Last night, Nick whispered to me gently, "What kind of magic dust have you sprinkled over Kesia?".  Baffled, I asked him what he meant.  He was incredulous as he remarked that she had slept beautifully two nights in a row!  (Can you sense the underlying implications... we have been battling with sleep problems for about two years now!  And have tried many strategies!)

"I made her a sleep book!  I showed you!"

In a nutshell.  It turns out I DO know my kids quite well, and I have a reasonable knack with finding solutions.  This makes it so much harder when I need to seek help for them, and those new people don't listen!!!

Anyway... Kesia has been enjoying night time foods high in tryptophan ( a sleep inducing chemical).  Warm milk with honey and nutmeg is a favourite, and yesterday she cooked some "sleepy muffins" with banana, oatbran and walnut.  Tomorrow we will make sleepy oatmeal in the slow cooker for dinner time, and I have a tuna salad recipe ready to go into her sleep book at the weekend.

I have added to the photo gallery in my previous post for those who are curious to see what her sleep book looks like!

We now have to tread carefully into term time.  Zack has now gone back to school and the peace is palpable.  But school starts tomorrow, and Kesia has such high hopes that I fear she may crash at the first sign of trouble.

I'm so pleased that I finally got some concrete advice from CAMHS about drinking and eating.  It was simple and not rocket science, but whether all I needed was direct guidance to help with my anxiety and that rubbed off... goodness knows, but she's done really well over Christmas.  With Zack home, her eating has been better too...

The worries about statementing, school and CAMHS are clamouring for attention in my brain, and I am trying to keep them at bay, or at least in some sort of order... 

However... Nick and I have a holiday to look forward to first, thanks to Maman and Cherry Trees... I won't believe it till we're there, and I hope my poor mother can forgive the sorry state of my house!!

There are little buds of hope as we embark on another year.  As much as I have a tendency to look away from this rather artificial change of date, I find myself with some hopes and wishes and a desire to "do" some things a little differently.
I have started a journal in the last few days - thanks to Pinterest and a lady called Hope who writes a blog called besottment, I am enthralled by this lovely and personal art form...  I have never written a diary - this blog is the closest I have ever come, and those of you who come looking to see if I have updated are frequently disappointed I fear.

This journal is somewhat different.  I am using it to remember some things, but mostly to try and pinpoint my thoughts, feelings, loves, hates and ideas about life, the universe and everything. (I have to say I'm hoping for a little more clarity that 42!)  It is coming as an offshoot of therapy, and I am loving the pairing of becoming with creating.  Some pages I will no doubt share here, while others will remain secret.  Kesia has started her own journal and we spend some time journalling together, sticking pretty pictures into our books and using "curly writing" to make our thoughts more beautiful.

After two years of therapy, music is finally beginning to surface.  It is dark, painful, mysterious and as yet I have no idea how to move forward with it, but for the first time in a long time I feel a "want" to pull it out and deal with it.  This "thing" that for so long defined who I was and then defined what I did.  Ironically, "doing" music killed it inside me, and then life battered me and I lost my connection with it.

Ho hum.  Deep dark thoughts late at night...
So tempting to push them back down again!!

Oh!!  Little thought that has completely taken over... I have this wonderful fizz inside of me as I notice that we are developing new punctuation ("we" as a society).  I now have the ability with punctuation togive you an insight into my emotions :).  Without relying so heavily on the exclamation mark, which is just a breath of fresh air! :D.  I can even indicate to you the brilliantly humourous nature of this development :P  I have noticed not only that these little shortcuts to "emoticons" have more and more become used as puntuation in their own right, and probably have no need of a full stop or other mark following them to end a sentence.  How beautiful and lovely that we should now be able to "emote" a sentence so much more clearly than the rather limiting full stop, exclamation mark and question mark :)
No doubt these little symbols are overused, yet I do love ending my sentences with a symbol of my emotions :) :)

So for me this year, there will be much mulling about living and music.  Not always connected, but I fear that necessarily there will be overlap... I face this with some trepidation but with open eyes, beating heart and welcoming mind...

I wish for each one of you the strength to face whatever this year may throw in your path. xxx