You could say I have a teensy problem with follow-through, LOL.

Dinner was the highlight of the day. For about a year now, TH and I have been altering our family’s takeaway habits from a once a fortnight trip to McD’s or the other main takeout places to a once ‘every three to four weeks’ deal at a sit down restaurant. Nothing fancy - most of the time we just go to the local pasta restaurant with it’s simple meals and free gelato - but now that the kids are older, they’re better equipped to deal with a restaurant scene and we figured they needed the practice. So we spend a little more, but go a little less often, and it works out. We get a nicer meal and a better family experience.

For J’s birthday, we decided to do something different and hit the local Chinese restaurant. I hadn’t had Chinese (except for the odd ‘producton line’ food court fare) in years. We chose a banquet meal so we had all these courses coming out - it was awesome. The kids were enamoured with the Lazy Susan in the middle of the table and we very nearly had an embarrassing accident involving centrifugal force, soy sauce and some white pants - it was hastily avoided, thank goodness, with some sharp words and threats to tape their arms to the sides of their bodies for the rest of the evening. We amused ourselves between courses by snapping photos, including some clear gems that Talented Hubby made me delete immediately, just in case they ended up on the blog (that man knows me too well :P) After eating so much we were fit to burst (bye bye diet, eat least for that night :P) we headed home for cake. J had requested a choc mud cake with four different types of candy as decorations. Because I’m a pushover and hey, MY BOY JUST TURNED TEN AND HOW CAN I BE THE MOTHER OF A TEN YEAR OLD ALREADY! I JUST TURNED 29 YEARS OLD!!!, he got exactly what he asked for. Suprisingly all that sugar so late at night seemed to work the opposite way to normal and he was burnt out and asleep ten minutes after the cake. And then the adults all collapsed with very nerdy cups of tea and vowed never to repeat the day again. The End.

A full day, but a really good one. Not a bad time for a brand-new ‘double digits’ boy little man!

Here's A Funny Tidbit About Groceries - They're Not Free

Wow, grocery prices are rising and rising these days, aren’t they? What used to cost my family of five $150 per week (that’s Aussie prices folks, LOL - no coupons and a horrible conversion rate!) four years ago is now hitting the $200-$225 mark. It’s frustrating to think that the ‘cheap homemade pizza’ that was once a weekly menu staple has made way for a Pizza Hut special - because at $5 a pop for those, they’re actually cheaper! Seriously, a 600g (one-and-a-third pounds) bag of generic shredded cheese has shot up past the $7 mark. Blocks of cheese to grate yourself are only marginally cheaper. Throw in pepperoni, vegies and pineapple and it becomes more cost effective to get takeout pizza. One bag of cheese might stretch to two homemade pizzas but I’ve worked out the total cost of the ingredients we like on our pizzas and Pizza Hut wins, hands down (we could be different down here though - I’ve often come across references on American sites about takeout pizza being more like $12 or $15 each. In which case DIY sounds like a pretty good deal :P)

So, where do the rising grocery prices leave us?

In the Lizzie’s Home family, it’s a constant see-saw - providing healthy, filling meals and snacks but in a way that fits with our budget. With three children in school, there are three lunchboxes to pack every day (each including fruit, and something for recess and lunch), as well as Talented Hubby’s work meal. Then comes the snacking. My goodness, my family can EAT! Master J (ten on Saturday…gulp!) eats almost as much as Daddy now. And my kids are typical grazers. On school days they have breakfast at home and take a packed lunch to school. Then it’s home for afternoon tea. Then dinner. Though we’re pretty good at getting their fruit and veg into them, when you couple all this with a snack-happy husband, I feel like I’m at the supermarket twenty times a week just keeping them all fed!

One of my biggest food faults is that I can fall into a rut of just throwing a packet of this, or a muesli bar (granola bar?) of that into their lunches each day. With three children, a box of 6 bars lasts two days and costs $3 on sale - and they’re hardly rib-sticking. Add them up over the course of a month and we’re talking a whole lot of moola. I tend to go for convenience rather than low-cost. So I’m hatchin’ a plan.

