92 days until marathon day and IEP follow-up

Running

My marathon program said 40 minute run so that's what I did.  I plan to have a comprehensive search for my Garmin this weekend.  Meanwhile I think I'd be so disappointed by my pace that its a blessing I can't find it.  Conditions were a little hotter than they have been in the last few days but overall my legs are coping well.

Its going to be a long, hot summer

source:godisgiggling.wordpress.com

Autism

T1 had cricket training this afternoon.  It wasn't ideal timing, late on a Friday arvo.  He was tired, a little bit silly (most of the kids were!) and not at his best cricket wise.  Tomorrow is his first official game of cricket.  If someone had told me 2 or 3 years ago that he'd be playing a proper cricket match for 2 hours and holding his own socially and ability wise I wouldn't have believed them.  He doesn't know most of the boys and I must say his social skills have been a little shaky, with showing off and copying bad behaviours of others and having some of his own.  The bright side is that this will improve as he gets to know the kids or will give us something to work on with T1.  I'm usually so fixated on T2's progress that I sometimes forget that T1 still needs help.  Twins with autism - the stress, highs and lows!



I've been summoned to the school for an end-of-year IEP (individualised education plan) meeting.  I know what this is about.  School says - T2 is amazing and doesn't need a shadow, me saying yes he does, there are still many very obvious social and language difficulties to work on.  I am gearing up for battle!  Not to say that the school hasn't been amazing- it has.  I'm going to get prepared and try not to stress about it.

94 days until marathon & just when I thought my life was calming down....

Running

50 minute slow jog.  I can't find my Garmin, which is probably a good thing as I'm not really fit enough to push the speed right now.  My beginner marathon schedule said 50 minutes and that's what I did.  It was so cool and no humidity for a change.  I really enjoyed it.  Tomorrow said a rest day or cross training.  I got a shock email today (see below) and am still recovering so I think tomorrow will be a rest day.

One of my favourite views from my run

Autism

The twins are doing swimming lessons with school.  Today I volunteered to be a parent helper (translation - I wanted to check out how my kids were going).  I was mainly worried about T2 as T1 is pretty good.   T2 was really well behaved but I doubt whether he would have absorbed any of the instructions if I hadn't repeated them in his ear and prompted from behing to listen to the teacher.  There were 10 (yes TEN!) kids in a class and it was a 45 minute lesson so overall he did really well. But at the same time his swimming was quite abit worse than the others in his group and his listening to instructions was not good.  Ho hum!

Life

I just finished a long afternoon/evening shift at work and logged on to my email to be informed that my nursing placement will start in 3 weeks - PANIC.  Its 40 hours a week for 3 weeks and 1 and half hours drive away.  My vital signs are through the roof right now.  What's worse is that I have a HUGE, HORRIBLE anatomy exam in the middle of my placement so therefore NO study time.  I'll be so ticked off if my GPA drops.  Freaking out right now!

95 days until marathon and Australian Story

Running
This morning I went out for a very slow 40 minute jog as I'm hoping to finally start training for a marathon I want to run in January.  Then after I dropped the twins at school I went to the gym and did a pump class.  Because I was early I also did 15 minutes on the ellipitical.  I've just come home from a 5 hour afternoon shift which was really busy. Now my feet are aching.  Really aching!  If there are any nurses out there and you have a shoe recommendation, please speak up!

The rain held off this morning

Autism

I can't believe my twinnies headed out to day 1 of the last term of Kindy.  I know if I blink twice their first year of school will be over :(.

Last night we watched Australian Story, which featured a story on a young man with ASD  just finishing school.  He is the son of the owner of the therapy the boys went to.  It was a follow up to when he was featured on the show at 12.  It was so great to see his progress and that he has a career planned out and a good level of independence.  I can't wait to see how the twins will be when they finish school.  I no longer have gut-wrenching fear about it.  Probably a very extreme version of an average parent's worry, but not gut wrenching fear.  I no longer hopw I'll live to 100 so that they'll be ok and I can't look after them forever (but I wouldn't mind hitting 100 if I still had my faculties).

Getting back into it...

Running

This morning I ran a very slow 20 minutes.  Thankfully, I've had no aches and pains and I'm continuing to add 5 minutes to my run time each week.  Finally, I hope I'm on the road to fitness again.

A beautiful morning for a run!

