Cone of Silence

The Cone of Silence is a bit of a running joke we have amongst some Facebook friends. For most of the parents I chat to, the cone of silence is something they would all love to invoke on the days that their kids are ratty and noisy and sometimes silly. When someone appears to be having one of 'those' days, someone else is bound to ask...."Do you need a cone of silence??". It's all a bit of a giggle.

Today, I need a Cone of Silence. A big one that covers my whole house, including the driveway. As you can imagine...Ayla is not the reason. Well, not directly anyway.

If you have a neurotypical kid, this may take some explaining. But if you live in my world......you'll just get it.

It's hard to explain and it's going to be a total case of the farmer who complains when it rains and complains when it doesn't. My life feels like a complete shambles at the moment. Advocating at one school for Conductive Education, trying to raise money for Ayla's therapy, sewing, running web pages and shops, running a household, working, doing therapy, trying to make sure there is food in the fridge and food on the table and food in the lunchboxes, studying (for work stuff), masses of paperwork simply because my child has some extra needs .......but by far the most exhausting is the continual APPOINTMENTS! Far out....enough already! Seriously, I got rid of all the specialists in Ayla's life long ago but we still have appointments with the Speech therapist, appointments with the Occupational therapist, appointments with the Physiotherapist to discuss equipment needs for school etc., appointments with community connections to see how they can help us, appointments with schools, appointments with GPs to have paperwork filled out. Do you see where the whole farmer analogy is coming in? Nice huh? Yes, if I wasn't able to have these appointments I would be whining too because we wouldn't be getting the help we need.

It just seems that there is an appointment for EVERY day of EVERY week, and all because I need to fit in with their schedules. My entire day today was taken up with appointments....I didn't even get breakfast until 11am and my house is starting to look like pigs live in it. Anyway, I'm starting to rant now.

I chose a Cone of Silence for the rest of the afternoon. And in that time I decided this.......I need rhythm in my life. I need a weekly rhythm so that I know what comes next and can plan for it. So, Monday is appointment day. My new philosophy on appointments is this.....if a therapist can't possibly see us on a Monday, then we're just not meant to have that appointment. Tuesday is a home day/baking day and don't be surprised if the phone is off. Wednesday is a half day at school for Ayla and for me it's shopping day, Thursday is preschool for Ayla and sewing and errands day, Friday is preschool for Ayla and cleaning/sewing day for me. At the moment, weekends are taken up with working. So there. There is my new weekly rhythm. Now I just have to create an 8th day of the week so that I can do my entire week of ABR in one day :) Wish me Luck!


Another video of Ayla playing with Gus.

And now that my whine is over.....I would really love to thank everybody who purchased items from Don't Tell Mamma in the past 2 weeks and who made amazingly generous donations to Ayla's account. We now have enough to get to the next ABR workshop. Thank you from the bottoms of our hearts.