Product Hits & Misses: Keeping the iPad Audible (and safe)

Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
- Verizon wireless commercial

When we look back at the summer of 2012, I think we may remember it as the summer of the toilet training -- and of the iPad.

I threatened way back when to do a bunch of product reviews around Joy's iPad equipment and apps.  I naively figured that I'd work my way down Joy's list of apps and tell you all about them.  But at the pace I'm blogging versus the pace we're adding apps -- yeah.  It's not going to happen quite like that.  What I decided to do instead was to create a separate page that will represent a running list of her apps, with notes (see the new tab at the top of the blog!)  As well as being a good way to share, I figure it will be a good record for me, too.    I'm also resurrecting my "Product Hits & Misses" category, one I haven't used in quite a while.  The old ones are chock-full of useful information though, even across several years' time.

On to the product reviews!

Back when Joy's speech therapist was evaluating iPad technology with Joy, but before I'd had any chance to explore the iPad myself, she noted a concern about the iPad's volume levels.  She wanted Joy to be able to use the iPad to speak above a noisy classroom if necessary -- and indeed, the iPad's speakers are not among its most highly-praised features.  So she recommended that we look into external speakers.

When we did so, we found that most external speakers connected to the iPad via cords, which absolutely wasn't going to mesh with our active, tough-on-equipment young lady.  There was one product, though, that combined external speakers with a tough-looking case, complete with carrying handle: the iAdapter 2 from AMDi.  It's a pricey product, at $265.  The reviews looked good, though, and for what we were trying to do it was about the only reasonable option. So we pitched it, together with the iPad and ProLoQuo2Go and a couple other apps, for funding via Wisconsin's Medicaid waiver for children's long term support.  And we got the whole shebang.

The iAdpater encases the iPad in a 2-part assembly that fastens together with nine screws.  The speakers sit behind the iPad.  The case has openings for the front and back cameras and the iPad recharging plug, while the the opening for the Home button has a removable sliding cover.  (Joy figured out how to slide it open and get to the Home button pretty quickly.)  The case covers the iPad's volume controls, offering instead a 3-position volume switch, Hi/Lo/Off.  The case offers its own Sleep button that sits atop the iPad's Sleep button; the iPad's rotation-lock / mute switch is not accessible without unscrewing the case.

For the most part, we were pleased with the iAdapter sound quality.  We found that we seldom wanted to turn the iPad's internal volume higher than about three-quarters; Joy generally prefers the iAdapter volume switch set to "Hi."  We did run into at least one situation where an app wouldn't play well with the iAdapter -- in the Whizzit 1-2-3 counting app, some of the spoken instructions were inaudibly soft, while the rest of the directions and sounds were fine.  When the iPad was removed from the iAdapter, the problem disappeared.

Of my two other concerns with the iAdapter, one is an issue that affects all users, and the other is more specific to Joy.

The universal issue has to do with the fact that the iAdapter itself needs charging, separately from the iPad.  It comes with a cord and a wall-plug adapter for the purpose, which is great.  However, there's no indicator to let the user know how far the battery has run down, or how close the iAdapter is to being recharged.  We've never run it all the way out, so I don't know what would happen.  Does the iAdapter just go silent, and would the cause be obvious?   Meanwhile, we learned that we couldn't charge both the iAdapter and the iPad in a single standard 2-socket wall outlet: the wall-plugs are too big to both fit simultaneously.  You'll need either a powerstrip or two wall outlets close together.

The other issue is more Joy-specific though it applies to other kids like her:  girlfriend is tough on equipment. When Joy gets frustrated, stuff goes flying.  The iPad in its iAdapter case has gone flying down the stairs a couple of times, along with various lesser flings, since we got it at the beginning of the year.  Soon we began to hear little rattles within the case.  When I opened it up, I discovered that the inside of the case isn't as tough-looking as the outside.  The iPad is essentially held in place by slender plastic tabs, and several of these tabs had begun cracking off.  After several flinging incidents, the tabs had crumbled enough that the iAdapter case began to rub the wrong way against the volume control, causing the volume to suddenly mute at inopportune moments -- a development that Joy did not appreciate.

The tech support fellow I corresponded with at AMDi was extremely helpful.  He answered e-mail promptly, did a fine job of diagnosing the volume issue, and set things up so that we could send the iAdapter in for free repairs even though technically the flinging damage was not covered by warranty (and if it happens again, we're on our own.)  He also filled me in on the design principle behind the relatively-fragile internal support tabs.  Apparently they function like crumple-zones on a car, designed to absorb impact at their own cost in order to protect the cargo.  Of course you'd rather have your car-body crumple in an accident rather than your own body!  Turns out that both with iAdapters and with cars, the safety/protection features are secondary functions, and the crumple-zone protection is a one-shot affair.

Before I packed up our iAdapter to send in for repairs, we needed something to keep Joy's iPad usable and safe in the interim.  After a bit of surfing around, I settled on the SuperShell from M-Edge ($34.99).

There are several similar products out there, apparently.  The SuperShell is made of the same kind of material as Crocs footwear. It doesn't have any amplification qualities, though it does have a little cut-out for the iPad's speaker.  There are also cut-outs for the cameras and the charger plug.  The volume control and sleep button are accessed via partial cut-outs; the rotation lock/mute button is covered.  To install the SuperShell, just stretch it around the iPad and it springs tight.

What really sold us on the SuperShell (besides the awesome hot-pink color option) was this video, wherein the interviewer flings a SuperShell-clad iPad into walls and the floor of an exhibit hall:

 

The SuperShell really does work just the way it does in the video.  Joy has tested it, repeatedly.  It bounces.

The one criticism we have so far is that the cutout for the charger plug doesn't really let you get the plug in and out, so you have to pull the SuperShell off that side of the iPad to do the plugging in. But that's easy to do.

After the SuperShell arrived and we sent off the iAdapter for repairs, we learned something interesting.  The iPad on its own was actually PLENTY loud.  I'm not sure what the concern was in the first place.  We actually find ourselves repeatedly diving for Joy's iPad to turn the darn volume DOWN (she has become adept at adjusting it loud-where-she-likes-it.)

And the SuperShell is so cute, and we feel confident that the shell itself is not going to break when flung...

We actually never did re-install the iAdapter.  We probably ought to find another good home for it.

Joy's iPad, iPad's Joys

When I first heard what Apple had named their new tablet-technology, back when it came out a couple of years ago, I chortled along with the wags who made Kotex jokes.  What company in their right mind would give their product a name that sounded as if it belonged in the "that-time-of-the-month" aisle?

