I think all people have a list of things they want to do in their lives, and Kayleigh was no different. I have been thinking about want she wanted and what she is missing out on - I have tried to compile a list of what I remember her talking about - some of her friends might be able to add to it.
There were the normal things that teenagers want - like get a job and drive a car. And then there was Kayleigh's list.
Things on Kayleigh's list:
-Go running with her dad at night
- Climb Mt Tennent with her dad
- Do weights with her dad and lift the bar with 10kgs on both sides
- Ride her bike down to Tuggeranong (with mum or Dad or Natassja or a friend)
- Take Kiara to school for her first day of Kindy and teach her to read
- Beat Natassja on Wii Fit skateboarding
- Travel to England and see her family that live there
- Go to New Zealand
- Buy a car and a house down the coast (don't we all!)
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Hiding the evidence
As I have written about before, Kayleigh liked to sneak chocolate when ever there was some available but sometimes she snuck other food, when there was no chocolate available. She always tried hard to 'hide the evidence' that she had taken something and eaten it, but she wasn't very successful.
Sometimes when I had bought cake mix that came with icing, when I went to make the cake, the icing package was gone, and I went looking and found the left over icing that Kayleigh had made up in a bowl and eaten in her room. Then there was the can of sweetened condensed milk that she tried to eat, couldn't finish because it is too sickly, tried to get Natassja to finish and ended up with me finding them out and both of them feeling rather off for the rest of the day.
Kayleigh also liked to eat frozen peas - she would get a cup of them in summer and sit outside and eat them. And then there was the cans of spaghetti. Kayleigh was already called spaghetti girl at school because she liked to take cans of spaghetti to school and eat them, but she also liked to eat them at home - which wasn't a problem if she asked - but the number of times I walked in the door and Kayleigh quickly shoved something in a cupboard and tried to look innocent - every time there would be an open spaghetti tin with a fork in it. Sometimes she would manage to hide it but then forget about it only to have me or her dad find it later that day and she got in trouble - not for eating it, but for wasting it.
Nothing seems to go missing int he cupboard anymore and I don't find little surprises when I open the cupboard doors, but this just makes me miss Kayleigh more. Although it really annoyed me that she did it, I wish that she was still here to eat things she shouldn't.
Sometimes when I had bought cake mix that came with icing, when I went to make the cake, the icing package was gone, and I went looking and found the left over icing that Kayleigh had made up in a bowl and eaten in her room. Then there was the can of sweetened condensed milk that she tried to eat, couldn't finish because it is too sickly, tried to get Natassja to finish and ended up with me finding them out and both of them feeling rather off for the rest of the day.
Kayleigh also liked to eat frozen peas - she would get a cup of them in summer and sit outside and eat them. And then there was the cans of spaghetti. Kayleigh was already called spaghetti girl at school because she liked to take cans of spaghetti to school and eat them, but she also liked to eat them at home - which wasn't a problem if she asked - but the number of times I walked in the door and Kayleigh quickly shoved something in a cupboard and tried to look innocent - every time there would be an open spaghetti tin with a fork in it. Sometimes she would manage to hide it but then forget about it only to have me or her dad find it later that day and she got in trouble - not for eating it, but for wasting it.
Nothing seems to go missing int he cupboard anymore and I don't find little surprises when I open the cupboard doors, but this just makes me miss Kayleigh more. Although it really annoyed me that she did it, I wish that she was still here to eat things she shouldn't.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Beastie Bus
When Kayleigh was in year 5 or 6, I 'inherited' my Dad's Toyota Tarago - it was an '85 model, beige in colour with over 260,000kms in the clock and still on it's first engine. I learnt to drive in that car. The kids all thought it was fantastic!!!!!!!!! Kayleigh especiallyy thought it was pretty cool sitting in the back. The kids all names it 'THE BEASTIE BUS' cause it was a beast and little beastie (the kids) sat in it.
It was the car we went storm chasing in it. One time when we were looking for storms, a kangaroo jumped out and we hit it. Kayleigh was really upset and she insisted that we make sure the kangaroo was suffering. The kangaroo didn't even dent the car but it did not make it out of the encounter alive.
One time we were sitting at the lights and a Nissan GTR pulled next to us. It was a nice looking car and the kids driving it couldn't have been more than 22 years old. Kayleigh thought it was a nice car. Terence - playing silly buggers - revved the engine and took off from the lights pretending to drag the GTR (we had no hope) but the kid saw it as an amusement and 'dragged' us up the highway letting us get in front every now and again. Kayleigh was laughing so hard she was crying- - it was too funny to see a clapped out old tarago trying to take on a new Nissan GTR.