From Monday (the start of the next menu round in this house, and also grocery day) I’m going to avoid, as much as humanly possible, buying commercial ’snackfood’. Here’s a list of things I’m not going to buy:

muesli bars (granola bars)
potato chips
crackers (this will be hard…I’ll have to experiment with making my own)
ready-made cake bars
boxed cake mix (I’ll bake from scratch only)
mini sultana (raisin) snack boxes (I’ll buy a bigger bag and perhaps jazz it up in a kind of trail-mix way)
those mini fruit bars (Aussies: Bellis School Bars)
…plus whatever else I’ve forgotten
Instead, I’m going to have to plan and bake ahead for the kids’ lunchboxes and our family’s general snacking. I’ll make my own cakes, biscuits (cookies) and crackers. From scratch. It’s not like I can’t turn out a mean Fudge Brownie, but I’m just not so crash-hot on all the pre-planning cooking from scratch will force me to do. I’m the mother who is throwing a packet cupcake mix into the oven at 11 o’clock at night because I wasn’t organized enough to have done it already!

I figure I’ll probably be in the kitchen a lot in the first few days building up some freezer stock and experimenting. Also, if you noticed in my Basic Daily Plan I have a large-ish window of opportunity in the afternoons to get some baking done. Perfect. Tiring….but perfect. I can’t say I’ll be 100% successful at this, but I’m gonna have fun tryin’!

What do you bake from scratch to satisfy your kids’ perpetually-empty stomachs?

Lizzie's Link Love ~ The Belated Edition

Oooh, I haven’t done one of these in AGES. Some of these links have been gathering dust in my Favourites folder for months and months, so you may have seen them before. Well worth a second look though.

How I Feed My Family Of Eight On $300 a Month - A Life At Home (scroll down the bottom of the page and work your way upwards to read the posts in order)

My Kitchen Method: Menu Planning & Once a Month Grocery Shopping - A Simple Walk

Young Me, Now Me - Color Wars 2008 (for some nerdy reason, I find this site fascinating :)

No Limbs, No Limits - 60 Minutes Australia (I’ve watched this over and over, and I still get a lump in my throat - totally inspirational. There’s a short ad first, and you can also ‘max screen’ by clicking on the small button in the bottom right hand corner of the player)

The Art of Stockpiling - MotherLoad (which shopper are you?)

Muffin Tin Mealtime - Make and Takes (I love this - where ‘grazing’ turns into ‘mealtime’)

Days With My Father - Philip Toledano (This is truly phenomenal - Talented Hubby put me on to it a couple of months ago - what an amazing tribute!)

Saving Mum Australia - save money, save time (loads of great tips)

TypeRacer - for when you’re bored and want to prove to your husband you can type faster than he can…not that I’d know anything about that…

Wedding Photos We’ll All Remember - Divine Caroline (I’m sure this has done the rounds…but too amusing not to post :P

Enjoy!

Apparently There's This Thing On Today. With The People. And Some Counting.

How are my American friends coping tonight? Well, for me it’s already tomorrow, 11 am Wednesday - hey! Wanna know the result?

Okay, it’s an old joke, I’m sorry, LOL.

It has been kind of interesting, as an outsider, watching the hoopla surrounding the election. Probably more so because we take our politics far less seriously Down Under. Official election campaigns rarely last longer than 6 weeks, a Prime Minister can be in office indefinately, provided they have their party support (no ‘two terms and you’re out’ deal), and religion just doesn’t factor into it. I doubt most Australians would even know what denomination (if any) their Prime Minister actually is. When candidates get into debates down here, it rarely extends beyond official party policy. You almost never see attacks on a candidate’s personal life. Pregnant, unmarried teen daughter? Might make headlines on the gossip pages but it’s considered rather poor form to use something like that against someone politically.