OK, fine, nobody's laughing anymore, and that includes me (except at myself for my skepticism).  Two years later I'm happy to admit: the iPad is an amazing piece of technology, and Joy is reaping the benefits in a big way.

As long-time readers of this blog know, we've been making fits-and-starts at picture-communication with Joy for quite a while.  We have lots of little laminated photos and icons that we velcro-ed on to various pages or sequences for Joy to grab and hand to us to indicate choice-making or to tell us something.  We used the same velcroed items or laminted sheets of icons in a GoTalk4 where we could record a message or word and Joy could push the right picture to make the device "say" that thing.  We even spent a couple of months of regular appointments at the Communication Aids and Systems Clinic (CASC) at the Waisman Center in Madison to see if Joy would take to a more sophisticated programmable talk-by-icon-choice computer device with a touch-screen from the Prentke Romich Company (PRC) -- I believe it was a SpringBoard Lite.  Every one of the approaches showed some promise, but had drawbacks.  The laminated photos and icons, for example, were highly desirable in and of themselves as "stimmy" objects, which interfered with what their communication-meaning was supposed to be.  The GoTalk wasn't particularly flexible compared to computer-based products, and also became an object of desire in and of itself -- she wanted to use it as a noisy-toy.  The PRC device, she wasn't showing nearly enough interest and progress to be able to justify Medicaid card-service funding (two-and-a-half thou'worth).  So we sort of went into a holding pattern for a while with the GoTalk and velcro-icons, at least at home, and things stayed that way for a while.

Fast-forward two years, and much has changed.  We've had some developmental surging, along with a new funding stream via the Children's Long-Term Support MA waiver that allowed us to purchase an iPad and apps for Joy with a significantly less stringent burden-of-proof and paperwork (and at lower cost than the SpringBoard Lite as well).

And oh, how she has taken to it!  The iPad touch-screen is somehow just the right thing at just the right time.

Our basic setup is an iPad2 (16GB with WiFi), with an AMDI iAdapter2 protective speaker box (which I'll have to review in a separate post).  The most important app is ProLoQuo2Go ($189.99), a communication program in which the user taps labelled icons to get a synthesized voice to "say" the word or phrase.  You can set the icons/words up in the categories you want, and control how many appear on the screen (hence their size as well), and take or import your own photos or select from a sizeable collection of pre-programmed icons.

What a technological leap forward!  For a brief comparison, in order to put a photo on the GoTalk, I had to:

1. take the photo
2. import the photo from camera to computer
3. re-size the photo
4. print the photo (at some cost in printer supplies)
5. cut the photo to size physically
6. laminate the photo (more supplies)
7. trim again
8. add velcro (still more supplies)
9. record the right word in my voice, or get Rose to do it, on the GoTalk

To make an icon in ProLoQuo on the iPad, the only supplies I need are: the iPad.

1. I tell ProLoQuo to make a new icon (easy tap-and-type process)
2. I type in a label for it to say
3. I indicate whether I want to use an icon from the collection, or use a photo (existing or take a new one)
4. If I choose to take a new one, the iPad camera launches and I can snap the shot, and re-size it right there.

And voila, new photo icon created.

So now when Joy wants to watch a video, she can tell me which one by tapping a photo of the video cover. She is making real choices from a field of 25 icons/images, and has mastered the tiny 1/4-inch "Back" control icon that navigates between levels among the folders.

My beefs with ProLoQuo2Go are minor so far.  I miss the ability to record my own voice, or Rose's, and I don't always like the inflection of the synthesizer, particularly in phrases or sentences.  (At least one can override any given word's pronunciation with a new phonetic concoction of one's own -- I had to do that with the Baby Mozart video icon, for example, for which the default pronunciation sounded like "Baby Moe-ZHAR.")

The biggest challenge for Joy so far in using ProLoQuo has been less about understanding and navigating, and more about us keeping up with her.  At home we only have a few useful categories for making choices (songs, videos, LeapPad cartridges).  There are other categories for school -- occupational thereapy, classroom choices, lunch/sharing-time.  We need to give her more.

Meanwhile, though, there's no doubt that she gets it.  One day not long ago, I was puttering in the kitchen while Joy played in the living room right around snack time.  Suddenly she came running, jumping up and down expectantly.  I led her back to the living room to grab the iPad so she could tell me.  And there lay the iPad on the couch, open to the "snack" category within ProLoQuo.

She had told me.

I just hadn't been close enough to hear.

-----

I'll have a lot more to say about the iPad and the various apps we've been using so far, because I know this is information that's important to share!  For now, I'll link to a couple of useful lists of iPad apps that are excellent starting points:

iPad Apps for Communication, Learning, & Fun (pdf) -- by Amy Nelson, Kristi Otto and Connie Biksacky, presented at an Autism Society of Greater Madison April mini-conference

iPad Apps & Resources for People with Autism: Reviews, Links, Prices (Google spreadsheet) -- by Shannon des Roches Rosa, Corina Becker, and Jordan Sadler -- a parent, an adult with autism, and an SLP -- updated frequently

Product Hits & Misses: "Just Like the Other Kids" Edition

In general, as a parent, I tend to look askance at the argument "But Mo-o-o-o-m! All the other kids have one!" My poor, deprived children have neither Nintendo DS nor Playstation nor X-Box nor even Wii. Rose will tell you that on such scores, particularly with the expensive stuff, Mama has a cold Grinchy heart.

And yet. As with so many things, Joy leads me to new perspectives. For Joy, the opportunities to be like other kids are fewer and farther between than for her sister. I find myself actively seeking out opportunities to emphasize the "just like the other kids" aspects of her life. In some cases, like the two below, that includes products -- products that don't break the bank, even!

When we sent Joy off to school this fall, eating and drinking were a special consideration. I can pretty easily send a bag lunch that will keep her well-nourished. Drink, however, was a bit of a question. Joy doesn't "do" milk or juiceboxes these days. Fortunately she still likes water (and soda, though we don't send that to school!) She gets an open cup with supervision at meals at home, and was still using sippy-ish cups at daycare.

But Mama can't send a toddler-ish sippy to kindergarten with her big girl! So I went looking for a spillproof cup that:

• fits in a lunch box
  
• holds a decent-size drink of water
  
• doesn't leak
  
• is easy to open and close
  
• is easy to drink from
  
• is not particularly susceptible to chewing damage (no soft-straws)
  
• has gradeschool appeal

I found it at Target, at the appealing price of $3.99!


