Halloween Season 2009

One of the wonderful things about the fall/winter holiday season is that the holidays fall in such proximity to one another that it prevents those of us bloggers prone to bouts of procrastination from doing so indefinitely. Anyway, that's the motivator for finally getting this post up and running and, in contrast to a couple of the most recent posts, this one is going to be heavy on the pictures and light on the commentary.

Halloween season got off to a roaring start with a visit to the Please Touch Museum for their members-only Halloween event. We went at the gracious invitation of Hallie's friend, Alex, who was extremely excited to have her little buddy with her for the occasion. The museum was packed with kids and, at first, Hallie found the whole thing a bit overwhelming (and overstimulating). But, after a bit of adjustment, Hallie settled right in. She began her visit with a fun carousel ride, which was of course fitting given her costume choice:

Then, after some time at a few of her favorite exhibits, Hallie, Sharon, and Alex and her mom, Sheila took in a puppet show. We weren't quite sure whether Hallie would enjoy the actual show as much as she liked the idea of it, but, as it turns out, she had a splendid time and talked about the puppet show for days. The characters included a pirate, and that's always a good thing. Hallie loves pirates and likes to walk around covering one eye with her hand or a spoon and saying "Ar Matey!" while holding her telescope up to the 'working' eye. I think there may have been a duck involved, too. I'm not sure because I was speed-walking Lea through the museum while she napped. Anyway, the puppet show was grand and then we repaired to the Please Eat cafe where we grabbed a dinner of pizza, apples, and juice boxes. Hallie did eat some, but the highlight of her evening meal was collecting the trash--all of ours and some of other patrons, too--and throwing it out. It was nice that she felt so comfortable walking up to strangers and asking them if she could toss out their garbage.

The next day we paid a visit to the Johnson Farm with Hallie's preschool. I don't know why I thought this--perhaps it was the homeyness of the name?--but I thought we were going to be going to a relatively small working farm with a little pumpkin patch and a tiny petting zoo, all scaled to the size of your average three to five year old. Instead, we got this. I should have known that any locale with a spiffy website and that sells its pies online would be the opposite of homey. The place was buzzing--with people and bees--which makes some great sense the weekend prior to Halloween. The huge hayrides were very full; the pumpkin patch was enormous; and there was a performance area set up that featured locale country acts; 4H dance troupes and the like.

It was also very very hard to find the other members of our group (we were, admittedly, a bit late, as is par for the course with us. The part of Medford, NJ where the farm is located is a great deal further than we thought and we needed to stop and pick up a pizza for Hallie's lunch). We did finally meet up with our fellow YCCAers--a few on the hayride and in the pumpkin patch and more at lunch time.

Anyway, the experience was pretty overwhelming for us adults, but Hallie seemed to have a pretty good time.

Here are the girls on the hayride en route to the pumpkin patch:

Here's Lea in the pumpkin patch:

And Hallie:

Here's Hallie trudging alongside Sharon, who was in search of the perfect pumpkins (more on this later). This took entirely too long and the kids were all a bit antsy. It didn't help that Hallie kept tripping over the pumpkin vines on the ground.

You can get a sense of just how big the pumpkin patch was from this photo.

And here they are on the way back:

After lunch, Hallie was excited about jumping in the bouncy house (she LOVES these):

And she proved just as excited about visiting the animals on the farm. I'm pretty sure, given how many times Hallie returned for large handfuls of corn, that the pigs were quite overfed that day:

She also found the playground area to be pretty grand and had a wonderful time sliding through the PVC piping tunnel that they had set up for these purposes:

When we got home, it became abundantly clear to me that all that time that Sharon had spent in the pumpkin patch assessing the individual merits of each pumpkin really paid off. You see, she was on a mission. A couple of years ago, Aunt Laura had given us pumpkin decorations that she had made when the two oldest cousins, Sarah and Megan, were little. Even though Megan grew up not watching Sesame Street (since Sarah was too old for the show by the time Megan came around) and hence thought that Big Bird was in fact Big Yellow Chicken, she definitely knew who these two guys were:

Hallie had a blast making them. We were very impressed at how much power of concentration and attention she brought to this art project. School is really paying off in this respect. Hallie was very proud of the final project. She was proud to pose the little finger puppets in front of their pumpkin likenesses:

Lea also got in on the action:

I think this is a fitting tribute to Sesame Street on its 40th birthday, don't you?

