life is never easy, you have to earn your stripes.
yesterday in the mail, came a suspciously thin letter for me from Centrelink. it was a 1 page rejection letter to notify me that i don’t qualify to be Jovie’s carer. that i don’t provide the level of care required for the title.
it’s not the money that i’m only worried about, of course it would help out so much while i’m not working (and not being paid), but the slap in the face is that someone in an office somewhere judges whether you care for your Autistic child enough or not, and they have decided that i don’t do enough.
there are a few ways i can react to this – oh, there’s definate anger and confusion (the first rejection was because i work more than 25 hours a week but I don’t right now, and i corrected them but then they still reject the application? what. ). but i’m working on living a positive life and moving forward. i can’t be controlled by disagreements. i won’t be controlled by anger.
i will most probably ask them to review the application, again, but not after we start therapy (in less than 2 week now! yay!) and get a schedule going again.
but in the meantime, i still have dreams and passions that i want to pursue. i’m looking at changing careers and developing other side projects that i’ve had in my heart for a while. anything that keeps me in Jovie’s loop will do.
around the time of Jovie’s autism diagnosis in September, i read somewhere that now you have to be ready to fight for your child. i didn’t really know what that meant, but i’m slowly understanding. there’s going to be more rejections in the future, we will run out of funding and we might never take that family trip back to the States that we want to do in the next 2 years – but my goodness, i’ll fight it out for my children. whatever it takes to move our lives forward & upward.
I won’t lie, I’m incredibly ecstatic to hear/see my friend’s babies reach their milestones – see them play, watch them feed themselves and have the adorable conversations with them about everything a 2 year old loves. But when I’m alone and it’s quiet, I dream about what it be like if Jovie was doing all those things too.
If we flash back to December 2008, when my sister had come with me to my 18 week scan at the hospital. Finding out that I was expecting a girl was without a doubt one of the most memorable moments of my life. Just as we had left the sonographer’s room and made our way down the hall, I stopped my sister and jumped and giggled with so much excitement – I was going to have a girl!! Don’t get me wrong, finding out we were expecting a boy when I was pregnant with Jasper was also an amazing time, but knowing that it’s my last pregnancy – a baby girl (and a pigeon pair of kids) was a beautiful gift to be given.
I was jumping up and down for all the pretend tea parties, jumping up and down for the arguments about cell phones & boys, jumping up and down for her wedding day & babies & living all her dreams.
Today, dreams are much simpler and honest. Just some first words would be awesome. A ‘mumma’ or a ‘yes’. A ‘hello’ or ‘happy’.
I’m thankful that Jovie’s eyes tell me more and more lately, but I’m fighting for those first words and won’t give up.
What do you dream about?
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I had such a great week with my family – so much was going on
Monday – Halloween
Tuesday – My mum’s 60th birthday
Wednesday – Jasper’s 4th birthday & a sea creature show at his school
Thursday – Playgroup with Jovie
Friday – Another Playgroup with Jovie
Saturday – Meet up with friends and we tried to make the Santa parade but missed it by 30 mins..
Sunday – Mum & Jasper’s joint birthday lunch
Not to mention the cake baking I did this week… Total failure on Thursday night (the ones I mention in my blog post below…) and then I made a Nutella Mousse Tart and another batch of cupcakes/cake for Jasper on Saturday night/Sunday morning.
Jasper had said he wanted a train cake for MONTHS but then decided I was going to make him a Solar System cake. YEP. How did I do?
Thank goodness for no allergies this time around! I had alot of fun icing the mini cakes and cupcakes – can you spot the Sun, Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter amongst the other random designs? The big blue one is Rigel, how many of you know what that is?? I still don’t.
It’s Monday morning again and I’m exhausted. Jasper’s cough has teamed up with a runny nose, and have made it’s way over to me now so I’m trying to relax a bit before it gets any worse.. Jovie has been randomly SCREAMING and crying these past few days which is really hard to cope with but we always find a way. Most times if I just put her in her pram (so she’s strapped in somewhere), sit with her and be calm, pull funny faces and sing silly songs she calms down too.. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do… but I know as she gets older and bigger, it will get more violent unless we can teach her to communicate more clearly.
So it’s time to get a wriggle on and get this week started.. make sure you check out Dani’s Boob Job blog post, read about what Kelle loves right now and celebrate Kate’s daughter’s 1st birthday.