Target's Embark water bottle is BPA free, comes in bright colors (but without commercial character images), and has held up for a number of months so far. Joy has a pink one, Rose has a purple one, both are happy with them. We know of at least one friend whose mom got her one too after seeing my girls using theirs at the park after school! The only downside of these I can see is that they're in-stores only. Which is where Santa went to buy some stocking stuffers lately -- it will be good for each girl to have a back-up bottle...

Well, we got the original bottles back in the summer when the weather was still hot and the hydration need was more evident. But now we've got 10 inches of snow on the ground and temperatures in the deep freeze. Growing girls need winter gear, and that includes snow boots. Fortunately Joy does not have any particular foot issues / need for orthotics or any such. What I do require in Joy-boots is rugged construction and ease in getting the things on and off. What we've used over the past several years for both Rose and Joy, just like many of their classmates use, is the Snow Flurry boot from Land's End:


The big draw of these boots ($29.50, and you can order them online) is the velcro side-closures. You can't entirely tell from the picture, but each of the sides pulls open into a big wide gusset that makes lots of room for a little foot to go in, and then clings tightly closed to keep the boot on.

They've been improving these boots since we first tried them a few years ago. My only complaint with last year's pairs was that they got pretty stinky after a long season. This year's version claims "Antimicrobial finish helps fight odor" so we'll see if it helps! They've also made last year's little pull-tabs at the top of the closure into actual loops that a little finger can fit through to pull.

Joy's got the purple ones, and a couple of days ago as we were walking home we fell in with one of her classmates, a little guy who always greets her with a "hi, Joy!" even though he usually doesn't pay much attention to her other than that. This time, however, he noticed and took care to point out that Joy had the exact same boots as his younger sister -- and the same style as his own. Just like the other kids.... ahhhhh.

=========
I've been lax about "disclaimer-ing" these product posts, but I do want to make clear -- I receive no compensation nor consideration from the companies whose products I write about. If I ever get a review sample of anything, I will disclose that fact and would point out both positive and negative features forthrightly.

Product Hits & Misses: Big Girl Bed Edition

Monday night marked an important milestone in our family.

It was the first time EVER that all of us slept on adult-size beds!

Ever since Joy first climbed out of her crib, long time since, we've been using one form of tent or another to keep her safe during night-times and rest-times. She doesn't protest the enclosure at all -- I think it makes her feel safe too -- but if it's not there, she's up and about in a flash. Won't stay still long enough to have any chance at sleep, and her bedroom is not currently safe to be up-and-about in the middle of the night. (We're having some modifications done. But still.)

I wrote about tented products in my very first Product Hits and Misses post two years ago. Crib tent from Tots-in-Mind was a huge hit, making the crib usable all the way up to age 6 and a half! Pack-n-play tent was helpful but fiddly, making overnight travel possible but it always took such a long time to set up, plus it's definitely got a size limit to it. The PeaPod Plus travel bed, which took the place of the Pack-n-Play tent, was an astonishingly fine find. Good up to age 6 depending on kid-size, this portable tent sets up in one springy motion (though you do have to pump up the little air mattress to insert in the base separately). It folds away with nearly equal ease. We've used this for both travel and out-of-home napping for two years, at daycare and now at kindergarten. Amazing product.

Less amazing was the Pacific Play Tents Secret Castle Twin Bed Tent. This product fit over a twin mattress, and we'd hoped that it might serve a containment purpose for Joy with a few modifications (for example, the front door zipper only went top-to-bottom, but the base of the door was open, so I tried to modify that with snaps.) Not only could Joy get out easily, but the tent was poorly ventilated and also wasn't well-set-up for bedding. Big miss, alas.

Well, since we did that product search two years ago, a new invention has come on the scene. May I present: the Nickel Bed Tent from Ready, Set, Bloom LLC.


This parent-invented product came about due to the needs of a youngster with autism (named Nick, hence the Nickel Bed.) It's sized for a twin mattress like the play tent I just mentioned, but unlike the play tent, with the Nickel Bed you insert the mattress INTO the tent, so you can put a full set of bedding on it. The tent has great ventilation, and zippers open on three sides: two long sides plus one end. It also comes with little carabiners for hooking the zippers together, assuming you don't want them to be unzipped from the inside.

Joy loves her new tent. She popped right in with no trouble at all, snuggled the familiar blankets, went right to sleep. Two nights now, no troubles. We've started with an air mattress, but a "real" mattress is on order and with any luck will be able to pick it up today. Rose is a little bit envious, but she got to move to her own room with a queen-size platform bed some time ago, so I think she'll deal.

The tent is proving popular enough to keep selling out. It was on back-order when we discovered it, and is now on back-order again. The inventors/proprietors of Ready, Set, Bloom have been making tweaks to improve the product with each new batch from the factory, so the tent is apparently still a work in progress. The price is good: the current iteration sells for $139.99 (I think we paid $125). Compare that to a hospital-bed type enclosure!! One thing I really appreciated was being able to follow the company on Facebook, thus getting the inside scoop on product updates and shipping updates and such.

While this product is a huge hit with us, we've also found a few things that could use improvement.

The tent is, unfortunately, a bit of a challenge to set up. The tent poles have square-cut ends that don't slide particularly easily into the tent-fabric channels. The four main poles, instead of starting out straight and bending in the process (like most tent-poles these days do), are actually curved aluminum, probably more sturdy but also a little more finicky to put together and thread through. The set-up instructions seemed to refer to a previous iteration of the product, referencing straight poles of three different lengths when actually there are two matching short straight poles and then four matching curved poles -- confusing at first!

I do believe I'm spoiled by the "spring-right-out-of-the-bag" set-up of the PeaPod Plus. I could wish for a similar set-up in a large size product! though the PeaPod has an oval footprint and requires its own custom inflatable mattress, while the Nickel Bed Tent accommodates a standard twin mattress & bedding, and therefore can fit a twin-bed frame -- it has straps at the base of the tent to fasten onto a frame if you're using one. We'll likely travel with the PeaPod for a little while yet, as long as we can, due to the differential in set-up ease. When she outgrows that, we'll have the Nickel Bed Tent and air mattress, such that overnight travel will still be possible. For that awesome benefit, we can overlook a little bit of set-up time.

The fact that the zippers are made to attach together also technically makes the Nickel Bed a form of restraint. So we couldn't spend Medicare Waiver funds on it -- though if we'd needed a hospital-ish bed, we could have accessed that funding to the tune of a couple thousand. Fascinating how things work, or don't, sometimes.

