Mall Santa

The other night we took advantage of a no-longer-so-unusual luxury -- an evening with no special plans. We decided to go to a local mall and see a display of gingerbread houses. As we bundled up, I remembered that this mall had advertised a take-your-own-photos Santa, so I slipped a camera into my purse, even though a Santa sitting would be a major departure for both girls. (See Here Comes Santa Claus from December 2008 for the backstory on why.)

I think that Joy maybe actually looked at the gingerbread creations this year, a new development. She was more interested, however, in peering into the shops and looking up for ceiling fans. Each time she found one, she made sure to tell us: fan! OK, actually she kind of leaves off the "n"... but did you catch that? She actually told us!

We spent quite a few minutes hunkered down in front of one particular store window, where there were two mechanical toys. One was a skating rink where little figurines circled the ice in pre-ordained patterns; the other was a sledding hill on which the same two sleds appeared again and again and again. Though we've never owned any such thing, these toys were like old friends -- they appear on the Baby Bach Baby Einstein video, one of the first Baby Einsteins we acquired when Rose was a wee thing! Long, long we sat and watched, with occasional glances up at the store ceiling, where spun (oh bliss, oh Joy!) a ceiling fan.


The Santa-sitting mishaps of Rose's early years in the aforementioned post happened at this very mall as well, but all these years later they now have a different Santa and a different setup. He was sitting out in the open, next to a 20-foot-high gingerbread house, all twinkly and smiling with a small bench at his knee where children could pose rather than actually having to climb into his lap. Not a soul in line, we could walk right up to him! Rose put on a mild pre-teen-ish protest, too old for all this, but to my surprise she then actually sat on the little bench and pasted on a smile for the photo, earning herself a little candy cane and coloring book.

Then it was Joy's turn, the girl with whom we had never even attempted a Santa visit. The girl who has two new relevant words that she didn't have before -- "Picture," at which she will sometimes actually mug for the camera, and "Santa" which is very familiar from the Baby Santa Baby Einstein video (and also sounds like "panda" which is one of the funniest words in the world.)

So we said "Santa" and she sat on the bench! We said "picture" and she looked at the camera! And she smiled!

And just as JoyDad was taking the shot, she opened her mouth wide and lifted one finger to point out where she'd lost a tooth earlier that day.

Her middle finger.

I guess there's always next year. Ho, ho, ho!

A Halloween to Remember

I have the good fortune to have settled within walking distance of a dear college classmate of mine -- someone I met the first week freshman year. We went on to bear girl-babies within 5 months of one another, and they too have become fast friends. Every year since Halloween 2002, including this one, Rose and her neighbor-friend Elizabeth have trick-or-treated together.

At the end of the evening on Sunday, I wound up at their house while Rose and Elizabeth sorted through and traded their obscene hauls of candy. JoyDad & Joy had called it a night earlier, but I was able to hang out for a bit and join the entertainment of looking at past years' Halloween photos on the computer.

How young we all were, back in 2002 when a one-year-old Elizabeth-lion with an orange pacifier visited a few houses with a white-bunny-rabbit Rose! In 2003 I created my first homemade kiddie-Halloween costume for Rose, discovering the versatility of solid-color sweats and sticky-back felt. (My mother never did make a homemade costume for me -- multi-talented though she was, crafty-ness was not among her many virtues). Despite the preggo-nausea that went along with gestating Joy, I managed a rather delightful ladybug outfit for Rose.


Then came Joy. For Halloween 2004, at the age of 5 months, she wore a fuzzy bumble-bee outfit that I'd snagged at a thrift shop.


I created a homemade bee costume for rose, and got a sweet, sweet photo of the two sister-bees on Elizabeth's sofa. We didn't know it at the time, but that was the only good sister-photo we'd have to look back on when we flipped through the old photos this year.

Not in 2005, when Joy wore Rose's old bunny costume and Rose went as a homemade carrot.

Not in 2006, when Rose talked me into costuming them as hula dancers like Molly in the American Girl books -- and then Halloween night was downright wintry!

Not in 2007, when they'd just been flower girls in their aunt & uncle's wedding, so we re-used the dresses, but Joy was sick that night and couldn't even go out.

Not in 2008, when Rose dressed as Lucy the Diamond Fairy and Joy was her diamond.

Not last year, when they went as black-n-white Dutch bunnies. I made them both fleece bunny-hats and taught Rose to make homemade pompoms for the tails. Joy protested the whole costuming & trick-or-treat affair that year. So disheartening, I didn't even feel like re-hashing it on the blog. We didn't get a single photo of either girl that year.

And then came Halloween 2010.

I had very strict requirements for Joy's outfit this year. Nothing on her head. Nothing dangly & stimmy. No boxes, no wings. Meanwhile, Rose decided early on that she wanted to be a pirate. Arrrr.

Here's what we wound up with: a pirate wench (boughten costume) and her hook.



Didja see that? They're standing together. Joy is smiling! We got THREE good shots of the sisterly duo, plus another shot of the whole costumed trick-or-treating crew (4 girls + 2 costumed parents). Joy cooperated happily with the whole photo shoot.

We were still a little nervous about the trick-or-treating, and had planned that carefully too in the wake of last year's debacle. Only a few next-door neighbors were on the agenda if that was all Joy could handle, and then the older girls would continue on. But Joy walked nicely, stayed upright (i.e. very little stimming in dirt & leaves), stood with Mama on the steps, squealed & jumped when the treats went into the bucket. We went all the way up and down our street with her, and probably could have gone more.

It is so nice to have a photogenic Halloween for once, amid all the school struggles and health struggles this fall.

