Chicken is Yummy.

I treated myself to some English Breakfast Tea from T2 for Mothers’ Day (served in a Fathers’ Day cup I borrowed ) Mmmmm delicious.

My little Rubber Duckie tea infuser was the perfect gift choice from Heidi

I had tears in my eyes when Annie showed me the birthday gift her friend gave her.

This finger puppet kit I found while cleaning out cupboards kept Heidi entertained for an hour. Bliss.

Following my this is our home where we live blog post, husband made a trip to IKEA and with the addition of a 2×2 Expedit shelf unit and a coat rail the foyer area now looks much tidier. My before and after photo is also back the front – after, then before:

Picnics in the loungeroom are fun…

There is trash all over my house… well Trash Packs technically…

Head on over to Dorothy’s place to see what everyone else knows:

Having my nephews for a sleepover recently reminded me how different they are in many ways from my girls.

I don’t know if it is a girl Vs boy thing or an energetic kid thing or just they they happen to be more interested in physical games for whatever reason.

I do know that when my girls were little they didn’t have much interest in toys like this awesome Wooden Pounding Bench, but my nephews would come over and bash away at those sort of toys for hours.

Heidi’s teachers at early intervention used toys like the Wooden Pounding Bench to teach colours as well as motor skills, great way to build up that hand eye coordination, not to mention helping children get out frustration in a safe way.

Thank you Colorific for donating this super cool toy to our school trivia night  

It was my good friend S birthday recently. We wanted to have a very special birthday lunch for her and headed out for a Turkish feast at Antalya Turkish Restaurant on Sydney Rd, Coburg.

I was a little worried about how the girls would cope, but thankfully it wasn’t too busy so they were able to do their own thing while we enjoyed lunch, Heidi read her book for while:

Then ate a couple of pieces of bread and tried the hummus dip before taking herself off to an empty table to play with her iPad. Annie was most unimpressed that the menu included lamb:

and thrust it away from her in horror, thankfully the set menu included bread and salad – both of which she ate in large amounts.

The service was good, and the staff were lovely – they gave the girls a bottle of Turkish lemonade to try, neither girl liked it much but I give it a big two thumbs up, very tasty.

Food was plentiful and good, sadly I didn’t get to take any photos as it was all devoured far too quickly, not to mention I was more interested in eating the delicious food than taking pictures of it Make a terrible food blogger wouldn’t I?

For $30 a head the set menu included bread, home made dips, salad, mixed grill, doner kebabs, rice, Turkish coffee or apple tea and dessert, super good value and yummy.

I suspect that going on Sunday lunch time really worked in our favour as the restaurant was quiet, the girls had room to sit at other tables and do their own thing. Their iPads provided wonderful distraction when they got a little antsy and due to the small number of customers it wasn’t an issue that Annie would lock herself in the toilets for a break every 20 minutes…. or at least no-one said anything to me about it.

This is not a paid review or anything, I just wanted to share with you this lovely restaurant where I enjoyed a good meal.

Just when you thought I was finished with all the birthday posts !

Annie desperately wanted all her cousins to come to a giant birthday sleepover party, she was a little disappointed when only 2 could make it, but lets be honest, this Mama was very relieved.

So what to do at a birthday party sleepover to distinguish it from a regular sleepover?

I purchased a bunch of different glow in the dark products and the children played glow in the dark Hide N Seek:

can you find where everyone is hiding?

Heidi had soooooooo much trouble keeping quiet while she was hiding, her giggles gave her away as usual:

We played some glow in the dark tiggy:

4 children thundering around in the dark, amazing there were no injuries really.

Light-sabers came out to play, of course!

We had cake by candlelight (I’d put the left over party cake in the freezer & saved the lid)

We enjoyed movies with some nighttime mood lighting:

The birthday girl declared it best birthday sleepover ever

And so did I – I laid down the law early on, there were 2 birthday loot bags each, every time I had to tell someone off for misbehaving I would eat one of their lollies (candy) from the loot bags. Amazingly I didn’t get any lollies at all!

I’m over at Autism: In Our Words today, talking about food, fussy eating and autism…

Come visit my over there

Just recently we had cause to go to ALDI – I wanted to get some inexpensive frozen meals for mothers’ day so hubby could just pop everything into the oven and ta-da delicious mothers’ day dinner with minimal clean up after.

I walked out with a screaming headache after 15 minutes in the store. Husband commented that I’d had the same reaction the last few times we’d been to ALDI together.

Which reminded me of shopping at another ALDI store where if I stood in one particular section (near the tinned spaghetti) for too long I would have to abandon my shopping to go throw up. Something about that spot made me incredibly nauseous.

Mostly though when shopping at ALDI, with or without children, I tend to speed through as fast as possible because it always leaves me feeling very headachy and unwell. Yet I don’t get the same effect at other supermarket chains.

Which leads me to question – what is it about ALDI?

My first (and so far only) guess would be the fluorescent lights, I’m not a big fan of fluro’s and tend to turn the ones at home off, not only are they too bright, they hum (ugh annoying).