I must admit, figuring out the American voting system took some getting used to. I still don’t fully understand it. Here, we vote mostly for a party, not a candidate AND a party. Whoever happens to be the leader of the party at the time, gets to be Prime Minister. We never have multiple candidates per party, so no Clinton/Obama-esque fisticuffs beforehand. The parties choose their leader with no direct input from the public and then come Election Day, it’s a case of Labor vs Liberal, and the deal is done, more or less. We have minor parties, of course, but none of them receive enough votes to govern on their own and then it comes down to a complicated (and ultimately unknown to me) system of assigning preferences and then they count toward the….hey! Look at the pretty birdie!…..

That’s about the point where I switch off. It makes no difference - it’s a two-horse race no matter which way you look at it.

Voting is also compulsory here. Everyone over the age of 18 has to vote on both state and federal level. New 18 year olds are encouraged to register to vote right after their birthdays although registration isn’t compulsory per se…you just have to make sure you do it in enough time for an election. In theory, you can be fined if you don’t turn up to the booths on the day, although I’ve personally never come across anyone who has had to cough up the cash.

But this election in the US is rather ground-breaking, and I’m watching with fascination, tuned into MSNBC’s election coverage. At this moment, with only the first results coming in, McCain has taken Kentucky and Obama has Vermont. Which you know. Because it’s your country, LOL. No matter who wins, history will be made - either the first African-American President, or the first female Vice President (and, I think, the oldest guy inaugurated for a first term?). Clearly as an Australian I have no right to an opinion here, but it’s a bit hard to miss the information that has twirled around Bloggityville these past few months. If I was American, I know who I’d be voting for :)

Good luck America :)

Nineteen Year Old Lizzie? Your Life Is About To Get Real Hard, Real Soon

It’s been a long and very stressful week here at Lizzie’s Home. I’m physically and emotionally exhausted, and I’m ready for a bit of fun, thankyouverymuch :)

My darling boy, Master J, turns ‘double digits’ on Saturday. How can I be the mother of a ten year old? Oh, that’s right - Nineteen Year Old Lizzie remembers. The twenty-eight hour posterior labour. The conehead (his, not mine). The resulting agony when peeing. Those things are seared into my brain forever.

J has gone through more than the average ten year old to get to where he is now. The autism has been both a blessing and (I’m afraid to say), a curse at times. But it’s funny - all those tears and heartache in the early years were eventually replaced with real, honest-to-God, amazing achievements. I don’t remember every single nappy I changed (of many thousands) but I remember the day he first peed in the potty (he was almost 6. It happens people). I don’t remember specific nights of wakefulness, but I remember (more often than I can count) tucking him in as I went to bed, marvelling at the difference in composure he has when he’s asleep. And it’s not just the usual joke about children being devils when they’re awake and angels when they sleep, LOL. There’s a peace about him that generally isn’t present during the day. His overworked, overstimulated brain gets a chance to go to ’standby’ for a change.

I remember my fair share of bad times, don’t get me wrong. There was a period of about two years, right after he was diagnosed (at 3 ½)where his frustrations over lack of verbal communication mixed with a misunderstanding of normal social cues resulted in some really tricky moments. I cried alot those two years. But it got better.

This child of mine spoke his first word at 2 ½. At age three, at his first autism assessment, he had just a dozen words. At 3 ½ (eventual diagnosis), a mere 50. Take your typical, normally-developing three-and-a-half year old. Imagine packing all the wonder in those little eyes into fifty words. Try doing it yourself. How frustrating it must have been! And yet somehow, sometime during the year he was three, J taught himself to sight-read. My mind still boggles at this. His expressive communication was far, far below his peers. His internal comprehension, we were to find out, was not. You might wonder how we were able to determine he could read when he had such a limited vocabulary. Well, at first we thought his repeated words were echolalia, taken from our repeated readings of his favourite books. Then we started noticing him looking at newspapers, cereal boxes, street signs in neighbourhoods we’d never been to - and pointing and repeating the word. So we began to test him. We wrote out his favourite stories in our own handwriting and he could read the words, even when we deliberately put them out of order. And it just snowballed from there. He developed what would later become a favourite activity - a love for game shows. The first of these was, funnily enough, Wheel of Fortune, from which he actually learned the beginnings of spelling. Of course, with all this reading came more and more words and his vocabulary shot ahead. By the end of his kindergarten year (kindy is age 4 here…preschool everywhere else?) he had a good level of verbal communication, considering his earlier limitations. He could read a set of instructions and do them, even if the sentence was not read out aloud to him or he didn’t speak the words aloud himself.