Ahoy, onward to Thanksgiving, me hearties!

A House Blend Session

I think we've got enough layers in place for this to make some sense.

Besides, we had rather an amazing session with Joy's Tuesday-afternoon barista, that I'd like to share.

This was a 3pm-5pm afternoon session; the House Blend sessions are two hours long, minus 15 minutes at the end for record-keeping.

We have a consistent routine to begin and end the sessions, something that started all the way back with one of Joy's first Birth-to-Three therapists in 2006. At the beginning of the session comes a song to the tune of "Goodnight, Ladies" that goes:

Hello Joy,
Hello Joy,
Hello Joy,
It's time for us to play!

At the end of the session comes a song with three verses (I don't know a name for the tune): one verse for clapping hands, one for stomping feet, one for waving bye-bye. We have tiny reminder-notes taped to the outside and inside of the front door to help make sure that the songs happen.

The timing of the afternoon sessions is such that it generally starts with snack.


Joy has become a pro at yanking and handing over the photo cards. In fact, there was one snack over the weekend where we wanted to serve her something that wasn't on the photos, so we didn't bring the book out, and she was mildly cranky at not having her useful tool available! (She wasn't upset enough to refuse the tortilla chips... But I digress).

So after a suitable run of repeated photo requests for small servings of bunny-cracker and apple and milk, it was over to the living room for some jumps and pillow-squishes. I think that's all they had time for before our playdate guests arrived!

Since I have to be at home for these afternoon sessions, I'm no longer available to pick Rose up from school. Instead she comes home with neighborhood friends, a lovely family with a Rose-aged daughter and a 3-year-old son. Wonder of wonders, the mom is an early-childhood therapist (ST) herself and "gets" our situation without all the effort of edu-ma-cating on my part.

Joy's playdate was with the son. We'll call him J-Cat, short for Jellicle Cat because he is currently fascinated with the musical Cats. I could totally see him as Mr. Mistoffelees in the 2030 Broadway-revival...

As soon as boots and snowpants were shed, Rose and her pal disappeared into a back room, and J-Cat and his mom came to join Joy in the livingroom. J-Cat gravitated to a bag full of soft-blocks, so that became the first game. The barista held Joy between her legs, J-Cat sat between his mom's legs, and they took turns trying to toss a soft-block to the other. We used short verbal cues for things like "Joy's turn!" "Catch!" "Ready, set..." (wait for Joy to maybe chime in...) "GO!" And lots of encouragement & cheering & praise. Joy took a lot of support to play the game, but tolerated it -- like all things, up to a point.

When Joy started protesting, we cajoled her into "one more turn" and then it was her turn to pick the next game. The barista whipped a couple of toy photos onto the notebook, and Joy picked the Farm See-n-Say. So then the See-n-Say passed back and forth, with each kid getting a turn to pick an animal and pull the lever.


"Joy's turn!"
"Pull!"
"Duck... quack, quack."
"OK, J-Cat's turn!"
"Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!" (everybody claps along, Joy with support)

Joy didn't say much, but she made definite selections when offered choices, and took good turns with pulling or pushing or whatever the toy was. We played ring-stack, and blanket-pulls, and a train-toy, and another See-n-Say (an older bigger one with a stiffer lever, featuring baby zoo animals), and mini-trampoline jumping, and tunnel crawling. Joy needed some jump-breaks from time to time, while J-Cat needed some breaks to sing and dance for us.


After about an hour, both kids had hit their limit of such structured turn-taking. J-Cat wanted to play an imaginative game with his mom involving play-food, not one of Joy's strengths. So while they did that, somehow the very basic 3-hole shape-sorter came out as something for Joy & the barista to do.


What happened next was magical.

Joy pulled the lid off the shape-sorter, dumped the shapes, and started working to get the lid back on (accomplishing it with just a smidge of help.) The barista handed her one of the shapes, and Joy went right to work trying to get it in (again with just minimal help). Once she succeeded in getting the edges lined up correctly in the proper hole, she paused... and looked at the barista... and twinkled with anticipation.

The barista built the anticipation with a rising tone of "ahhh... ahhh..." (Imagine winding your way up to a theatrical sneeze.)

After teasing through several sounds of anticipation, Joy let the piece fall into the bucket, and began giggling like crazy, getting rewarded with praise and a tickle.

They did this again... and again... and again. They went through the entire bucketful two times, and then it was time for record keeping and the barista had to go fill in the binder. But Joy wasn't done. She went through another whole iteration of the bucket with me! And then I got up to go check on Rose, and Joy still wasn't ready to be done. She took the lid off once more all by herself, got out four pieces, got the lid back on, and ran the show all alone for two pieces' worth, looking all the way across the room to where I stood at the doorway, to make sure that I was watching and reacting appropriately.

After that we had to say goodbye to our guests, sing the ByeBye song after the report had been written so the barista could get out the door, and get ready for dinner.

There ya go. How's that for a House Blend session?

Right now we've got the playdate thing happening once a week. The rest of the sessions at our house are generally one-on-one, though Rose inserts herself into the action from time to time. Then twice a week we have sessions at Joy's daycare, with a very different dynamic among a roomful of peers (I'm never around to witness these since I'm always at work, but she's been able to do some neat things with support like join in on dress-up play.) At this point we've got 12 sessions on the schedule per week.

It's not always this awesome, by a long shot, but it's fun to share a good one!

By the way. J-Cat's mom is very pleased with these playdates too (besides being a phenomenal partner as the action is taking place). All this structured turn-taking practice is GREAT stuff for J-Cat as well as for Joy.

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.