The Beastie Bus had worn out suspension, meaning that every bump on the road was amplified in the back seat. There is a bump in the road coming up Tharwa drive from lanyon over the hill to Theodore. Kayleigh loved going up that hill because the back of the Beastie Bus would bounce up and down going over that bump - it was AWESOME!
One day we went to Woden and the Beastie Bus got stolen. Kayleigh had a panic attack over it. She went all white and shaking and she couldn't think straight. We manage to calm her down. The Beastie Bus was found a week later in Chifley - it had gone a whole 4 kms since it was taken, but they had broken the steering wheel cover and damaged the starting mechanism. We sold it soon after that - but Kayleigh was always reminisce about the Beastie Bus and how much fun it was to go places as a family.
It was the car we went storm chasing in it. One time when we were looking for storms, a kangaroo jumped out and we hit it. Kayleigh was really upset and she insisted that we make sure the kangaroo was suffering. The kangaroo didn't even dent the car but it did not make it out of the encounter alive.
One time we were sitting at the lights and a Nissan GTR pulled next to us. It was a nice looking car and the kids driving it couldn't have been more than 22 years old. Kayleigh thought it was a nice car. Terence - playing silly buggers - revved the engine and took off from the lights pretending to drag the GTR (we had no hope) but the kid saw it as an amusement and 'dragged' us up the highway letting us get in front every now and again. Kayleigh was laughing so hard she was crying- - it was too funny to see a clapped out old tarago trying to take on a new Nissan GTR.
The Beastie Bus had worn out suspension, meaning that every bump on the road was amplified in the back seat. There is a bump in the road coming up Tharwa drive from lanyon over the hill to Theodore. Kayleigh loved going up that hill because the back of the Beastie Bus would bounce up and down going over that bump - it was AWESOME!
One day we went to Woden and the Beastie Bus got stolen. Kayleigh had a panic attack over it. She went all white and shaking and she couldn't think straight. We manage to calm her down. The Beastie Bus was found a week later in Chifley - it had gone a whole 4 kms since it was taken, but they had broken the steering wheel cover and damaged the starting mechanism. We sold it soon after that - but Kayleigh was always reminisce about the Beastie Bus and how much fun it was to go places as a family.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
It's black and it's white, it's wrong and it's right....
No, I am not referring to the Katy Perry song, but when I hear thse lines I do think of Kayleigh because she did think in very Black and White ways.
In Kindergarten Kayleigh fell out with a couple of girls for her insistence on not 'breaking the rules' in regards of going out of bounds. The girls wanted to play under a tree that would have been no futher than a couple of metres outside what Kayleigh had been told was the 'out of bounds' line. The girls really wanted to play under the tree as it was hot, but Kayleigh refused point blank to go past the line. In her mind it was 'wrong' and she didn't want to do the wrong thing. There was no way she was going to go outside the line, no matter how much she wanted to play with her friends.
The same went when a boy kept hitting her in year 1, for no real reason. We told Kayleigh to just punch him back so he would stop (I know, we are such bad parents!) but Kayleigh refused point blank to hit this kid back becuase the terachers had told them it was wrong. She would rather get hit by this kid then defend herself becuase she was told it was not the right thing to do and she would get into trouble. There was no grey in her world - it was either right, or wrong.
She did settle slightly with some shades of 'grey' as she got older, but she was always very insistant on doing the right thing. If it came to putting her principles on the line, she always chose what she believed was the right thing to do. She couldn't be influenced by others to do what she believed was the wrong thing. She wanted to avoid problems and the issues that came with crossing the line, so she rarely every went over it. I know she tried hard to please others by doing the 'right' things, but she never felt good by doing what she pereceived to be the wrong thing, so she never pushed it.
In Kindergarten Kayleigh fell out with a couple of girls for her insistence on not 'breaking the rules' in regards of going out of bounds. The girls wanted to play under a tree that would have been no futher than a couple of metres outside what Kayleigh had been told was the 'out of bounds' line. The girls really wanted to play under the tree as it was hot, but Kayleigh refused point blank to go past the line. In her mind it was 'wrong' and she didn't want to do the wrong thing. There was no way she was going to go outside the line, no matter how much she wanted to play with her friends.
The same went when a boy kept hitting her in year 1, for no real reason. We told Kayleigh to just punch him back so he would stop (I know, we are such bad parents!) but Kayleigh refused point blank to hit this kid back becuase the terachers had told them it was wrong. She would rather get hit by this kid then defend herself becuase she was told it was not the right thing to do and she would get into trouble. There was no grey in her world - it was either right, or wrong.
