Songs of the Season, Part 2

JoyDad and I had a remarkable time at Monday's Solidarity Singalong! Hundreds of protesters filled the Capitol rotunda on the ground floor and balconies, singing recall-themed versions of Christmas tunes, in cheerful defiance of our governor's latest attempt to quash dissent. A resounding win for free-speech!

Photo credit madtowntj of Daily Kos

The re-purposed tunes of the Solidarity Singalong are at least somewhat analogous to a little ditty to the tune "The Farmer in the Dell" that we've
been experiencing a lot lately:

The A says "aaa", the A says "aaa"
Every letter makes a sound,
The A says "aaa!"

The song is from a series of products by a company called Leapfrog. (Link goes to a YouTube video -- I'd've embedded it, but it looks like they've disabled that option for this one.)

The "A says 'aaa'" phonics-washing of Joy began around the time of her birthday at the start of the summer, when she got a Leapfrog Fridge-Phonics toy from Auntie S as a present. The toy has a magnetic back, so you can stick it on the fridge -- or in our case, the fireplace.

You choose a letter to put in the slot, and then the toy sings the song for that letter. Or, push the little orange notes above the letter and it sings the familiar ABC song.

Some months after we got the toy, we discovered that the Leapfrog Talking Letter Factory DVD, which we'd gotten for Rose when she was just beginning her love affair with letters and words, had become acceptable to Joy as well. The cartoon story on the DVD involves a tour of a factory that makes letters, and sings through their "every letter makes a sound" songs one by one, with funny little additional mnemonics (for example, the E cups its hand to one ear and says "eh?" as if it couldn't hear you!) Joy particularly loves the opening menu-sequence, something she apparently shares with quite a few kids on the spectrum.

Then still more recently, just at Thanksgiving, we pulled out yet another saved Leapfrog artifact from Rose's toddlerhood -- her "My First LeapPad." Kids interact with this clever toy by touching a series of printed pictures with an attached electronic pen. You can buy a variety of spiral-bound books, each coming with its own game-cartridge. To tell the toy what page you're on in any given book, you have to touch the green "GO" circle on that page with the pen in order to get the correct noises that go with that page. It's definitely a couple of steps beyond the baby-toys that have been the staple of Joy's repertoire.

And guess what? We already had the "I Know My ABCs" book and cartridge, built around the "A says aaa!" song!

I was amazed how fast Joy figured out the sequence of turning on the toy, turning the pages of the book, and tapping the "GO" cicle. The latter is a particular accomplishment because the "GO" circle is at a different location on the perimeter of each page, in order for the toy to differentiate which page's fun to serve up. I love to watch Joy scan all the way around the edge to find the "GO"!

After all this musical phonics-washing, Joy now can fill in the blanks when we sing her a letter:

JoyMama: "The B says..."
Joy: "buh!"

And look what else she's been doing lately, another Rose hand-me-down:

One more Songs of the Season post yet to come... stay tuned!

Go Jump in a Lake!

I guess if one's child is going to be driven by an unspoken imperative to "Go jump in a lake!" it's good to have a beautiful lake to jump into.

The JoyFamily returned on Monday from another long-weekend jaunt to the family cabins in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I'm pleased to report that our trip home was nicely uneventful, in contrast to our Memorial Day mudbath. The vacation itself was free of marauding ruffed grouse, and nary an exploding shower pipe was to be found.

The big novelty of the trip was the company of AuntieS, who hadn't been up to the lake in 3 decades. It was such a treat to have her there, I didn't even mind "letting" her win a round of dice the last night we were there... Besides, she took pictures! (Photos below are courtesy of AuntieS).

For Joy, the top-priority draw this visit was the lake itself. We hadn't been in the cabin five minutes, just beginning to unload and unpack, when we suddenly heard the lake-side screen door slam and Joy was hurtling down the steep embankment toward the pier. How she kept on her feet the whole way down, I'll never know -- I'm not even sure how I managed to stay upright in pursuit. I caught up with her at the last second, just as she paused at the far end of the pier before launching herself into the drink.

