Five and a half years ago, Joy had a five-word-phrase in her repertoire for a brief span. It was a line from Ring Around the Rosy: "Ashes, ashes, all fall down!"
I went back to the archive of team-messages that I've been using for group communication for years, and there it was in the seventh message (we're up to #1551 by now):
I had to work very hard not to laugh the other day when she flung her cup, and then sang out her version of "Ashes, ashes, all fall down!"
I'd forgotten that incident, but remembered hearing the phrase on at least two additional occasions. And then... Elvis left the building, the sliders on Joy's mixer board slid into a new position, and the phrase disappeared.
Fast forward to this weekend.
Joy came home from school on Friday with a new piece of artwork, this one containing both swirls and dots. This one had been created to the tune of Ring Around the Rosy, a tune that Joy had suddenly begun to request that day. We also learned that she'd been excited to work with LeapFrog phonics toys at school, which she'd connected with at home in a big way right around the end of 2011. And the Brown Bear theme had continued at school as well, evidenced in a copy of Baby Bear, Baby Bear coming home with her for the weekend.
It rained most of the weekend. Ordinarily this would be a bummer, but we've had a long string of parched weeks, so the rain was actually very welcome. And guess who got to go out and make splashes and splashes, stomping in the puddles among the fallen leaves?
We played Ring Around the Rosy in the puddles, and Mama substituted a new line for the "ashes" line (that probably isn't a reference to the Black Death, though it's an oft-told myth): Splashes, splashes, all fall down! Joy responded with many splashes and stomps and giggles, and helpfully refraining from actually falling down.
Then something seemed to catch her attention. She looked, leaned to the side, took another looong look.
"Joy, what do you see?" asked Mama.
The response grew out of Brown Bear and our stomping-splashes, and just about took my breath away.
I see bird -- stomp, stomp, stomp!
Six words, gentle readers. Six in a row, one more even than our long-lost Ring Around the Rosy line, in an original combination.
She was working other spoken-combos this weekend, too. She says them slowly, with great emphasis, almost with a period after each word.
I. Want. iPad! I. Want. Help! I. Want. Cracker! I. Want. Bread! (This last was a request for the infamous zucchini bread)
I haven't heard a spoken request for a hug yet. But you'd better believe she was receiving, this weekend.
And as for me, I am so greedy.
I. want. more.
But there were moments to be lived in, this weekend, and each one was a miracle unto itself.
We got our piano tuned the other week. Rose has been making great strides with her piano lessons, making the instrument sing each morning with her practicing -- so we wanted to be sure it was singing in key! (Didja hear the one about how people keep having to break into song because they can't find the key? Heh.)
Anyway, the guy who did the turning also plays a variety of instruments but is particularly skilled with the marimba. He's won numerous awards, plays from a repertoire of over 250 songs, and has performed in Wisconsin's Capitol Rotunda.
He also has autism, and didn't speak until he was eleven. Now, in his mid-thirties, his list of accomplishments is long. In his work as a piano tuner, he is accompanied by his mentor, a retired piano tech who supervises his work and helps him stay focused. His mom, who manages his scheduling, also taught him at home. By the time we'd completed the whole transaction, I wound up with two of their CDs -- one of his performances, one of her compositions.
Mom's songs, as it turned out, were integral to his education. Twenty-some years ago, public schools were open to students with disabilities thanks to the 1975 "Education for All Handicapped Children Act" (predecessor to IDEA) -- but in his case at least, they weren't very successful at figuring out how to serve him. His mother was a kindergarten teacher, and she discovered that what he best responded to was music; that if you sang his lessons to him, the material would actually stick. So her CD features the songs of his education, created as she put together a music-laced curriculum for him.
Joy, meanwhile, has gotten off to a fine start this school year. I was concerned that the transition back into school, with a mostly new-to-her team and coming off a late-summer riddled with behavioral challenges, was going to be rocky at best. But her new special-educator and teacher and student-teacher met with us repeatedly in August, processed the mounds of input we had for them, and felt like partners in the education of Joy before classes even started.