She did settle slightly with some shades of 'grey' as she got older, but she was always very insistant on doing the right thing. If it came to putting her principles on the line, she always chose what she believed was the right thing to do. She couldn't be influenced by others to do what she believed was the wrong thing. She wanted to avoid problems and the issues that came with crossing the line, so she rarely every went over it. I know she tried hard to please others by doing the 'right' things, but she never felt good by doing what she pereceived to be the wrong thing, so she never pushed it.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Reading
Kayleigh didn't enjoy reading that much, which made me a little sad because I love reading. I think the main reason that she didn't really get into reading that much was the struggles she had with learning to read. Kayleigh only managed to get to level 4 reading at the end of Kindergarten and went from level 6 to 10 in the last 2 weeks of year 1. I don't know why she struggled so much but it really put a dent in her love for reading. When she got to year 3 and 4 I encouraged her to read, and do the right things at home, by buying her a Rainbow Magic book each week. Within a couple of months, Natassja and Kayleigh had a good collection of Rainbow Magic books to read. Kayleigh liked the Rainbow Magic books - her favourite one was the 'Flute fairy' but I really don't know how many to read from cover to cover. Natassja devoured the books, but I think Kayleigh only picked up the ones she wanted to read and read the front chapter and then the last chapter and maybe one of the middle one, just to get an idea of the book.
At one stage we had most of the Harry Potter books for the girls, but neither of them were that interested in them and I don't think Kayleigh ever picked one up and tried to read it. I know she attempted to start on
The Lord of the Rings' but even I know the first couple of chapters in that book is heavy going and she soon lost interest.
At the end of year seven, Kayleigh brought home one of the Twilight series - New Moon (I think). She was trying to read it in her English class, and she told me she wanted to see what all the fuss was about and she again found it hard to get into the book - She told me it would be easier to wait to see the movie. I told her that books always have more in them than movies and to try and persevere with the book. I don't know how much she got through but she still had it when she passed away and I got Natassja to secretly give it back to the library at school - it would have been 8 months overdue.
At one stage we had most of the Harry Potter books for the girls, but neither of them were that interested in them and I don't think Kayleigh ever picked one up and tried to read it. I know she attempted to start on
The Lord of the Rings' but even I know the first couple of chapters in that book is heavy going and she soon lost interest.
At the end of year seven, Kayleigh brought home one of the Twilight series - New Moon (I think). She was trying to read it in her English class, and she told me she wanted to see what all the fuss was about and she again found it hard to get into the book - She told me it would be easier to wait to see the movie. I told her that books always have more in them than movies and to try and persevere with the book. I don't know how much she got through but she still had it when she passed away and I got Natassja to secretly give it back to the library at school - it would have been 8 months overdue.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
A letter to Kayleigh
Dear Kayleigh,
It's been over a year since I last talked to you and last gave you a hug and so much has happened. Every day I think about you and what you might be doing and what you might think about. i found out last week that I'm going to have a little brother or sister for you, and although the news is happy I was sad because I know that you will have a sibling that will never know you, only hear about you and see you in movies we have taken. I know you would have been so happy because you ask me for another sister less than a week before you left. You were so excited and were talking about names and gender and what you thought was a good name. I would like to tell you that if we do have a little sister for you that the name we chose was the one you liked - Kymberly.
Every time I watch a movie I wonder if you would have liked it. Kiara's favourite movie Tangled - I know you would have loved. Some of the other movies we have watched which are not childrens movies I wonder what you would have thought. I know you used to sneak out and watch movies from the dining room where your dad couldn't see you. I knew you were there but didn't rat you out and I know there were some movies that you probably shouldn't have seen. I saw 'The Warrior's Way' the other day - a bit of a japanese mix with western movie - a little odd - and the first thing I thought of was whether you would have thought the same thing. Your Dad enjoyed it.
Every time I see an ambulance I get angry. I know it is not their fault that you are not here - but they took so long in getting to our house. I know they tried their hardest to get you back and at the hospital that night a saw several of them in tears. I just feel so much pain at the sight of an ambulance. I also feel a sense of loss every time I go past the hospital. I can see the window of the room you were in in the ICU wing. I always glance at it even though I don't want to, and remember you there and remember waiting for you to wake up and give me a smile and me to say ' Kayleigh, geez you gave us a fright!' but it never happened, I never got to speak with you again. Every day I struggle not to blame myself for what happened, for not knowing that you were in trouble, that you needed help, not calling an ambulance sooner. You were always so strong, maybe you felt OK, I don't know. I heard you arguing with Natassja and your voice was strong and you sounded so pissed off with her. I assumed that you were OK. I regret making that assumption every day because I thought you sounded normal. 10 minutes later you were gone.