J improved steadily from there. At his ‘big school’ entry examination with an Education Department psychologist (standard procedure in my state for special needs kids - it helps determine the best schooling option for them) J scored in the FIRST PERCENTILE for everything. Every single thing. In certain areas, his development was stated to be as low as a 14 month old child (he was then nearly 5). We chose not to put him in a separate special school but to ’shelter educate’ him in a small special ed classroom (max somewhere around 10-12 students, with one full time teacher and one SSO, so the student/teacher ratio was 1:5 or 1:6) within a mainstream school. He’s been in this situation for the last five years, and has thrived. He gets the extra attention he needs during lesson time but interacts socially with the other kids at recess. As you might have read a few days ago, his class went on a school camp with two other (regular) classrooms. I love this arrangement.

And in the years that he’s been in this environment, we’ve been incredibly grateful to discover that not only has he (so far) avoided the more common ‘piggyback conditions’ with his autism (mutism, epilepsy, intellectual disability - the last of which ¾ of autism spectrum kids are said to suffer, from very mild to severe - and the list goes on) but he has been deemed high-functioning autistic with talents in maths and reading well above his year level. How lucky are we?

As a nineteen year old new mother, I thought I knew everything. I knew nothing, LOL. Ten years in real time has aged me more like twenty (:P) but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I mean, how many parents get to witness multiple miracles?

Halloween In Australia

In my area, neighbourhood kids are trying their darndest to get Halloween off the ground.

Generally speaking, Australia is pretty lukewarm on the whole Halloween thing. Trick or treating is still a bit of a novelty, at least in my area, and you’re far more likely to hit a house whose occupants stare at you as though you’re crazy. Like most things though, we’re influenced by American culture and so the stores carry the Halloween paraphernalia and the supermarkets highlight products that would do well as ‘treats’ for the door-knockers.

I grew up reading about Halloween as an ‘American tradition’ but never celebrating it. Your fall holiday is our spring conundrum, so there’s no ‘harvest’ feel to this time of the year. It’s getting warmer, not colder. Perhaps that’s got something to do with it. Either way, trick or treating is still a bit of a weird concept down here. Doesn’t stop the local kids trying though!

When we were caught out two years in a row with no candy to give out (I wanted to remind the kids who knocked on my door those years that technically-speaking, Australia doesn’t celebrate Halloween, but instead gave them little boxes of sultanas (raisins) because that was all I had to hand - we were terribly popular for that decision!) I finally gave up. I started making sure I had candy on hand because lets face it, I like being one of the only people on our street who bother. Talented Hubby just shakes his head. He thinks I’m a sucker and that because of the hit-and-miss nature of trick-or-treating down here, the kids all get together and mark sucker-houses on a big map to know which ones to hit the following year, LOL. We don’t go out ourselves. It’s just not worth dragging three kids up and down the surrounding streets and being rejected at 80% of the houses. But the kids get a kick out of handing stuff out. That’s Halloween to us.

We don’t usually get many people. This year I had a random boy on a bike (no costume, unless he was Skater Boy?) trying to cash in on the ‘free stuff’ idea (I later saw him at the supermarket with friends, fistfuls of recently purchased candy of their own), a group of four children (thankfully supervised by their father) who actually made the effort to dress up, three Indian boys from up the street who arrived at 10:15 (again, no costume) and most disturbingly, two young teenage girls (14 or so?) dressed as Playboy Bunnies complete with fishnet stockings, leotards (and cleavage), bunny tails and ears. I did not see their parents anywhere.

So I gave out candy, and probably earned myself the no. 1 spot on the Sucker List. But it was fun :)

And we’ve only got like a garbage can full of leftover candy…sigh.