On top of that, Joy has been blessed with musical SEAs (special education assistants). The past two years, she was met first thing every morning by an SEA who plays drums and teaches piano. We were sorry to leave that aide behind as Joy moved up to 2nd grade, but simply delighted to hear her new morning-greeter SEA announce, "I'm a singer!" Joy's affinity for melody and tempo was quickly evident to this new SEA. We've been hearing updates about Joy echoing little tunes and tapping rhythms.
Then on Friday, she sent home this piece of artwork.
"Song Spots"
Joy, who had never made it all the way through art class before as far as I knew, hung in for a full 45 minutes with her singer-SEA on Friday and dotted this sheet in one marker-color after another -- in time to music. It sounds like her art teacher got into the act with the music as well. I know he plays the bass, and the note said "Teacher plays quiet jazz too!"
SEAs choose to stay in a career where they are often sworn at, kicked and challenged. They do this, because they care about our children and they understand the importance of their role in our students’ lives. We need to start rewarding SEAs both financially and by treating them with the professionalism they deserve. Most importantly, we must create school conditions that foster success for the students they serve.
Indeed.
In tandem with the new music delights, we've had a burst of words these past weeks as well. The speech-settings on Joy's mixer-board are hitting new highs. I now regularly hear at snack-time, when Joy finishes the first serving of goldfish -- "moh... CACK-uh!" Not too long ago, when Joy was angling for her iPad (which was busy charging up on the other side of the bedroom door), we got a three-word prompted utterance out of her: "I... want... iPad"! Heck, just yesterday JoyDad was watching football with her, and was teaching her to raise her arms and say "Touchdown"! (Next on the list of sports-speak to teach her will be "Go Bears!")
Music to our ears.
And yet, while all this wonderful music and speech and overlap between the two is happening on the home front, down at Wisconsin's Capitol, a new Chief of Capitol Police has been tasked with squelching musical free speech in the Capitol Rotunda.
I've blogged about the Solidarity Sing Along before: red heart balloons, and holiday defiance in the face of an attempted December crackdown last year. Since March of 2011, the Sing Along has gathered daily to continue expressing opposition to the ongoing depredations of the Walker administration. This remarkable resistance-movement has been a thorn in the side of the Republican regime since the singing first began. They tried to squelch us last December with a ridiculous, unconstitutional re-interpretation of Capitol permitting rules, flying in the face of the Rotunda's rich history of being a public square, intentionally designed with acoustics suitable for free political expression. We showed up by the hundreds in December, daring them to arrest us all -- and, in large part due to the thoughtful leadership of the previous Capitol police chief, no arrests were made and the Sing Along continued.
Now, however, the arrests have begun. Chief David Erwin, a former Scott Walker bodyguard, has led the Capitol Police in an anti-singer campaign. The arrests and citations have targeted the people who attend the Sing Along most frequently. While Erwin gives interviews complaining about disruptive protesters who go around "terrorizing" tourists and Capitol staff, the arrests are for holding signs. Or banners (like the one held by JoyMama the rabble-rouser in the red coat below). Or for attending an unpermitted event, or for sections of the Administrative Code that have never been interpreted in this way before. Despite repeated requests for clarification, the Capitol Police are declining to specify what activities might be deemed citation-worthy on any particular day. They've taken to showing up at people's homes and workplaces to deliver citations, without having approached the individuals at the Capitol at the time of the supposed infraction. It's intimidation, and they're pairing it with a cynical propaganda campaign that Rebecca Kemble wrote about compellingly in The Progressive the other week: The Two-Pronged Assault on Dissent in Wisconsin's Capitol.
The citizen-lobbyists of the Solidarity Sing Along believe that our permit to lift our voices in musical dissent is contained in the following words of Wisconsin's Constitution (Article 1, Section 4):
The right of the people peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good, and to petition the government, or any department thereof, shall never be abridged.
"What part of SHALL NEVER BE ABRIDGED don't you understand?"
And if we poke a little bit of fun at Chief Erwin with masks and signs, that too is free speech, a bit of political theatre to bring home our message. We gather and sing in peace, but we are determined. We intend to keep singing until Wisconsin is back on the right track. Even then, we will continue to be involved on a new level.
There's too much at stake -- and my Joy, who delights in rhythm and song, is at the heart of the future I'm fighting for.
Christmas Eve, and the final installment in this Songs of the Season series.