Any ideas?

I’m just going to take this as a sign I should continue with my online shopping.

I was lucky enough to receive a Lenard’s gift voucher at the Bloggers BBQ.

Annie helped choose what we would get, a couple of chicken schnitzels (pictured above), a couple of chicken Kiev and 2 chicken rissoles – all of which she then refused to eat, because ewwww meat.  However she had also chosen all the ingredients for and then made all by herself this beautiful salad which she happily ate instead and even shared a little with us.

Love how the chick on her shirt looks like it is about to dive into the salad.

Back to the chicken, husband and I really enjoyed the chicken schnitzel and the chicken Kiev (picture below) and they were super easy to prepare, I like that all the recipes are available on the Lenard’s site so you can double check the best way to prepare their chicken. Heidi had the chicken rissoles and ate them all which is unusual for anything not involving chicken nuggets.

GIVEAWAY

I have one $20 Lenard’s Chicken Voucher to giveaway.

1. Leave a comment below telling me what you serve with your Lenard’s chicken purchase.
2. Winner will be chosen by Annie – which ever she food she would most like to try herself.
3. Entries close Monday 21st May at 6pm (AEST)

Disclaimer: I received a gift voucher from Lenard’s to purchase the chicken, all opinions expressed are my own.

We had some coloured popcorn left over from Annie’s party so I busted it out for afternoon tea when friends came over. It was fascinating to watch all the spectrum kids picking through the popcorn.

One child had to take one of each colour, another would only eat pink, third child was unimpressed that the popcorn was not ‘normal’ and wouldn’t eat any.

It reminded me of when I was younger – I could only eat M&M’s and smarties if I emptied out the packet and lined the different colours up in rows, then I would the colour I had most of first and the colour I had least of last.

Odd the things you remember watching kids have afternoon tea.

A few months ago I participated in a Sleep Study through OTARC and it is an honour today to have Parise Nichole Gentikoglou guest posting at Stuff With Thing with some preliminary results. Sleep (or rather a lack of) is a huge issue in our family and I know from recent discussions that many other families with children on the Autism Spectrum suffer from sleep issues and all the related challenges.

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My name is Parise Nichole Gentikoglou and I finished a Bachelor of Psychological Science, Honours, at La Trobe University in 2011. For my Honours, I completed a research project entitled “Sleep Quality and Psychological Well-being in Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”, with my supervisor, Associate Professor Amanda Richdale, Principal Research Fellow at the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre.

My study examined how sleep and behavioural difficulties in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) impact on mothers’ sleep quality and psychological well-being; this has not been looked at before for mothers of children with ASD. We were interested in the quality of mothers’ and children’s sleep, as research tells us that poor sleep in children is often associated with mothers’ poor sleep and psychological well-being. We also looked at children’s behaviour problems and mothers’ fatigue, and symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress. Mothers completed questionnaires about themselves and their child with ASD, and kept sleep diaries for a week. We were able to examine questionnaires from 25 mothers and their children, and sleep diaries from 22 mothers and their children.

The results of our study indicated that poor sleep and behaviour problems in children were related to poor sleep quality in mothers. On examining the sleep diaries, we found that the less time the children spent asleep, the more time the mothers tended to be awake per night. In addition, the more daytime sleepiness experienced by the children, the less refreshed the mothers felt. Poor sleep and problematic behaviour in children were related with higher levels of fatigue, and more symptoms of anxiety in mothers. Children’s problematic behaviour was also associated with increases in mothers’ stress, and symptoms of depression.

Together, children’s poor sleep and problematic behaviour had a negative impact on mothers’ sleep quality. In addition, children’s sleep and behaviour problems, and poor maternal sleep had a negative effect on mothers’ levels of fatigue, and anxiety. Furthermore, children’s problematic behaviour and mothers’ poor sleep had a negative impact on mothers’ stress, and symptoms of depression. Overall, our results suggest that both sleep and behaviour in children with ASD can have a significant negative impact on mothers’ sleep quality and psychological well-being. We plan to publish these findings and we hope that our findings will encourage future research on treatments for poor sleep in children with ASD, and the provision of supports for their families.

If you have any questions about our study, you can contact me (Parise Nichole Gentikoglou, parise.nichole@hotmail.com), or my supervisor (Associate Professor Amanda Richdale, 9479 1742, a.richdale@latrobe.edu.au).

If you would like some further information regarding the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre, please visit our website, or email us at otarc@latrobe.edu.au . You can also find us on Facebook.

Annie wrote up a menu for her birthday:

Breakfast – soft boiled eggs and soldiers and bacon

Dinner – chocolate chocolate

This is what she ended up getting for her birthday meals

Breakfast – soft boiled eggs (sort of), toast soldiers and bacon

Lunch – was all wrapped up a secret surprise

Under the wrapping was a ham focaccia, cheese triangles, yogurt and a gingerbread person, treat foods I rarely buy.

Dinner was souvlaki (thank you McCormicks for the spices), Turkish bread, dips and salad.

It was soooo good…