Letting go

My eldest (neurotypical) is off to high school next year and I've come to face that I have to start letting go.  So today he and a friend went to see a movie without parents.  I dropped them off at their seats and went and studied in the foodhall for a couple of hours before picking them up.  All went well and it made me think about T1 and T2 and hope that their time will come.  I already know that T1 will get there but less sure about T2 (but deep down I know it will happen).

A good nurse can eat while studying cadavers and the urinary system!

The bad thing about letting eldest see movies without us is that we don't get to see the latest teen movies!  They saw Maze Runner and gave it a good review but eldest thought it might be too scary for me! :)

The whole family went to see the new Planes movies and for the first time T2 watched the whole movie.  Its the first time I haven't had to palm him off to my husband in frustration.  I did have a timer going and every 15 minutes of  'good watching the movie' he got more snacks.  It worked a treat.

Its good to be back!

Alice

view from my balcony

view of the red centre from the plane

Well I'm now in Alice Springs on my nursing clinical teaching block.  Each day 18 of us external nursing students turn up to uni to practise our nursing skills on each other and life-like mannequins in a simulated hospital.  Every morning I've been getting up at 5.30am to go to the awesome gym at the hotel I'm staying in.  So far I've done 2 days of cardio and one day of pump.  Tomorrow I'm keen to do a spin class.  I'm very, VERY glad to say that I'm currently able to run very slowly on a treadmill for 15 minutes with NO hip pain.  Finally.  This week I'm going to keep my running to 15 minutes at a time and aim for 20 minutes next week.

The weather here is AMAZING.  So warm and the beauty of being in the middle of the desert is there are NO clouds.  Seriously.  I have not seen one cloud since I got here.  Part of me wishes I could travel around and experience some of the beauty of the Northern Territory, but not this trip.  I'm VERY keen to get back to my family.

After each teaching day I zip back to my hotel as fast as possible, get into my swimmers and hit the pool for an hour before the sun goes down.  Bliss!

I've also been eating out  - mmm..chocolate

Not missing work or anything besides my beautiful family.

Now, I'd better hit the books and then the pillow.

Poor Neglected Blog, Poor neglected body

Long time no blog.  I injured my hip doing the City To Surf and have struggle to run ever since.  I think its finally on the mend so I'm focusing on cross training and very slowly running without any pain.  Yesterday I joined a gym to help with my strength work and hopefully prevent any more injuries.  Yesterday I tested my hip by doing a very slow 15 minutes on the treadmill (7km and hour!) and then did a pump class.  Today I'm really sore so I'll take a day off.

I hope to keep blogging but am so busy juggling work/uni/family.  I'll at least try and log my training.

Next week I'm off to Alice Springs for a week for a Clinical Teaching Block.  I'm going to miss my family :(.  Its really hot there so I indulged in a bit of retail therapy.  My swimmers had disintegrated so I really needed some new ones.  Can you tell I'm into stripes at the moment?  All from Target and there was a special - $20 if you spend $100.  Lets just say, ahem, I qualified for the special :-).

Love stripes

Did you notice my sphygmomanometer in the background! :)

Its time to lace up the shoes again/ Boronia Tea House

Long time no blog.  Since starting my new job and it being the first time doing paid work since the twins were born, I've let all the non-essentials slide….and some of the essentials, like looking after my health.  I did manage to do the City To Surf a couple of weeks ago.  I managed 80 minutes which was fine considering I didn't run for 3 weeks leading up to it.  I do think I may have done something to my hip so I'm going back to the beginning and just jogging 15 minutes a day with some walk breaks.  Its all my hip can manage and its just faster than walking.  I just need to do it for my mind more than my body.  Because I'm not working on a running goal until I'm fit again I managed some snaps.

Its been far too long

I'm lucky to have a great place to run

A family of ducks? geese? I saw on my run

High Tea at Boronia Tea House

My MIL and I had a wonderful, well-needed break from work/kids/study and chilled out at Mosman in this beautiful heritage building.  I've been here a few times and last time I wasn't as impressed with the food.  But today I was pleasantly surprised.  The food was really fresh and delicious today.  The tea we chose was organic English Breakfast and everything was great.  I must say that the staff are always really wonderful and the service is consistently good.  It was just what we both needed.  The rain stopped, the sun came out and it was just lovely.  I just love High Tea - the ritual, the sugar, a good pot of tea and stopping for a couple of hours to enjoy.

Chicken, egg and tuna sandwiches

yum

organic English Breakfast - tea leaves of course!

 And I got a good chuckle from this bumper sticker on the walk back to the car :-)