All told, Joy's new Nickel Bed is a huge step forward, and I salute the inventors for seeing the need in their own lives and making their solution available to the world as well!

Product Hits and Misses: Sensory Seeker Edition

As with the autism-insurance post -- it's been a while since I've done one of these!

I'm really excited about a new goodie that has come into my sensory-seeking daughter's life lately.

I posted briefly at one point about Joy's home-concocted weighted vest. Unfortunately I never posted a photo, and now it's been disassembled and discarded, alas! But I'll re-describe it, and then tell you about the newer-and-better version.

Foy Joy, a weighted vest helps give her some of the sensory input she so seems to crave. While she's wearing it, it seems to help her get to a place of being calmer and more focused. The theory would have it that the effect should last after the vest is removed, which doesn't actually seem to be the case with Joy. (If you've seen one person with sensory issues, you've seen one person with sensory issues!) Here's a page with a little more information on weighted vests.

Commercial weighted vests can get pretty expensive, and so one of Joy's occupational therapists set her up with a homemade vest based on one of those swim vests with removeable floats. Looked kind of like a pink barrel. Take all the floaties out, replace with weights, and there you go! Add as much or little weight as you need, in consultation with your OT. Weights can be bags of rice or beans or fishing weights or shot, either plastic baggies swathed in duct tape or homemade cloth beanbags. Since they're removable, you don't have to worry if the weights can be gotten wet in the wash. We even added weight with a couple of duct-taped door-hinges!

The floaty/weighted vest worked well but had some disadvantages. First, it was obviously not a standard piece of clothing (see barrel comment above), so it sets the wearer apart and people do tend to gawp or ask questions. Second, it was made of polyester-ish material, liable to snags and runs. The weights in particular tended to poke out of their pockets eventually.

Our new improved replacement is a kiddie fly-fishing vest from L.L. Bean! We have to credit Joy's kindergarten staff for introducing us to this. Price is $34.





The vest is breatheable and durable, woven cotton instead of the snaggy knit. It looks like a real garment, and comes in khaki or pale blue or pink. It has rings on the front to clip chewies on, and one in the back for a caregiver to grab. It has a clip over the zipper in front to keep the vest on. And, it has pockets all over the front for weights, plus a big flat zippered pocket for weight in the back!

We're using the weights from the old vest. It's working out really well so far. This one's a hit.

[Update: I just remembered a post from Both Hands & a Flashlight a while back, about their adventures in homemade weighted vests, that you might want to peek at as well.]

---

Another hit with Joy, in general and specifically, is keys. Real keys, none of your plastic fakes, thank-you-very-much. She loves to handle them, clink them, carry them around, stim on them. Mama's ring of keys is the ultimate prize -- Mama's got to be very careful not to bring out the keys when Joy might request them and have to be told no, or great unhappiness ensues.

So, we've come up with a replacement.


These are keys from the hardware store. They're "mis-keys" -- keys that got flubbed up in the process of cutting and had to be discarded.

Different hardware stores have different policies with mis-keys. One store near here cheerfully gave us a whole handful for free. Another said sorry, but they return them to the manufacturer for some sort of refund. Yet a third tosses all their mis-keys and metal shavings into a big ol' bucket that you can dig through and choose the keys you want for twenty-five cents a pop.

The ring of keys pictured above is connected to a mega-chewelry bracelet from National Autism Resources. I'd initially bought a cheapo curly-bracelet keychain at the hardware store, but when Joy started chewing on it, the teeth marks stayed and the bracelet got deformed very quickly. The real thing is worth the extra money.

We've also recently acquired a ChewEase Clip-on Chewy Tube from National Autism Resources. The product has a plastic clip at one end, attached to a chewelry-type coil with a key-ring and a chewy-tube at the other end. Yes, I did say "key-ring." You could see how this product might work together with our keys obsession...

Just be careful to track the keys when your kiddo is carrying them about. We've lost two sets on the prairie, one because she dropped them when I wasn't looking, the other because I apparently hadn't fully joined Joy's key-ring to the ChewEase key ring and it wiggled off. I do hope that, if anybody found them, they didn't knock themselves out trying to find the poor soul who's been locked out of a non-existent home & office & car!

Product Hits and Misses: All Terrain Tricycle

I've just changed one little thing in the sidebar -- Miss Joy is no longer 5 years old, but SIX! Happy birthday, sweetheart!

JoyDad and I decided a while ago that our gift to her would be a new tricycle, more suitable to her size. She'd finally this spring started riding the sweet little trike handed down from her sister, just as she got to the point of outgrowing it!

So we went online to see what we could find for a big-kid trike. We didn't need anything adaptive, mind you. Just something that acknowledged (universal-design-wise) that sometimes bigger kids like to ride trikes too, whatever their neurology. What we found was way outside our price comfort zone. We were not particularly interested in dropping between $150 and $250 on a tricycle, no matter how right-sized and sturdy!

Fortunately our school-district team came up trumps. The PT at Joy's school recommended a trike from Harbor Freight, which has a local store here. The product is called the All-Terrain Tricycle, and the full price is an eminently-reasonable $59.99 (plus shipping if you order online.) Apparently this item goes on sale frequently. We paid $50; as of this writing, it's $42.99 online.

The trike comes partially-assembled in a box:


The assembly instructions were poor, but the assembly was intuitive enough I had no problem. It was half an hour from box-opening to all-cleaned-up, with photography included!



The trike rolls easily, is plenty tough, and has multiple holes for setting the seat closer or further back depending on how long your kiddo's legs are. Downsides are minimal. The seat is a little too tilted for my taste; the front tire assembly pivots all the way around, as opposed to our smaller trike that didn't let you turn it too far; and, the new-materials smell from the tires was so strong we couldn't store the box in the house!

Other than that, though, it's an excellent bang for the money, and I think Joy will do just fine with it. I'll write more about the presentation of the gift, and other birthday-celebratory reflections, after we're back from our traditional Memorial Day pilgrimage to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Happy long weekend, everyone!

Product Hits and Misses: Universal Design Edition

In honor of the LEND program from which I just graduated yesterday (!!), I've got one more seminar topic to pay forward.