I also wanted to tell you how proud I was of you. Through all the crap you went through and struggles that you had, you were always cheerful and happy. You always wanted to do your best, even if you didn't understand it. You always tried your hardest and you were always kind and considerate to every one around you. You forgave so many people for doing the wrong thing to you proving that you were the better person. You had a big heart and I could have seen you in a great job one day doing what you loved, surrounded by good friends and a nice guy. You would have made a great mum - better then me - because you were so tolerant with younger kids and especially Lucas and Kiara. They miss you so much.
I am missing you everyday, Love always Mum xxxooo
It's been over a year since I last talked to you and last gave you a hug and so much has happened. Every day I think about you and what you might be doing and what you might think about. i found out last week that I'm going to have a little brother or sister for you, and although the news is happy I was sad because I know that you will have a sibling that will never know you, only hear about you and see you in movies we have taken. I know you would have been so happy because you ask me for another sister less than a week before you left. You were so excited and were talking about names and gender and what you thought was a good name. I would like to tell you that if we do have a little sister for you that the name we chose was the one you liked - Kymberly.
Every time I watch a movie I wonder if you would have liked it. Kiara's favourite movie Tangled - I know you would have loved. Some of the other movies we have watched which are not childrens movies I wonder what you would have thought. I know you used to sneak out and watch movies from the dining room where your dad couldn't see you. I knew you were there but didn't rat you out and I know there were some movies that you probably shouldn't have seen. I saw 'The Warrior's Way' the other day - a bit of a japanese mix with western movie - a little odd - and the first thing I thought of was whether you would have thought the same thing. Your Dad enjoyed it.
Every time I see an ambulance I get angry. I know it is not their fault that you are not here - but they took so long in getting to our house. I know they tried their hardest to get you back and at the hospital that night a saw several of them in tears. I just feel so much pain at the sight of an ambulance. I also feel a sense of loss every time I go past the hospital. I can see the window of the room you were in in the ICU wing. I always glance at it even though I don't want to, and remember you there and remember waiting for you to wake up and give me a smile and me to say ' Kayleigh, geez you gave us a fright!' but it never happened, I never got to speak with you again. Every day I struggle not to blame myself for what happened, for not knowing that you were in trouble, that you needed help, not calling an ambulance sooner. You were always so strong, maybe you felt OK, I don't know. I heard you arguing with Natassja and your voice was strong and you sounded so pissed off with her. I assumed that you were OK. I regret making that assumption every day because I thought you sounded normal. 10 minutes later you were gone.
I also wanted to tell you how proud I was of you. Through all the crap you went through and struggles that you had, you were always cheerful and happy. You always wanted to do your best, even if you didn't understand it. You always tried your hardest and you were always kind and considerate to every one around you. You forgave so many people for doing the wrong thing to you proving that you were the better person. You had a big heart and I could have seen you in a great job one day doing what you loved, surrounded by good friends and a nice guy. You would have made a great mum - better then me - because you were so tolerant with younger kids and especially Lucas and Kiara. They miss you so much.
I am missing you everyday, Love always Mum xxxooo
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Growing up pigeon toed
When Kayleigh started walking we noticed that her right foot turned in a loooooong way and her left foot also turned in ( although not as much) so she was quite pigeon toed. We took her to the doctors and ask what we should do. Dr Reading was a great doctor (pity he retired) and he did a full check up and paid particular attention to the muscles in her feet and ankles and lower legs. Kayleigh's pigeon toes where not because she had issues with her muscles or joint formation, it was the way she taught herself to balance. The doctor told us not to worry because it wasn't effecting the way she walked or ran.
Kayleigh didn't notice her pigeon toes much, it didn't make any difference to her and no-one actually noticed (i mean who looks at your feet?!). By the time she got to being a teenager, you couldn't really notice that she was pigeon toed at all as her balance was alot better but it was noticeable when she got tired her foot turned in more. She also wore out the outside of her shoe more on the right foot because of the extra pressure applied on that side.
Kayleigh didn't notice her pigeon toes much, it didn't make any difference to her and no-one actually noticed (i mean who looks at your feet?!). By the time she got to being a teenager, you couldn't really notice that she was pigeon toed at all as her balance was alot better but it was noticeable when she got tired her foot turned in more. She also wore out the outside of her shoe more on the right foot because of the extra pressure applied on that side.
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