In past years, we've been able to sit on the pier and play little games, or swing on the rickety metal swingset between the cabins, or hang out happily for hours on the screen-porch overlooking the lake. Not this time around. Some switch on Joy's mixer-board had assumed a new setting -- the "Go jump in a lake" setting. Being in sight of the lake without actually jumping in? Not to be considered.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated for lake-splashings every afternoon we were there. Summer is waning up north, but by afternoon the sun had always warmed up the air and the lake enough for a swim.

The first afternoon, we splashed both off the pier and with the rest of the family off the side of the pontoon boat.

The next day we learned to float tummy-down on a little inflatable life-ring toy.

The third day, Joy discovered the delight of driving her hands down into the muddy sand of the lakebed. That was so much fun, she was even willing to dunk her head under when we went into slightly deeper water, for the joy of that sloppy lakebed.

We had other fine moments as well: unusual success at going for walks down the woodland roads, and playing with ferns WITHOUT consuming them, and an unusually calm ride home.

Gorgeous weather aside, this was not really an ideal weekend to upset the Joy-routine with a trip to the lake. We've had fruit-basket-upset with our therapy staffing and schedule and location through the course of August, with changes still happening. Then our summer childcare arrangement came to an end mid-August, leaving us patching together the last two weeks. And then the crowning routine-buster -- the start of first grade, with shortened days both Thursday and Friday, and a new teacher and case manager.

Since I didn't get this written before Day 1 of school actually happened, I'll let you in on the first day's outcome -- Joy's two main special education assistants are with her again this year. The first day of first grade was not at all like the traumatic first day of kindergarten. Not without some stress of course, but overall a big relief to everyone involved. Onward to Day 2!

Thankful

So much to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving weekend!

• For good health and good weather, that enabled us to take our planned crazy Thankgiving road trip to Chicagoland and on to Indiana.
  
  
• For smooth traffic and open-road tolling, reducing the drive-time immensely -- we have plenty of past years' memories of waiting in long idling lines for our turn to throw coins into tollboth baskets.
  
  
• For Rose's help with the pie-baking on Thursday morning, as we step through our crazy routine -- there's that insanity bit again! -- of trying to bake two kinds of pies plus pack on the morning of Thanksgiving Day itself. The pecan pie (complete with caramel candy and rum) was about the best ever.
  
  
• For AuntieS and her labors of love in preparing her home for company, and preparing the rest of the feast, and sticking with it even through a lot of little "oopses" in the process. It was all delicious, and we'd never have guessed at the trials and tribulations!
  
  
• For AuntieS again and her thoughtful purchase of little Thanksgiving gift-lets for the girls. For Joy, she chose a non-traditional present of two little bundles of curly-ribbons from the gift-wrap aisle. Perfect, perfect, perfect! For Rose, a Barrel of Monkeys, with which she played as if it were a brand-new invention.
  
  
• For Joy's delight in tossing the curly ribbons back and forth in a "my-turn, your-turn" game with AuntieS's mother-in-law -- with whom Joy has never actually played before.
  
  
• For my amazing 101-year-old grandmother, whom we helped to move into assisted living quarters last Thanksgiving. Not that she felt quite ready for the move at age 100, mind you. Her new apartment is bright and comfortable, and she's among the least "assisted" of the residents there. She took us on a tour of the building, she played cards and dominoes with Rose, she and I compared reading lists, she took us out to dinner!
  
  
• For the family of Joy's playdate pal J-Cat, who loaned us a portable DVD player for the trip, making Baby Einstein possible at Great-Grandma's and in the car.
  
  
• For the swimming pool at the hotel, so the girls could work off some of their energy while JoyDad (who did ALL the driving) and Great-Grandma could take an afternoon break.
  