I wasn't the only one to set up an annual holiday letter with a musical lead-in this year. GrandpaJ and GrandmaJoy sent an entire letter premised on the blessing of music in their lives in 2011. Their letter began with a story that involved their granddaughter.
Both grandparents volunteer regularly to visit inmates at a correctional facility. GrandpaJ has been matched with one fellow in particular for quite a few years now, developing a cautious but meaningful relationship over time. In early December, this man sang a solo at the annual prison Christmas banquet, a "hearty rendition" (according to GrandpaJ) of O Holy Night.
He dedicated it to his friend's granddaughter Joy, and asked everyone to pray for her.
A dining hall full of prisoners in Kansas, praying for my daughter!
How marvellously unexpected, topsy-turvy, upside-down.
And all in celebration of the topsy-turvy arrival of God-With-Us, a baby born in an out-building among the farm-animals, while a dazzling host of angels brings the astonishing news to ordinary shepherd-folk in the fields.
As the introduction to our annual Christmas newsletter this year pointed out, "the local oldies station has switched to 'all Christmas music, all the time.'" Christmas, more than any other holiday, comes with its own musical soundtrack.
The JoyFamily appreciates the holiday soundtrack -- JoyMama in particular was simply delighted with the Messiah singalong at church on Sunday! (Rose, in contrast, left the sanctuary at the first chorus, claiming that the singing and instruments were painfully loud.)
We have our own songs going on this season too.
I've written before about Joy's bedtime routine, that involves filling in the blanks for Rock-A-Bye Joy and Twinkle, Twinkle, with Joy filling in the words. In recent weeks, these songs have gone to a whole new level. They've become an interactive people-play, where Joy decides what will be rocked or twinkled and when it will happen.
It looks something like this: she'll bring me her stuffed penguin and cuddle up to me with penguin in her arms. Then she'll rock slightly back and forth, saying something like "WOH-woh." Which is my cue to sing:
Rock-a-bye PENGUIN, on the tree top,
When the wind blows...
... and Joy fills in some "peh-peh" word so I can continue
PENGUIN will rock!
The funnier the item, the better the Joy-giggles. One of my favorites has been the plastic tomato slice:
Twinkle, twinkle, little TOMATO!!
But wait, there's more! JoyDad and Joy then added a variation where Joy points to her own body-parts, with a one-finger point even, to direct him into verses such as:
Rock-a-bye KNEE, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, BELLY-BUTTON will rock!
The most recent variation has to do with a home-made board book dating back to Joy's days in daycare and early-childhood ed. The book has photos of people close to Joy, plus useful shots representing daycare, home, mealtime booster-chair, potty, etc. When Joy brings this book with a cuddle and a "WOH-woh," and starts flipping to the desired pages, we get something like:
Rock-a-bye GRANDMA, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, POTTY will rock!
I've got a few more musical offerings to share before Christmas rolls around next week. Meanwhile, though, I'm off to the Solidarity Sing-Along at the Capitol, something I've written about here and elsewhere. Today's singalong of holiday-themed protest songs will end up being a test of a set of new restrictive rules designed to quash protest, this regular protest in particular. Might be something of a showdown today, though it sounds as if the administration isn't going to try any mass arrests. I'm all dressed up respectable-like just on the off chance, though!
Keep singing, and I'll report more Joy-family song-related goodies in days to come...
I'm dating myself with this memory, but the 1982 song "99 Red Balloons (99 Luftballons)" by Nena was part of the soundtrack of my high-school years.
Ninety-nine red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else...
This was at about the time as the movie "War Games," when the thought of accidental global thermonuclear war was in the public imagination. The song protested the war machine with a fable of two children who release a bevy of toy balloons. Some country's surveillance software takes the balloons for a security threat and: "This is what we've waited for -- this is it, boys, this is war!"
I hadn't thought of that song for years, even when my daughters began to show great delight in helium balloons. A red birthday-balloon tradition became especially strong with Rose, whose February birthday falls at just the right season for discount Valentine balloons!
For Joy, mylar balloons have always been a stimmy delight, from their dangly ribbons to their delightful crackly feel. Once Joy came along, Rose had to learn to share the heart balloons -- though there were always plenty to go around.
Now in Wisconsin, mylar heart-balloons have taken on a whole new meaning.
