Cross Country

We're back from a full Easter long-weekend. Filled it full ourselves, by taking on a trip to my dad's place in Kansas, a 12-hour drive from here.

I'd like to say that Joy was a dream, pleasant and cooperative and at her most charming and communicative the entire time!

The truth, of course, is considerably more mixed than that.

As I look back at my past few Joy-posts, I've been doing a lot of accentuating the positive. Which is great, important, uplifting! but quite a bit less than the whole picture. Blended in with the increased vocalizations and the group hugs have been a short fuse, a renewed spate of toy-throwing and biting (self and others), a powerful unwillingness to let herself be properly cleaned during a messy diaper change.

Those unwillingnesses ramped up sharply for our Kansas trip. We thought we'd have a pleasant stop at McDonalds en route, but she threw food and refused to eat anything more than a couple of fries. We struggled with getting liquids into her the entire trip, resulting in the unfortunate digestive effects that occur when one doesn't drink just quite enough. Still haven't gotten any milk into her in the last five days. Soda and juice, can you believe. Yikes.

She flung the glasses off my face several times. I lost a handful of (increasingly gray) hair to her fist. At one point at Easter dinner she'd been happily eating a serving of jello salad with carrots, and then before we could blink, multiple fistsful of orange jello went flying all over the table. In front of ALL the relatives. Sigh.

And yet!

Her grandparents were so thoughtful and kind as we planned several days' worth of visit activities. Grandma came up with a musuem to visit, called the Museum of World Treasures, with an eclectic collection for Rose and her cousin to peruse and a big upstairs playroom with an indoor bouncy castle where Joy could jump to her heart's content! I even got to sneak out and see a couple of the exhibits... and had an Elvis Sighting! a silk scarf signed by Elvis himself. How could you top that?

Another day we went to the zoo. Joy immediately wanted to climb over a fence and play in the water with the flamingos, and couldn't get over her disappointment that it wasn't allowed... until Grandma rented a sturdy stroller that gave her a chance to be wheeled around and calm down. We had a resounding success with feeding the goats! Notice how the initial hand-over-hand support faded out to nothing:







Joy rewarded Grandma with unsolicited kisses on their front porch swing. And Grandpa made a most excellent discovery that Joy liked to play in the back seat of their parked Prius! Safe, enclosed, a fine distraction.

It had been years since we made this particular visit -- since 2006, to be exact. We packed in a lot of family into the few days, including my brother (Uncle Schnirelmann) and sister-in-law, several of my uncles and aunts and cousins, step-sister & brother-in-law and their three daughters (the youngest of whom is not much older than Rose). I felt a little bad that I didn't even try to contact any of my childhood friends, but then again, I didn't even end up getting to talk much with all the relatives.

Autism Awareness Day (April 2) came and went during our travels. I didn't have anything profound or coherent to say. But I'd like to share a set of posts from Both Hands and a Flashlight for their insights on autism awareness for different audiences:

• Be Aware -- For Families and Friends
  
• Be Aware -- For Parents
  
• Be Aware -- For Everyone

And I think that, for this post, we are about at

THE END

Random Tuesday Thoughts

I think I'm still on a Thanksgiving-turkey tryptophan buzz. Hope you're up for some randomness, 'cause that's all you're getting today!

• What a whirlwind of a holiday weekend! Much baking of pies Thursday morning, much gobbling and chattering Thursday evening at Auntie S's place. Different lodgings both Friday and Saturday nights, several sets of family gatherings, whoo!
  
  
• I'm not going to see the movie "Four Christmases." Who needs to go to the theatre to experience multiple family holiday gatherings stacked one atop the other?
  
  
• Joy was a super little traveler. She's so content to ride along in her carseat, especially if we toss her a toy now and then. Rose actually demands more attention than Joy, can you believe?
  
  
• Thursday night we stayed over with Uncle Marathon & Auntie Save-the-Tatas. They have a brand-new kitten that Rose just swooned over (the more so because I have allergies so she can't have a kitty of her own). Joy was willing to give the kitty a pat or two, but she REALLY wanted to play with: the cat toys. We came home with a toy which has a ball & jingle bell on top of a spring growing out of a stand. I am not exaggerating when I say this toy had a catnip-like effect on Joy!!
  
  
• Our Friday visit was to my grandmother, who turned 100 last May. Our visit happened to fall during her move from her retirement apartment across the street into an assisted-living apartment. I want to be not-quite-ready to move into assisted-living when I'm 100... I hope that her new place, bright and sparkling, begins to feel homelike soon.
  
  
• Grandma took us out to dinner Friday night. Joy drank from an open plastic-glass at the Old Country Buffet! Without spilling a drop! Two glasses of lemonade and was asking for more!
  
  
• Saturday we got to see Auntie RatM and Auntie Meerkat -- it had been a long time! We got to take them to the park to play with the girls. Rose swirled herself down the firepole over and over, with great drama. Joy let me guide her in climbing up a somewhat wobbly web-like climber up to the slide platform. What a trooper.
  
  
• More Joy awesomeness, quoting from her OT's update last week: "This kiddo is pretty amazing at motor planning those activities which she's motivated for! ... When [Joy] wants something she's crafty, smart, clever, strong, and fairly precise with her movements. What a great kid!"
  
  
• When I read an update like that, it's no wonder I get confused about labels. In a good way, though.
  
  
• I wonder how many blogposts are waiting for me in my Google Reader? Maybe I'll go find out.

Generalization

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


Here's what she had to say:

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

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

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