  
• For zero "acts of ow" between Joy and Rose for the entire trip cooped up in the car -- right up until a hair-pull when we had arrived back home in our own driveway and I wasn't getting Joy out of the car quickly enough to suit.
  
  
• For Joy's success in putting a few carefully-chosen ornaments onto our little artificial Christmas tree, and for Rose's delight in decorating the rest of it.
  
  
• For seventeen years of marriage between JoyMama and JoyDad, as of yesterday. Here's to the next seventeen!

Monday Numbers, Race for the Cure Edition

Much mum-mum-numbering to report from this past weekend, and yet to come...

• 11,500 - approximate number of runners, walkers, volunteers at our local Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure on Saturday



• 878 - number of runners whose times were recorded via "chip timing"



• 113 - number of chip-timed women runners in the 41-50 age group



• 63 - my place in the standings among those 113



• 30:44 - my official time



• 1 - how many seconds slower that is than my unofficial 5K training record



• 9:54 - what 30:44 works out to in minutes per mile



• 10:00 - what 9:54 is under. Woohoo!!!



• 670 - how many dollars my friends and family chipped in for the cause! AWESOME! Thank you all so much!



• 2 3/4 - how many hours after arriving home from the race we were back on the road, on the way to cousin KJ's bar mitzvah celebration.



• 39.1 - mpg our new Honda Fit got on the highway on the way to the temple



• 90 - about how many minutes long the ceremony was (our new bar mitzvah had to share the proceedings with a bat mitzvah as well, which made many parts of the service twice as long)



• 75 - how many of those minutes Joy managed to witness (we'd have made it through the whole thing if it hadn't been for a certain matter of a stinky diaper)



• 100 - about how many pretzel sticks Joy consumed over the course of those minutes



• 3 - number of other kids who shared with Rose the honor of pushing the challah bread cart in the ceremony



• 1 - morsels of challah that Rose saved for her sister, who missed that part of the proceedings



• 2 or 3 at least - how many weeks of vacation AuntieS deserves after all that bar mitzvah planning! Wonderful job - so sorry we had to skip out of the party early, but meltdowns will be meltdowns!



• 2 - number of years, on and off, that JoyDad has been struggling on and off with pain at the back of his left foot



• 2 - number of weeks he'll be on crutches, if all goes well, after an outpatient surgery tomorrow. Think good thoughts for him, and all of us! Maybe next year we can take the whole family to the Race for the Cure!

Is this how it feels?

I had an uncomfortable car ride home last night.

We'd had a lovely time with AuntieS and the JoyDad family, much good food and conversation and egg-hunting. Then we bundled the girls into their footie-jammies and our stuff into the car, and headed out to drive the couple-of-hours home.

I don't know whether it was the too-much-good-food, or the antihistamines I took 'cause I'm allergic to the pets at AuntieS' place, or the allergy reaction, or something else, but I could not get comfortable in the car.

It felt like my skin was too tight. It felt like I needed to stretch my legs, only the stretching I could do in the confines of the passenger seat didn't help. My leg muscles and knee joints felt "off". I needed regulation and couldn't find it! I wanted to get out of the car and run, or have someone hold my hands and "jump" me in the big soaring jumps that we do for Joy. I kept shifting and twitching, trying to find a comfortable position, probably annoying the heck outta JoyDad.

Joy, meanwhile, had slept on the earlier half of the trip, and was not about to sleep on the way home. She kept pushing my seatback with her feet, which irritated me beyond usual bounds.

And I had to wonder...

Is this maybe what it feels like for her ALL THE TIME?

Santa 1963

So remember how I said that my family never did the photo-on-Santa's-lap thing?

JoyDad's family was a different story.


He's on the right of the photo, on the lap of none other than Auntie RatK. What an adorable family, huh?! (Older not-yet-aliased brother on the left, Auntie RatM and Uncle DO had not yet arrived.)

