Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Pictures

Why won't blog press let me post pictures? Ugh!




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Last day of vacation.

I'm just coming to the end of a 12 day vacation. It's been nice despite the fact that I went in for a 4 hour shift on Sunday night. My job is working with adults with disabilities. At the particular house I work at, 3/4 of the people have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Those 3, share space. It's a normal house. 1 person spends most of the time in the apartment in the basement. I have worked with the individual in the basement for 14.5 years. We have a great relationship.
As for the 3 upstairs, it's difficult. If you aren't familiar with FASD, look it up. It's basically brain injury. Before birth. Due to a pregnant mother drinking alcohol. We have 3 individuals who are all affected by the same thing. (The only disability that is 100% preventable btw.) They are all very similar but oh so very different. Add in a little paranoia, some sever thought pattern and social disorder and oppositional defiance disorder and the fact that no one can see and or understand their own disabilities and refuse any and all assistance by the staff working, and it makes for a long and mentally draining day. Factor in too, that most homes have minimum two staff working at a time due to high physical needs or dangerous acting out behaviour, but since we have neither, we have only one staff on at a time.
Ok, we have no "office" or private space to do our documentation or paperwork, and no private space to communicate to the staff arriving on shift what has been going in all day. (Remember paranoia? Yep it's part of our job to talk to oncoming staff about the individual's day.) Often times we find ourselves out on the front porch doing our exchange of information.
Needless to say, it can be stressful and not a job for just anyone.
For a while it was exceptionally stressful due to a staffing shortage.
Myself and the other full time staff in the house ended up doing enough overtime to be able to have a whole extra week of vacation time. We had hired some new people and that staffing crisis was over. Things were starting to lighten up in the stress department. Well.... While I've been on vacation two people quit. Due to stress.
Hence why I worked 4 hours while I was on vacation!
I almost had to work 8 more but another person ended up taking that shift. I'm glad that I've already been scheduled for my next vacation or it might not have been approved.
We're going camping that week. We're using my brother's pop up and spending 5 nights at Killbear provincial park. I'm looking very forward to it.
This vacation has been spent pretty much at home. In our yard. It's been nice.

Maizey is doing well. She's been having trouble with the potty and began wetting herself. And then bm accidents. We've discovered that she is holding her bm and becoming constipated. With the introduction of some more fibre and strict poo poo potty time each day, we've seemingly solved that problem.
She misses school and keeps asking if there's school tomorrow.
She is also enjoying the time home in the yard and can swim on her own without floaties. Because our pool is too deep for her, we still have her wear her floaties when we aren't in the pool with her as we're afraid she'll get tired half way across and panic. She can swim the length of the pool on her own but not every time.
It's been a great summer so far.
Maizey and Angela just spent the past weekend at ang's sisters cottage at sherkston shore resort. I opted not to go because I had just got my period and I'm like a 12 year old girl when it comes to my period. It is usually rather heavy and I didn't want to have to keep going from the beach to the cottage for the washroom. Not to mention getting up once every two hrs through the night to go to the washroom to change. It was just more comfortable for me to be home for that.
Update on ttc- we haven't been. We are 90% sure Maizey is going to be an only child. We are just feeling comfortable with our family the way it is. Every now and then though we get that baby fever and consider another. My body hasn't been too co-operative with no really strong signs of ovulation, so we don't bother trying to coordinate with our doner in Toronto.


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