We’ve not long come back from 3 nights at Sandy Point. We’ve been there 3 times now and it’s definately a favourite with our clan, we’d love to one day own a beach house of our own down there. I took the kids down by myself once last year as we have some friends who have a house down there. It’s Tiffany’s mum’s house but Jill and Tony are happy for them to use it whenever they want to. Tiff’s Wilson is the same age as Bill and Scarlett is the same age as Bridie so it’s always fun to catch up. We stayed at their place the first time. Then we went down over the summer for a week and hired a huge house that slept 10, we spent 5 days with Amanda and Geoff and their three kids (HAGS family and very good friends) and 2 days with my mother and father in law Bev and John.
This time we decided to go it alone. My sister Deb and her family were hiring a place at Waratah Bay which was 5 minutes down the road so we thought we’d all go down at the same time. The weather was a bit crappy so the first day we really just settled in and caught up with Tiff and kids. Deb and Neil arrived a bit later so popped in after dinner and then we popped around to their place to check it out too. Ours was a bit of a hike from the beach but their’s was just near the caravan park so a perfect location really. Bill of course didn’t want to leave their house because he got to play their Xbox 360 which he hadn’t played before!
We all had reasonably early nights so got up the next morning ready to check out the beach. Being spring meant that we could take our black lab Minka to the beach so off we went, stopping in at Tiffany’s along the way so that the kids could have a play. The sun was out but it certainly wasn’t that warm but of course Beth doesn’t worry about that and wanted to go for a swim. Sometimes I forget how far we’ve come with Bethie, she can be so good about some things and then she does something SO autistic and it brings me back crashing to the ground again!
I had told the kids that they could paddle up to their knees if they wanted to, Beth had leggins that come just below the knees so we rolled them up and thought it’d be ok. Old dopey me! She got her pants a little bit wet so we didn’t worry too much. Clearly that’s when I should have pulled her back and given her a stern talking to. Instead we ended up fully clothes at the shore screaming at her to come in. By the time she turned around she was up to her armpits and having a lovely time! She hasn’t done that for years, it used to be a common occurance once upon a time.
I can remember reading in the Mother Warriors book that I read recently that while one of the children was getting rid of the virus in his brain (what Beth is doing at the moment) there can be some temporary regression. In fact he said that it’s like the autism volume is turned up so that behaviours that seemed quite manageable became quite severe. Richard Malter never told me that would be the case but another friend of mine has taken her son to see him and is doing the same types of treatment and has noticed a marked regression there also. It will be interesting to see how it pans out as I know in our case Beth is full on hyper even more so than usual, bouncing everywhere and doing facial grimaces, she just can’t seem to keep still. On the plus side her communication and response times have been terrific so hopefully the regression is a temporary one.
The rest of the holiday was pretty much incident free. We spent that afternoon back at the house, Tiff and kids came over for bbq lunch and stayed for pizza dinner. On the Wednesday we caught up with Deb, Neil, Ali and Rick (their kids), Dan (Ali’s boyfriend) and Callum, a friend of the kids. We went out to lunch at the Toora pub which was beautiful and not weight watchery at all! We went to the park beforehand and did have a bit of a worry when Beth ran across a driveway area to fling herself into the toilets, luckily there’s not much traffic around those parts. We went back to the Waratah Bay beach house and went for a lovely walk along the beach, the kids found a storm water drain that had made a bit of a wall in the sand so they played there for ages. Minka loved running along the beach though Deb’s dogs kept barking at her, poor thing was scared to death, she’s such a wimp!
We came home on Thursday, all pretty much exhausted after stopping for the obligatory lunch at McDonalds! Hopefully we’ll be able to get back to Sandy Point over summer at one stage but for now it’s back to real life!