It started in February, when the protests against Governor Walker's appalling budget proposals broke out. At some point during the initial protests, someone released a heart balloon in the Rotunda. It floated up to the dome... and stayed there. And stayed, and stayed. As the protests morphed into work on the recall elections, and the major remaining protest presence in the Capitol was the daily Solidarity Singalong, the heart balloon became a symbol of the endurance of the protests. A Capitol Balloon Facebook page sprang up, and a Twitter account. When eventually the balloon did come down toward the end of June, it was taken to the Wisconsin Historical Society to be preserved for posterity.
With the original balloon gone, replacements began trickling in. More balloons floated up to take its place, and protesters began delivering balloons to legislators. The Department of Administration and the Capitol police began to take notice. Soon there were reports of an arrest for a balloon release, and of police officers tailing a protester as she delivered balloons to legislative offices.
Then on Tuesday, a bizarre act of violence. The protester who had delivered the balloons was singing toward the end of that day's Solidarity Singalong, bearing a balloon ready for delivery to yet another office, when the facilities manager accosted her and began stabbing her balloon with a knife, repeatedly! By the time the balloon was good and dead, there was blood on the protester and on the floor, though she had not been injured (it seems the knife-wielder had managed to cut himself in the process.) He then took off, leaving spatters of blood in front of the stairs that lead to the Wisconsin Supreme Court -- and she followed to demand his identification. Instead of providing it, the protester & witnesses relate, he grabbed her and threw her into the door of the women's restroom.
The mainstream media coverage has been misleading, sadly at odds with the witness accounts, painting the incident as a little ol' argument that ended in a state employee popping a protester's balloon. The Department of Administration says that their employee hurt his hand in a tumble on the stairs before the confrontation (why he'd go accost a protester rather than attend to the dripping blood, nobody can say.)
Fortunately, between Facebook and Twitter and blogs, we needn't rely the mainstream press for the whole story. By the next day, the eyewitness accounts had made the rounds -- and the response at Wednesday's Solidarity Singalong at the Capitol was incredible.
Our little family was there.
We didn't bring any balloons ourselves, but there were plenty to go around. The Rotunda was alive with heart balloons, and clever signs ("You've already broken my heart -- you didn't need to STAB it too!"), and children running and playing. The crowd was close to 200!
Instead of ruffling the Capitol authorities with a big balloon-release, the organizers attached their balloon-clusters to large spools of ribbon, reeling them up to the dome for the singalong hour, and then back down afterwards. Of course, with so many individual balloons handed out to folks like Rose & Joy, some were bound to escape. We almost lost Joy's, but I caught it just in time and re-attached the string!
Joy isn't entirely thrilled with these singalong events, but she tolerates them if we provide enough food and enough distraction. The balloon was a great help, and has been fun at home too. Meanwhile, the noon protests do provide a small way for me to contribute while still on childcare duty, and lift my spirits as well.
Our struggle in Wisconsin isn't quite the apocalyptic vision from Nena's song, but the metaphor isn't unrelated. Gov. Walker himself referred to his first budget-attack as "dropping the bomb" when he thought he was talking to billionnaire David Koch on the phone -- but was actually getting pranked by a blogger. And this legislative session has surely left a swath of destruction and rubble in its wake. (Examples abound at a clever new website called WTF has Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker done so far?)
Recall elections in under two weeks. On August 9 the recalled Republicans face their Democratic challengers, on the 16th the recalled Democrats try to hold their seats as well. Polling shows most of the races close -- Republicans have no insurmountable leads -- we've got a real chance to flip the Senate here!
But meanwhile...
...Ninety-nine dreams I have had
And every one a red balloon
It's all over, I'm standing pretty
In the dust that was a city
I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
Here it is, a red balloon
I think of you and let it go
It feels like spring. The snow is mostly melted off the garden, and soon we'll take the mulch off our strawberry plants. Snowdrops are blooming on the south side of the house; tulip leaves are poking through in the front flowerbed.
And for the past two weeks, new/renewed vocalizations have been sprouting for Joy like shoots from subterranean bulbs. There've been so many, it's hard to keep track. Some of them are Elvis Sightings: she said "buh-buh" for bye-bye, just once! She said "muh" together with her "more" sign at just one snack time, two requests in succession! She said "bay" for her bagel, just once! Others are more durable: a big explosive "pah!" that might mean "play". A lovely "chew" noise that is associated with her chewy toy (and also with a tickle game).