The next week brought the YCCA Halloween parade (see my Pumpkinhenge post above for more details on this...) and the main event, the big day itself.

We were thrilled because our friends Anne, Eliza Grace, and Bessie (Anne's mom and Eliza's Nana) came down to join in the festivities.

When Eliza decided at the last minute to jettison her Native American garb for that of a ballerina, Hallie followed suit. Soon, our two little dancers and their entourage were ready to hit the neighborhood:

The girls both proved to be very quick adopters of the trick-or-treating ritual:

Here's a nice shot of Eliza and her Nana trick-or-treating:

While collecting candy was definitely fun, what's even greater about Halloween in our neighborhood is that there's this one block where the residents close off the entire street and everyone, regardless of whether they have kids of trick-or-treating age, gets into the holiday spirit. Not only do they give out vast quantities of candy, but they also set up craft tables where kids can decorate their own gourds; color pumpkin or witch or similar cut outs with markers; watch as their balloon animal of choice is blown and twisted; or oversee the production of pom-pom spiders. Our girls had a blast doing all of these things:

The whole group had a grand time and we got home to our place in the nick of time to avoid a major downpour. After a nice visit, our friends headed back to New Jersey.

The next day, Hallie sampled some of her loot. It turns out that, though she doesn't eat much at one sitting, she very much enjoys chocolate (Hershey's bars, Kit Kats, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups all pass muster, even if she takes a few small bites of each before moving on, and Hallie's fairly willing to sample--or at least open--anything that comes in a wrapper that might pass for junk food). She also finds cheese balls (but apparently not cheese puff sticks) quite delicious and has a fondness for bats-and-jacks pretzels. Now if you could only pass off green beans as junk food by giving it a pretty colored paper wrapper...

Anyway, that about sums up our Halloween fortnight!!! But even though the holiday is over, costume-, pretend-play and some candy eating live on (though not much this week, since Hallie's been home sick and not feeling up to eating much; probably it's H1N1 but we'll never really know for sure. Whatever it is, the fever is down and has been gone a whole day now and we've gotten away without any respiratory issues whatsoever, so we're pretty happy right now. Just two days of vomit, likely due to antibiotics to treat a suspected ear infection. So we're now up to 230 days without vomit this year for those of you still counting).

The Mother of All Posts...Part Two: Visiting with Friends and Having Fun

Just in case my last post transmitted the impression that it was all surgery and eating (neither of which are particularly fun activities where Hallie is concerned) around here, allow me to correct that post haste. We've also had our fair share of fun play dates and outings around here lately.

In addition to her regularly scheduled gym class, which Hallie loves (and which has given Hallie a sense of structure, circle time, cleaning up, etc as well as a lot of physical strength that is beginning to show---she is now getting more comfortable walking up stairs with support both from us and the banister and has learned to climb on the monkey bar structure that is giving her access to the long slide in the playground down the block and my heart is no longer always in my mouth when she attempts this feat), we've also been doing a bunch of other fun stuff.

First, two weekends ago we had a very nice playdate over at Elizabeth's house with Elizabeth and Eliza Grace. I got a couple of nice shots of two of our moving targets who did, actually, play a bit with one another.

 

 

Sadly, I did not get a picture of Elizabeth, yet again!

We also had a fun play date with Jake and Gina who came to visit us for dinner that same weekend. Jake is an amazing kid and the resemblance between him and Hallie are remarkable and more than just skin deep. Both kids are into numbers and letters and Jake is able to not only write his name but also a lot of other words. He is a beginning reader at the ripe old age of three and very, very clever (Hallie is showing signs in this direction, too. This morning she took out these sign language flash cards I bought way back when that we never actually used and not only focused on the pictures and signs but also on the letters, spelling out each word and pointing to them with her fingers in the way that an early reader would). Both Hallie and Jake are into puzzles and Jake acquainted us with these very cool multilayer puzzles (of course, I ran out--or surfed over--and bought one of an egg turning into a tadpole and then a frog that is now on its way to our house).