So for quite a few years, the vegetable peeler of choice in my kitchen has been the Good Grips peeler from OXO. It's got a comfy wide handle, it's sharp as the dickens, and it slices off a nice thin reliable peel every time. Been using it for years.
What I didn't know until recently was that this product was originally designed to make vegetable-peeling more comfortable for people with arthritis -- as well as everyone else. Now, if they'd viewed and advertised it solely for the arthritis market, it would have been a tiny little adaptive niche item, sold in special needs catalogs, nobody who didn't have arthritis would have thought to buy it and even those who did would be aware of a certain stigma of using such an item ("sigh, it's a great product but it just makes me feel so old!") But that's not what they did. They had the foresight to realize and capitalize on the fact that what was good for arthritis in this product would be good for a whole lot of people, with or without vegetable peeling challenges -- and they've got a whole line of highly popular kitchen utensils now.

The Good Grips peeler is a fine example of Universal Design.

Universal Design is defined as "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design." The concept rests on seven principles, which are spelled out in detail at the Center for Universal Design at NC State University. I'm going to list just the principles and their basic definitions here:

Principle One: Equitable Use -- The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.

Principle Two: Flexibility in Use -- The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.

Principle Three: Simple and Intuitive -- Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.

Principle Four: Perceptible Information -- The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities.

Principle Five: Tolerance for Error -- The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.

Principle Six: Low Physical Effort -- The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.

Principle Seven: Size and Space for Approach and Use -- Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user's body size, posture, or mobility.

We had some interesting small-group work in the seminar, each table of students analyzing a group of products that were placed on our table, and then making forays through the building to critique design issues from the perspective of case-study scenarios -- if you were a person with certain challenges and needed to do a certain daily-living sequence of tasks in the building, how does the current setup help or hinder?

It made me think of some everyday products and some recent experiences with Joy.

Consider these two battery-powered toothbrushes:


The Dora-toothbrush on the left, from Colgate, is the first one we tried when we decided to try the battery-powered toothbrush thing with Joy. It was a good success. She can turn it on and off herself with minimal support (the pink buttons just above Dora's head), and likes the feel of it in her mouth.


However, eventually it wore out, and when I went to get another one (I think I'd forgotten which store I'd gone to), the Colgate/Dora one wasn't there. So I grabbed the one on the right, the Little Mermaid from Oral B.

Not a good move. Not only was the toothbrush kind of ugly -- the lithe form of the Little Mermaid doesn't lend itself well to wrapping around batteries! Look at the on/off switches -- the on switch is right between her clam-shell bikini, while the lower button approaches her maiden-bits. Why didn't the designer dude (it HAD to have been a guy) just put the on-off switches horizontally, press the right clamshell for on and the left for off -- but I digress. More importantly, the buttons were hard to push. Joy couldn't summon that extra force, and got very frustrated with it. In addition, the bristle-movement was more extreme, and if you didn't get the brush into your mouth right away (and Joy's not that fast with it), it would fling little bits of toothpaste around.

Big universal-design fail on the "low physical effort" principle, plus being ugly and kinda demeaning. We went back out and sought Dora in particular. Accept no substitutes.

Here's another example from our everyday life -- the door handles of our two vehicles.

Our Honda CR-V, which we've had for 10 years now:



Joy cannot yet operate this handle. It takes a pretty sturdy pull, and you pretty much have to wrap your hand around the handle to do it. (Principle 6, low effort). It also doesn't pull straight out, but pivots such that the right side stays in place and it's really the left side that you're pulling out (Principle 3, intuitive).

Fortunately things are better from the inside, when it comes to pulling the door shut:



Look at that nice long snaky handle, with multiple places and heights to grab and pull. You could even use that holder-space lower down as a place to pull if that were more comfortable for you. (Since we have the child-lock on at all times, the door-open handle from the inside doesn't enter our calculations at this point). Joy does well at pulling the door closed, though it's kind of a heavy door and does take some effort.

Then we have our new car, the Honda Fit that we got just about a year ago. With this car, Joy can let herself in.



The handle pulls up, pivoting along the entire top length, with a minimum of effort. As long as you get your fingertips under, you don't have to wrap your hand or anything.

But oh no, what did they do to the inside?


There's only one little place to put your hand and pull. And it's only at one height, which isn't a good height for Joy because she's buckled into a car-seat by the time she needs to close that door. Fortunately she can do it if she stretches. And the door pulls easily, which is a plus. But why couldn't they have provided options, like the long snaky inside pull-bar did in the CR-V? (Principle 2: Flexibility in Use.)

I want to leave you with one final statement here, something that one of my LEND-trainee colleagues quoted in his final Leadership Presentation the other week. The quote applies to systems of health care, and it struck me as really thought-provoking, implying the applicability of universal design for systems well beyond toothbrushes and veggie peelers and car door handles:

Delivery models that work for populations with special health care needs will have applicability for everyone.

It's not just about what's good for special needs. It's about what's good for ALL of us. Universally.

To all my readers -- thank you for providing a sounding board and the opportunity for me to reflect on this year's LEND experience. This has really been a pivotal year for me in moving toward what I want to be when I grow up! :-) The journey continues, and it's so good to have so many people sharing that journey with me.

Product Hits & Misses, Warm-n-Cozy Minnesota Edition

It's been a while since I've done one of these! But producers keep producing, and we keep consuming...

First up is a clever product introduced to us by Joy's OT, that we got for both Joy & Rose as Christmas presents.


These are L-Bow mittens, sold online from balmy Minnesota at http://www.lbow.com/. The genius of the product is that they come all the way up to, well, the L-Bow. No more snow on the wrists between the mitten and the sleeve!

Joy's are the purple ones, Rose's are pink. You can see that the smaller size (Joy's) has an un-differentiated thumb -- each mitten has an identical triangle-shaped thumb pocket. I supposed it's meant so that the little kids don't have to figure out which mitt is which. I find that it's hard to get just Joy's thumb into it. Rose's mittens, the next size up, have more standard thumb-cases.

The big plus for Joy is that the mittens stay on much better than standard mittens, in addition to how well they keep out the snow. Rose likes having un-snowy wrists too, though at first she was afraid the other kids would laugh at her. (That issue does not seem to have materialized.) I don't know if Rose is getting them on without assistance at school; at home she's asking for help to put the second one on. For Joy we help her with the whole process, though she does put out her hands and assist with pushing them in.

Another plus was responsive customer service -- I initially ordered the wrong size for Rose and had to do an exchange in time for Christmas. No problem.

Unfortunately we've had some glitches with the construction of the mittens. I've had to do two sewing repairs on Rose's: the side of one thumb opened up and frayed, and the elastic band in one of the mitts had gone hard and crunchy and needed to be replaced. I imagine they'd have sent a new pair if I'd asked, but I didn't want to throw reparable mitts into the landfill. So I sewed up the thumb and replaced the elastic, and they're working fine.