Rose and I have been attuned for noticing signs of spring. We saw the first robin of the season on Friday morning near Joy's daycare. We saw an animal in the backyard that first looked like a rabbit, but then turned out to be a squirrel with a white tuft on the end of its tail.
I remember one of the concerns I had when I first meet with the Birth-to-Three case manager who came to our house for an intake interview. I told him about how, when I would be on for childcare with Rose and Joy and Joy's daycare buddy, I'd point to a squirrel out the front window. Rose and Buddy would be fascinated. I could not get Joy to look. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything," I said self-deprecatingly. The case manager wouldn't commit to what meant what, but told me to keep paying attention.
This morning Joy was looking out the front window, watching a squirrel. Later in the morning we went for a run, with her in the stroller. She tracked a bird that flew over. She giggled at an airplane. And every time a car went past, she'd turn her head around to follow it, with a great big giggle.
Did I mention we went for a run? I am picking myself back up after falling off the wagon with running during the long dark iciness of January and February. It feels so good to re-emerge onto ice-free sidewalks and sunshine pouring down.
Rose is making great strides on piano these days. The material in her class is getting more and more challenging, and she's keeping right up. She's got the ear... when she makes a mistake, she hears and works to correct it. And it helps a lot to have me play through a song just once when the rhythms get too difficult.
Joy's speech therapist was all set to write up a present-level for Joy's upcoming IEP that said something to the effect that imitation was not something that has moved very far forward this year. All of a sudden, the occasional imitations are popping forth all over, from animal noises to word-approximations. At school during her kindergarten practice the other day, she was playing Row Your Boat on one of those wooden rocking-boat kinds of toys, with a couple of other kids. "If you see a lion, don't forget to roar!" went the music. The kids roared, Joy roared. And then she roared again, to get more roars going. Not just imitation, but initiation too!
There are other things -- more occasional potty successes, getting her coat on and off by herself, making attempts to blow bubbles. The list is getting too long to remember. I've been a little bit hesitant to even write about it, for fear of jinxing the whole thing. But I think it's time to start celebrating, at least just a little.
When last I wrote, the Joy-family was off to a weekend's worth of activities, to include a camping adventure with our congregation at a nearby state park. Last year we had a fine success with this annual tent-camping event, Joy's first overnight campout beyond our yard. We did another successful backyard campout on Labor Day weekend, but ended up deciding not to take the tent out this Saturday. JoyDad was feeling under the weather, and for a while I thought I might be taking the girls for the evening on my own.
Fortunately, though, he perked up enough to make the trek to the campground after Joy's afternoon therapy, so the whole family could take part in picnic potluck and campfire conviviality.
Joy sat well at the unfamiliar picnic table and ate, per usual, a wider variety of goodies than her sister did. For entertainment afterward, she found a plastic band from a firewood bundle that she held onto almost all evening, a fine distraction from the fall leaves on the ground that might otherwise have consumed her attention (and that she might have attempted to consume herself in greater numbers than she did!) I spent a nice chunk of time blowing bubbles for her as the dusk was falling, and then when it got too dark to see bubbles, we moved over to the campfire.
Our congregation is big on singing, with four-part a cappella hymns a regular feature of our worship. This translates to lots of lovely harmony on the folksongs around the campfire as well. JoyDad always brings along his guitar to these events; sometimes one or two other people will bring guitars as well, but this year there were three other guitars, two banjos, a ukelele, and a bunch of copies of the folk-song compilation Rise Up Singing.
So at one point between songs, JoyDad inserts a query as to whether there's anything by Elvis in that thar songbook. And our local Elvis impersonator (what, doesn't every congregation have a local Elvis impersonator?) asks JoyDad does he know the opening lick to "Suspicious Minds." And JoyDad, who knows that song forward & backward, swings into the opening bars without a pause. Someone shines a flashlight-spot on our Elvis dude, and we get the entire song, all the moves and facial expressions and rich Elvis voice -- the whole deal. Yours truly, with Joy on my lap, was able to chime in with some of the other gals on the back-up vocals... it was quite the highlight of the evening. Elvis sighting at the campfire, who knew?!