Like Hallie, Jake is also a sensory kid. Perversely, this makes us very happy (I am not sure it makes his mom so happy, though!) since it's clear that Jake is not only typically developing but a gifted little boy.

Jake also made me happy by eating seven (!!!) of my fish sticks. I hope that one day he serves as a model for Hallie in this respect.

Here's a lovely shot of all the kids and Gina:

 

And here's Jake playing dress up. Of all the options, he picked Miss USA. Silly boy!

 

We've also managed to get to the Please Touch Museum twice in the last week. On our first visit, which took place on a Saturday, it was enormously crowded, but Hallie mostly took things in stride and did not get overloaded or melt down (until we got to the carousel line, but even then pretty much did okay even with the fifteen minute wait).

As predicted, Hallie loved the room full of shoes (a pretend shoe store) and was particularly attracted to a pair of black patent leather tap shoes that were way too big for her. We almost had to do an intervention to get them back!

Here she is planting flowers in the flower garden:

 

Here she is oggling herself in the Alice in Wonderland exhibit:

 

And here she is looking like a giant in that same exhibit:

 

Honestly, I found the whole Alice in Wonderland thing just a bit freaky. Oddly enough, I've never been a big fan of the book (I also don't really like that other classic, Wizard of Oz, terribly much. I find both fairly frightening and always have).

Of course, Hallie was particularly interested in sensory experiences at the Please Touch. During our Saturday visit, she grooved on racing through and spending time in the section where they had what I think was a simulated rain storm using these plastic sheets cut into ribbons that hung down all around (kind of like the things that wash off the water at a car wash). She would have spent all day in there. The picture does not do justice either to the exhibit or Hallie's joy at spending time in it:

 

And speaking of sensory experiences, Hallie LOVED the water table area. She gleefully played with the ducks and water wheel toys and boats on both of our visits.




Of course, some of this play involved considerably rearranging.

Where do you think all of the ducks from the duck pond went?



Why, here they are!



And no sensory experience is complete without sticking one's hands into the hand dryer:



Hallie also had a lot of fun playing in the three-and-under indoor playground area and loved how fast she could go on the indoor slide:



(She also just mastered what I call the 'curly slide' at our local playground. Way back when, she had a bad flipping incident on one of these and we've been too chicken to have her try again. Piece of cake now)

And she loved jumping on the lily pads and even managed to get both feet off the ground roughly at the same time once or twice:



Hallie also had a great time in the arts and crafts room. She seemed to know exactly what to do in terms of painting at the easel (though to my knowledge she has no actual experience doing this). She picked up the brush like a pro, happily dipped it in paint and used the paper (rather than her body) as a canvas. She ended up having a marked preference for green, but the finished work of art is quite lovely and Hallie seems very proud of it:







And here's Hallie playing dress up with some wild stuff in that same room.





All in all, she had tons of fun at the Please Touch and we're hoping that we get to go back soon and that some of our friends, preemie and full-term alike, join us there!

Just one last note: we did, at last, manage to interview a single decent nanny candidate (out of a field of about a dozen, and many dozens of emails from others we did not bring in) and, thankfully, she accepted the position when we offered it to her. Our new nanny, who will start on the 16th, when Sharon needs to return to work, has some personal experience with feeding issues and aversions and kids on the spectrum; her nephew, who grew up with her, has both and so N. has an idea of what she is getting into here (which is always useful) and was even here for a feeding therapy appointment that exhibited Hallie's averse and sensory tendencies around food. We try to be up front about Hallie's issues without detracting from her excellent points, though it nearly always feels like we are making excuses for her ('she has all these needs, but she is the sweetest girl in the world' starts to ring hollow for me). Thankfully N. was not put off by this and seems up to the challenge. So at least that's off our plate.

Still on our plate: testing (for the 3-5 early intervention ("Intermediate Unit") placement); preschool visits (more on this in the next post); and fighting the system. Also on our plate: two batteries of tests--one administered by the Center for Autism and the other by the annoying agency that administers IU in Philadelphia County. Makes ear tubes seem like a walk in the park.

Whew...two posts down and one more to go, but no promises that I'll get to finish, or even start it, before the dawn of March.