L-Bow mittens run from $18.99 to $27.99 depending if you want the basics, the breatheable mitts (those are what we got), or the top of the line with removable "Easy Dry" inserts. The site also carries gloves and other products.

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Next up: a basic item of baby clothing in a larger size -- bodysuits/"onesies" in a size 5T! These seem to have gotten rarer over time. Gerber used to make 5T a few years ago but dropped them altogether; the Gerber 4Ts are hard to find in stores but can still be acquired new on Ebay. They were inexpensive, thin, stretchy, lapped-shoulders only, and more under-shirt quality than T-shirt quality.

Joy grew out of the (small-running) Gerber 4Ts a while back, though not out of the need for them. Still in diapers, still at risk for diaper-digging. That's when we found Essential Whites, a company that is in the process of changing its name to TodBods but is still online at http://www.essentialwhites.com/ -- also in Minnesota!

Joy's been wearing their short-sleeved size 5T all-cotton bodysuits day in, day out for half a year now, and we just ordered some new long-sleeve ones. They shipped in a flash, and showed up in a lovely tissue wrap with a little herbal sachet:


We've found the short-sleevers to be soft, durable, and to run large for 5T, which is a blessing 'cause we haven't found any size 6's yet... Excellent quality, and we expect similar things from the longer-sleeves. There's a sleeveless option too. The only potential drawbacks to mention: the large sizes only come in white (great for tie-dye though I should think) and they do have neck-tags (doesn't bother Joy but may be a sensory problem for some.)

The 5T bodysuits are priced to match their quality: $10 apiece for long-sleeve, $9 for short or sleeveless. Buy 3 get 1 free, and if you go over $48 you get free shipping.

Product Hits and Misses: "Squeeze That Nickel" Edition

Squeeze that nickel till the buffalo hollers, dear readers! (OK, I guess that would have been the LAST depression when buffalo nickels were around. And they weren't even buffalo, they were bison. But still.)

Yes, today I've got several money-saving goodies to review. First up is a little trick I've been using for homemade diaper wipes. A friend of mine passed this tip along to me in a greeting card when Rose was born, and I've been using it ever since. (I trust that one of these years I'll be able to give it up. But that time does not appear to be close.)

So, how do you do homemade diaper wipes? Here's the recipe:

1/2 roll good-quality paper towels (I use Bounty)
2 c. water
1 T. mineral oil
1 T. baby shampoo

To get a half-roll of paper towels, you'll have to cut the roll with a serrated knife, as if you were sawing a log. I usually trim off any raggedy bits with scissors.

For a storage container, I use a one-gallon plastic lettuce tub:


I just bought a new one recently. The first two lasted me through seven and a half years... ohhhh I've been doing this for tooooo long....

Anyway. Mix up the water, oil and shampoo, and then plop the half-roll in, cut side up. Give it a few seconds to soak up a bunch of liquid, then take out the half-roll and flip it upside down so the smooth side is up.



Put on the lid (you may need to squish the roll down just a bit first, but that's OK). And there you have it. I was initially told to pull out the center core and pull the wipes from the middle, but for me it works best to take them from the outside. After the roll gets a little smaller, you can turn the roll on its side within the tub to make the wipes even easier to grab:



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OK, next item is in honor of the late, loud pitch-man Billy Mays:


How does this fit the "Squeeze That Nickel" theme? I'll tell you how. This stuff WORKS to take out stains. And if you can take stains out, you can put the clothes back in the drawer to wear again. And you don't have to buy new ones. And you save a TON.

Joy's clothes always seem to pick up more stains than anyone elses in this house, most often food-related. She eats enthusiastically and well, preferring to use her fingers. She does use fork or spoon when encouraged to do so, but does not always keep her mind on the task... She also tends to stuff her mouth a little too full, resulting in interesting driblets and droplets.

Yesterday I used OxiClean to get out mulberry stains from a white onesie, and dried-on red wine stains from the back of her dress. (Huh? Oh, yeah. No, there was no wine in her sippy. That wouldn't have spilled, right? Actually I was silly enough to go chasing across the yard after her with a glass of wine in my hand. Clumsy mommy!) Anyway, the stains totally vanished.

These last couple of days I've been seeing post-Billy-Mays OxiClean ads. And, as much as I was annoyed by his outsized voice and his impossibly-dyed-black hair and beard... the more moderated female voice that does these new ads does not make ANY kind of impression. I can't believe I actually kinda miss the guy.

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OK, one more product.



The lowly pinwheel may set you back all of a buck at the dollar store. But oh, the joy we get out of these things!

We can't leave pinwheels lying around for Joy to play with at random, because she doesn't take too long to crumple the wheel and bend the stick beyond all use. However, they're great when one of Joy's baristas needs to put a guaranteed distraction into her hand for just a minute while they jot something down or program something into the GoTalk. We've also had good success lately with turn-taking games -- Mama will blow on the pinwheel, Joy giggles hysterically, Joy reaches up a hand to spin the wheel herself, Joy giggles hysterically, Joy pushes the pinwheel back toward Mama, Mama blows on the pinwheel, Joy giggles hysterically... You get the picture. How many giggles can you usually buy for a buck, huh?

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OK, that's all for today... must go make more applesauce... squeeze those windfall apples till the worms holler, or something like that!

Product Hits & Misses: Bouncy Edition

Here's a product that's got both the miss and the hit thing going on! Last year, it was a miss. This year, it's a hit. I present to you:

The Bouncy Castle.



We were very excited to find this thing last year. It was Joy's big 4th-birthday present from us and the grandparents, plus party entertainment all rolled up into one. Joy is a natural jumper, loving trampolines and carnival bouncy houses and all such. Even better, it only cost $200 shipped! (Prices have gone up. I can't find ours online anymore, but here's a link to a very similar one.)

The castle is pretty easy to set up and take down. It stakes into the yard with 4 tent-pegs, and the tube in the back attaches to a fan (not pictured) that stakes down with two smaller pegs. Run an extension cord to an outdoor outlet, turn on the fan, and the thing inflates before your eyes. You can put in up to three kids, total 180 lbs. Totally awesome.

Except... Joy didn't want to go in. All the other kids at her party last year were clamoring for their turn, but she was unimpressed. Not with friends, not alone, she just did not approve. If we actually lifted her in, she'd lie down. Or scramble out.