I've enjoyed learning about JoyDad's family's holiday traditions. Like lutefisk. And the traditional holiday cheer that is memorialized every year on their Christmas home videos, the Glögg! I've yet to find a recipe that involves as many bottles as seem to appear on the videos, but I'm here to tell you, it's some amazing stuff. I have it on good authority (cough, Auntie RatK, ahem) that the fumes alone as the Glögg simmered on the stove could cause a state of elevation.

The holiday fumes in my own extended family had more to do with the simmering of dried green beans (I found a recipe that calls the dish Leather Britches, tee hee!) I guess there's a parallel to lutefisk, in that it's an old-fashioned method of preserving food that is now really only used for the sake of tradition. I've done it myself, though, from scratch, all the way from growing the beans in my own garden. Traditions must be preserved, no?

Lots of fun traditions, this time of year!

Generalization

Traveling with Joy & Rose has proven to be a whole lot easier lately, generally speaking.

When I started this blog back in July, we were just on the point of noticing a pattern -- that Joy's seizures got worse when we had long days of car travel. But then came this current string of seizure-free (81 days right now, touch/knock wood!) When we went to the northwoods in October, Joy travelled like a pro, and we had the same experience this holiday.

First leg of the trip took us to Thanksgiving Dinner at the home of AuntieS, where we contributed the pies:


Next leg was to the home of my grandmother, Great-Grandma to Joy & Rose. At 99, she still hosts us overnight in her apartment and cooks for us and is so very interested to see the girls and hear about all the details of what's going on with us!

Joy was very comfortable at Great-Grandma's this visit. Everything about it was easier. For example, Great-Grandma noticed that Joy didn't cry AT ALL the entire visit. (No seizures means no seizure-fusses!) She initiated happy jumping-games with random adults, including an in-law relative whom she only met once before. She did almost no grabbing for forbidden stuff, and she did a lot of self-entertaining.

The last two points (grabbing & self-entertaining) combined into an interesting accident at one point during the visit!

Great-Grandma has a fun box of old, old toy building blocks. She has also tossed into that box a bunch of little clear plastic discs that come with the packaging for hearing-aid batteries. An example is on the left in the photo below:


Joy took a shine to the little plastic disks, especially once she discovered that they made a fun little clattery noise on the kitchen floor if she threw one down. She spent long stretches of time carrying little disks over to the kitchen and tossing, retrieving, tossing, retrieving.

Then during one of these games, when our guard was down, she looked up on the kitchen table and noticed a different kind of disk. Similar, yet larger and sparklier, like the disk on the right. It was a cut-glass coaster. And what a lovely crash and a shatter it made when she snagged it to use in her tossing game! As we galloped into the kitchen to remove her from the shards, she was trying to retrieve one of the larger pieces to make it happen again...

What a neat bit of generalization! So near, and yet so far. And she was so pleased with the results of the new toy, we had to work to keep her out of the kitchen after that point, as she obviously had it in her mind to reproduce all the fun that happened when she used the big sparkly tossing-disk.

Disk-shattering aside, though, in general it was a superb holiday!

Speaking of superb -- I got a most excellent blog-award last night, from Barbara at TherExtras. She has selected me for The Baddest Mommy-Blogger Award (remember, bad is the new good!)


Here's what she had to say:

JoyMama is bad-to-the-bone. She was bad before she became a Mama - as evidenced by her willingness to EAT FIRE. And be photographed doing so. And post photos on her blog. After I asked for proof. Clearly, God prepared her for rare and wonderful parenting.

I'd be blushing, but when you're b-b-b-b-BAD to the bone, ain't nobody can make your face turn red.

Oh, and if you needed more proof that I'm a bad-mama rule-breaker -- as admitted previously, I generally don't really "do" tagging/awards. So I'm not passing it on, even though I know plenty of baaaad mommy bloggers. I'm sure the award will make its way around in due time!