Rose's Mini-Pumpkins

These beauties are courtesy of Rose and Rose alone.

My only contribution was to get down the permanent markers and hint at certain dire consequences should any marks get on the nice wooden desk.

Yay, Rose!

Boo!

OK, I'd like to put in my order right now for the next five years' worth of Halloween weather.

Make it just like that again, please!

We had a nearly-70-degree day on Friday, clear and sunny, which meant that trick-or-treating weather was in the 50s. The girls each wore a few thin layers of clothes under their costumes, which was plenty. (For comparison's sake, sometimes the temperature has been below freezing. It makes costuming... challenging!)

Speaking of costumes, Rose went as Lucy the Diamond Fairy from the Rainbow Magic series of "chapter books" by Daisy Meadows. Joy was Lucy's diamond, which meant wearing a big diamond-design of sticky-felt on a black sweatshirt, both chest and back. (Yes, yes, I know, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and all that. Just a little inside Beatles joke for the aging-hippie parents/grandparents of all those young chapter-book readers, I guess.)

Joy didn't have much interest in holding her candy bucket, and she really would have preferred to hang out and stim in fallen leaves rather than go from door to door. However, Rose and her friend were great about letting Joy take turns ringing the doorbell, and Joy also did do a good job of putting candy into her bucket.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: the pumpkins!

First, Joy's jack-o-lantern. You'll remember that Rose had drawn a bunch of choices for her, and then gotten her to pick one. Here's the one she picked:


And here's how it turned out on a somewhat rounder pumpkin:



Then we had Rose's pumpkin. I had talked her down from wanting to carve "Happy Halloween" to just the word "Boo!" However, not content with just a "Boo!" she went on to draw a creative face as well for me to carve.


Next came my Obama-lantern. The stencil worked very nicely, although the next day I had to shore up the sunrise-bit with toothpicks, because the crosspieces were so slender.


Finally there was JoyDad's contribution. I think that if you're applying pumpkin-carving to the election, his comment may have been even more apropos than my own...


Finally, here's the full lineup in all its glory:


Hope you all had a happy Halloween!

P.S. Women's Retreat was most excellent.
Will post about it later in the week.

Pumpkin Patch

We have an autumn tradition of four years' duration now. Every fall we take a trip to a nearby farm with a pumpkin patch and corn maze and petting zoo, together with the family that gave us the Joy! book. It's been a delight to look back over the photos across the years and remind ourselves how our girls have grown!

This year we had a special guest, my younger brother (Uncle Schnirelmann) who was visiting from out of state for the weekend.

The first incident of note at this year's visit was the temporary wristband, to mark that you'd paid your entrance fee. Last year when we tried to put the wristband on Joy, she wailed and fought and tried to chew it off until we gave in. This year? Wore it with zero complaint. I think it may have something to do with the other bracelet she wears...

Once we got inside, Joy wasn't too much interested in the petting zoo, or the pumpkins. Like Kayla over at Opposite Kids, Joy found the stimmies more interesting than the main attractions -- she preferred to play with bits of straw or cornstalk from the ground rather than petting animals or noticing pumpkins.

She did really well with the children's corn maze, though (which featured one obvious main path through):


Rose and her friend enjoyed the corn maze as well:


The absolute best thing about the pumpkin patch trip, though, was Uncle Schnirelmann. He and Joy invented a game whereby she would run to him, and he would grab her by the arms and hoist her all the way up his 6-foot-tall frame, to rest her knees on his chest and laugh into each other's faces. They did this all over the farm...


... even in the pumpkin patch itself (much better than scouting for those pesky pumpkins, in a rather picked-over section of the field anyway).


We've yet to carve the pumpkins we brought home, but Rose did successfully engineer getting Joy to make a choice among the options that she drew:


Joy's hand landed on the one at the lower right, with the eyelashes. The cutest of the bunch, to be sure, but the most challenging to carve! I'll post jack-o-lantern pics once we have them.

UPDATE: OK, I only just noticed: there's something at least slightly similar in Joy's body position playing the jump-up game with Uncle Schnirelmann, and mine in the sidebar photo leaping off the bridge. What can I say but... that's my girl! Wild women, we are!

Special Exposure Wednesday: Choices

Just lately, Joy's vocalizations are many but her words are very few.

In service of trying to get her to use SOME sort of signifier to communicate -- rather than just going to or grabbing whatever she wants -- we're making a new attempt to use photos for communication, eventually for use in making choices.

Back a couple of years ago, we did some preliminary work with PECS, which stands for Picture Exchange Communication System. It's a structured alternative to sign language in which a person communicates by selecting and handing over laminated pictures, often little line drawings like these:


Joy made some progress with initially learning just the act of handing over the pictures, but she seemed to be attaching words to objects almost as fast as we were providing the pictures, so we let it fall by the wayside.

Between then & now, alas, we've had these regressions.

After the first regression, the language did come back. This time it's not really happening the same way. It does seem to be time to give pictures another try, though this time we decided to use real photos instead of making Joy interpret the meanings of line drawings. So I went and took a bunch of shots of common items in Joy's world, and her senior therapist for the intensive autism therapy got them laminated for us.

Our first step will be using the photos in conjunction with the item or activity, eventually hoping to move to making choices. It's not a strict PECS protocol, more like just making available another avenue for communication.

Here are some of the photos. Do you suppose she'll want to play with the slide...

Or will she prefer the sandbox?


Maybe she'll want to drink some milk...

or possibly some juice instead?


Even without hearing much about these plans, Joy's older sister Rose has picked up on the idea. She's been very excited about decorating for Halloween, and is already making plans for how we'll carve the pumpkins (though we've yet to get to the pumpkin patch). At first she wanted to carve hers with the words "Happy Halloween!" but I do believe I've convinced her to go with "Boo!" instead.

Then she wondered what Joy would want on her pumpkin. And then she came up with a sisterly idea: she would draw a couple of options, and Joy could choose among the drawings! I did not prompt this in the slightest. Here is what Rose drew:


It's such a thoughtful big-sisterly thing. I hope that Joy will cooperate at least a little.

Meanwhile, I've already got the stencil picked out for my jack-o-lantern. Fair warning: it does relate to presidential politics, so don't click if you don't really wanna know... (At least I'm not planning on wearing a politically-themed costume, as I've done a time or two in the past!)
How I'm carving my pumpkin

Make your choice -- and do be sure to vote November 4, or earlier if your state allows!