Fortunately Rose and her friends got some good use out of it before the snow flew, although we found that the afternoon sun limited the play time -- in direct sun, it got very hot very fast.

Jump forward to this spring, and I decided to pull the castle out again for another round at one of Joy's therapy play dates.

This time? She hopped right in and started bouncing.

Woo hoo!

We had a wonderful fun playdate with the bouncy castle this Tuesday. Not only was her usual buddy there, and his mom, but we had a double dose of therapists, and then another friend and HER mom came by to drop off a belated birthday present. And stayed to bounce. Rose, meanwhile, was holding court indoors with three friends there. I love it when a playdate snowballs!

Neat happening as the playdate was winding down. The one girl and her mom were leaving, and the mom told Joy goodbye with a big wave. And Joy grinned at her and WAVED BACK! She barely even knows this mom, but gave her a lovely farewell. The therapists and the other mom erupted in a chorus of "OH my gosh -- she WAVED -- JoyMama, did you SEE that -- she actually WAVED!" The recipient of the wave was a little bit stunned at what she'd taken for granted!

The next day Joy waved again, this time at Lynda's, to someone else she didn't know all that well. Fascinating.

I'm getting rather far afield from the product review, but that's how things have been going lately. Sorry to be a little scarce around here. Since the schedule kerfluffle around JoyDad's surgery, I've been strung pretty tight, with more plate spinning than usual combined with a lower tolerance for any of the plates getting wobbly. Feeling overly anxious over things that ordinarily wouldn't throw me. Bleah. Hoping that things will settle down as JoyDad continues to recover and we get the summer underway.

Product Hits & Misses: Bubbly Edition

It's spring, it's spring!

We had a gorgeous day yesterday. And we started it out with a trip to Target to pick up a replacement for what has become (for us anyway) an indispensible toy. Behold today's first hit, the bubble machine:



Here's a photo from the web of how it looks in the packaging:

Joy got the first of these bubble machines for her birthday at the start of last summer. This year it's called "Amazing Bubbles Bubble Generator"; last year's model was called "Turbo Bubbles Bubble Generator", and both are from a Chinese company called Placo. Cost us about $15 at Target; they only have them during the spring months and into the summer, as far as I can tell. You pour bubble solution into the front of the machine, and then it turns both on and off by means of a single colorful push-button on the top of the machine.

Joy LOVES to turn this thing on and off, and to run around in the resulting stream of bubbles. Yesterday she was actually tracking bubbles and working on popping them, another skill that seems to come and go. The first of the above photos is the one that we use in Joy's PECS book; a highly motivating choice.

Downsides of the toy: it eats lots of bubble solution (make sure you buy an extra gallon of the stuff) and also eats AA batteries of which it takes six. It also comes with a handle on top, but if you try to pick it up with the handle while there's bubble solution in the toy, it will tip and dump out all the solution. Oops. For a cheap plastic toy, it did pretty well, lasting a whole year. Eventually the fan fell off in the back of the machine and there's no way to open the thing up to get to it. Still. You'll notice we ran right out to replace it while the getting was good!

On the MISS side of the equation last year was another battery powered bubble generator called Bubble Bellies: Manely the Lion, by Little Tikes.


Poor Manely. He was a cute idea: you operated him by grabbing a handle on his back and squeezing, which opened his mouth for the bubbles to come out and turned on the fan. Should have been good grip-manipulation practice. But he was too heavy for Joy to turn on and carry around easily, and his handle tended to stick which made him frustrating even if you worked him on a table, and he broke within weeks. Plus he didn't give nearly as good bubbles as the Bubble Generator. Manely = Miss.

So, one more bonus hit before I go today. This one is from Rose.


I first saw these "Multicultural" washable markers from Crayola last fall at Target when I was school-supply shopping for Rose. I passed them over at the time since we were spending so much money already, thinking that I could pick them up as a stocking-stuffer later. But when I went back closer to Christmas, they were nowhere to be found, and I didn't know the right search term (multicultural) to find them online. Suddenly we found them in our local craft-supply store this week. Rose was delighted, and set right in to make a rainbow of people! Wish I'd had this kind of thing back when I was a kid; the standard colors never did justice to skin tones. Heck, I bet my mama wished they had washable markers at all back when I was a kid!

There's your product roundup for the day. JoyMama out.

Product Hits and Misses, Homemade Edition

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but I've got a couple of goodies to share.

The first one is a huge hit, and has been rather a long time coming. It's a 3-ring binder full of laminated photos, for picture communication. I first talked about laminating photos back in October, in a post called "Choices". That's when we started using photos of everyday objects (mostly food and playthings) to offer an alternative to spoken language for labeling things. We've been moving toward having Joy be able to select and give someone a photo card as a form of request. But for several months, we just had the cards in loose piles at home. At daycare each card had a hole-punch in the corner, so they could be threaded onto a ring and kept together in that way.

The photo communication has now become a more central part of Joy's formal House Blend goals, so over the holiday I put the binder together. It's a velcro-and-manila-folder project (see Both Hands and a Flashlight for some games based on a similar concept!) Each laminated photo gets a little square of stick-on velcro tape (the soft fuzzy side so it doesn't stick to carpet and clothes) on the back. Each page of the binder can hold four photos on a side, so four corresponding velcro bits (the prickery-burr side).

The binder pages are organized by categories: Food & Drink, Upstairs Toys, Downstairs Toys, Outdoor Toys. Next addition will be an Actions section: jumping, tickling, pillow squish, etc.

Then the front of the binder has two strips of the burr-side velcro. Here's how it looks at snack time:


As you can see, there's a lineup of three cards stuck to the binder, corresponding to the three parts of snack that are sitting before her: bunny crackers, drink, and raisins. To get a small helping of any of the three, Joy has to grab the corresponding photo, rip it off the velcro, and hand it to an adult. At the beginning of snack, I also use it with just two photos to give her a choice of which grain-option to have: bunny crackers or pretzels? Kix or Cheerios? Then once she's made that choice, we go to the three-card setup.

Joy is really shining with using the photos, particularly at snack-time. She does love her food, and will make requests again and again. Often we have to cut her off when the number of helpings gets ridiculous, which sometimes even prompts her to make a "more" sign or say a "mah" word! (Yes, we do reward her for that. One final helping before the snack goes away for real.)

I made a similar binder for daycare, velcro-ing all the photos from the rings into a binder so she'd have similar structure for photo choices. This, so far, has been a bit of a miss, in that the photos-on-a-ring were such a useful handy way of using the photos (at least for labelling), that they miss it now that I've slapped all the photos in the binder! Perhaps a duplicate set of photos is in order, at least for the most useful of the ring photos.

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Next up is a common kiddy toy, cardboard box-blocks, that we got handed down to us from a friend. Joy is still learning the whole tower-stacking thing, so these were a neat find. What makes them "home-made" was a suggestion from Joy's lead therapist, who observed that the boxes can be opened up, and if you fill them with some weight, you can get a bit more sensory bang out of them.

So here's what we did.


There are two usable compartments within each block. We filled each compartment with a ziplock sandwich baggie full of wood fuel-stove pellets, two eight-ounce baggies per block for a finished product with an extra pound of weight in a block. Rose helped me fill the baggies and weigh them on a kitchen food-scale. We had the wood-stove pellets easily available because we use them in the bunny litterboxes, but dried pinto beans or gravel or such would work well too.


Hmmm. Have I ever posted about bunnies? I may need to do that at some point.

Product Hits & Misses: Homemade Edition

Why buy something fancy and expensive when you can hit or miss just as well with something homemade and cheap?

First up for consideration is our big homemade crash pillow. This is an unqualified hit. I first saw one of these at Joy's intensive therapy service provider's offices.


It's nothing more than a huge homemade pillow, full of chunks of soft stuff. The one at the office was filled with foam remnants from a mattress factory. In fact, a mattress factory in our area had been making such pillows free of charge for community members with autism, but they had a closed waiting list by the time I contacted them. Then I'll make one myself, said the little red hen! And she did.

The case is a king-size flat sheet -- you can pick one up at a thrift store for couple of bucks. I just folded it in half, nice-side in, and ran a 1/2-inch seam most of the way around with my trusty 1970s-vintage sewing machine, leaving an opening for filling. Then I turned it right-side out and stuffed it with finds from around the house: the contents of ratty old pillows, a chopped-up "egg-carton" foam pad we had lying around. Get the kids to help with the stuffing! Then stitch up the opening by hand and you're good to go.

The pillow is pictured above folded up against the wall, in case Joy and Rose want to take a running start for a good big crash, as below.


The pillow is big enough for Joy and me to crash together, or Joy and Rose, yet flexible enough that you can fold it over a kid for good big full-body squishes. Rose has even napped on it a time or two.

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Next up is the infamous Bucket-o-Beans. This one went over the line from huge hit into too big a hit, and must currently be classified as a miss. Maybe it can come back later.


The Bucket-o-Beans is simply an 18-gallon plastic tote, with 20 pounds of dried pinto beans poured in. A sensory-seeker's paradise, originally recommended to us by Joy's first occupational therapist.

Joy loves to sit in the beans, and have them rubbed on her body, and stim in them with her hands. For a while it was a nice sensory-input option, and a fun way both to contain her and interact with her -- she'd pull my hands down into the beans, for instance, to request that I rub them on her.

Alas, the Bucket-o-Beans descended into addiction, to the point that the ONLY reason Joy ever wanted to go downstairs to the basement was to get into the beans. Then she'd throw a tantrum when it was time to get out. First we had to hide the Bucket-o-Beans away. Then we had to hide a similar unrelated tote that held food for our pet rabbits, because Joy was convinced it held the B-E-A-N-S. Yes, we have to spell it out now, or risk bringing on the urge and the ensuing fuss if we slip and say the word.

Other things to be aware of with the B-E-A-N-S:

• They can be swallowed whole, and exit whole as well, swollen to about 3 times their original size. (Did I really need to tell you that?)


• They can be scattered all over the place, especially when a kid gets out, and even more so if the tote tips over.


• Use under supervision, and be aware of the lid if your little one likes to create cozy enclosed spaces. Most such totes come with suffocation warnings.

All that being said, it's a way-cool and inexpensive option for kids who relish and need such input. I'm hoping that some months down the road, it might be useful for Joy again.

Product Hits & Misses

I'm figuring on doing "Product Hits & Misses" as an occasional feature here, highlighting goodies that have worked well -- and not so well -- for Joy.

But first, a big vacation hit! We just got back from a long weekend in the north woods, at a small rustic lakefront cabin without running water or electricity, but with peace and beauty a-plenty. Joy particularly liked hanging out on the pier, so we did a lot of that. Photo credit to JoyDad:

Now, about the products. We had a new goodie this trip that made life much easier: the KidCo Peapod Plus travel bed.


Joy started climbing out of her crib at an early age. She still won't sleep anywhere that she's not contained; a "big girl bed" is currently out of the question. However, we did manage to make continued use of the crib with a Tots In Mind Cozy Crib Tent:

The tent velcroes around the top rail of the crib, and then the front panel zips down to get your kiddo in and out. It worked so well that we got a similar tent for the Pack-n-Play portable crib that Joy slept in at daycare! We then used a Pack-n-Play with the tent when we went on vacation.

The tent works best on the crib, because you don't have to keep taking it down. The one that goes on the Pack-n-Play has 10 separate tent-pole pieces, and something like 12 clips to attach it to the playpen. It's been a pain in the patoot to assemble and disassemble every time we travel, but at least it was working -- but Joy was growing, and the Pack-n-Play was ceasing to be safe.

Enter the PeaPod. Compared to the Pack-n-Play tent, it's a marvel of engineering. You open the carrying case, and the PeaPod snaps all the way open. Kapow, no rods to assemble, no clips to clip. It does have a thin air mattress that you have to inflate with the small hand-pump that comes with the package, and then you insert the mattress into a zippered compartment at the base of the Peapod. The sides are nicely ventilated, and it comes with a little sleeping bag too. Really nicely designed.

Joy slept lovely full nights up at the lake in her PeaPod. She's also been napping in it at daycare. It's supposed to be good up to age six, so we may get two years out of it, until she realizes that she can zip the panel open herself...

Our product "miss" for attempting the same purpose was a Secret Castle Bed Tent, a tent that fits over a twin mattress like a fitted sheet. We thought that might be a nice way to transition to a big-girl bed.

Cute, huh? Alas, the bed tent didn't have a zipper at the bottom of the flaps, so Joy could crawl right out. Also, when the front flaps are down, there's not enough ventilation and the thing becomes a sweatbox. I tried to fix things by sewing snaps to hold the flaps down, and cut a comforter to fit inside because otherwise she'd be sleeping on tent nylon. Joy simply popped the snaps and refused to nap.

So we gave the bed-tent to older sister Rose for a play toy. At least it's good for something.