Hallie-isms

Hallie is extremely fond of a good metaphor.  Here are just two recent examples:  Papers fluttering in the breeze "look just like leaves on the tree."  The argyles on her socks this morning "look like diamonds; they are just like the kites flying in the sky."  So I suppose that we should not have been surprised when she came out with the following the other night:

Hallie and Sharon were in the bathroom for pre-bedtime hanging out on the potty.  Hallie let out a very loud fart and exclaimed, concerning the constipation that apparently was the underlying cause of this:  "Mommy, there's a traffic jam in my tushie!"  We found this hilarious and quite clever.  And also promise to delete this post from our blog before it can become a source of embarrassment to our poor kiddo. 

***

On an unrelated matter, Hallie apparently has apparently embraced the roles that Sharon and I have carved out for ourselves (by design or by necessity).  The other morning, Hallie was talking about an upcoming visit with friends and family (loosely based on a melding of a real impending outing with an imagined one fashioned after an episode of Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse).  She was describing how she'd be taking a choo-choo train and said, "I'll sit next to Hannah and Adam and right near my friends Eliza and Taylor.  Mommy will be in the diamond car."  I innocently inquired:  "where is Mama going to sit, Hallie."  Hallie pointed to me and stated, emphatically:  "You're staying here Mama.  You'll be in the kitchen, cooking."   I guess she notices that I do all the cooking around here, no?  Given Hallie's relationship to food, however, I am not sure whether this is a compliment or an insult.

***

The outing that we went on, to a local farm/orchard/pumpkin patch, was organized by our friend Anne, mom to the one and only Eliza Grace.

The farm hosted a small array of barnyard animals, a wagon ride around the stable, some toy tractors and John Deere trikes that the kids could toodle around on in the yard, pumpkins to pick and to decorate, and pony rides.  Our kids loved the animals the most and Lea was thrilled to have a chance to ride the horsies.  They also got into painting their pumpkins and listening and dancing to the band.

Halloween has long been one of Hallie's favorite holidays.  I'm not sure if it's the dress-up aspect (she loves clothing adorned with witches, and pumpkins, and ghosts, etc, as well as full-on costumes), the controlled spookiness of it all (Hallie has been talking about goblins and other scary creatures of late), or just the chocolate (the kid does love her chocolate, but only the plain stuff).   Or maybe it's the fact that she came home from the hospital ten days before Halloween and this is the first holiday of the year that she spent with us?  Who knows.  Whatever it is, it's great fun to see her so happy.  And since Hallie's happiness is infectious, we all end up smiling a lot this time of year, too.

Hallie astride the biggest pony at the farm:

Hallie and Lea dancing around and being silly.

Lea taking her turn on the pony.

Me giving Eliza Grace a ride.

 She also rode a pony and looked good doing it.

And of course the kids had fun clamoring on a miniature John Deere tractor.

A great time was had by all.  Unfortunately, Hallie did develop the sniffles by late in the afternoon.  In retrospect, she appears to have been developing a cold all week (hopefully not a result of the flumist.  Now that she had her bout of pneumonias, I do think it's time to return to the conventional flu shot instead).  But she began to seem run down by late in the day yesterday and has gotten worse throughout the day today.  By tonight she was running a fever of close to 101 degrees.  We're hoping that preemptive flovent and albuterol will keep the junk out of her lungs.  Please cross your fingers on this one since we really cannot (or at least do not wish to) return to the cycle of pneumonias that plagued our kiddo for the better part of last winter and spring.

Christmas and Beyond: A VERY Belated Post

As Sharon just helpfully pointed out, I never did manage to do the Christmas post. I have also not managed to post much of anything else. The heart is willing, but the blogging hands are tired is all I have to say. Things have been nutty around here lately: we are currently experiencing a rare moment (that I am no doubt jinxing as I type this) when both kids are well, but between Thanksgiving through the end of the first week of the New Year, one or the other kid was sick, and quite dramatically so. Then they both recovered but Nadia, our mother's helper/nanny, contracted pneumonia (unrelated to Hallie's; she came back to work on Monday already showing symptoms of distress) and she's been out of work most of the week. So I've been doing pretty much all of the daytime childcare AND trying to prepare to start teaching full time again in a couple of days. Needless to say, blogging has suffered.

So, in the spirit of trying to catch up before the proverbial crap hits the fan, here goes:

Christmas:

We have crappy pictures that do not do justice to how much fun the kids, and especially Hallie, had at Aunt Laura's on Christmas eve (sadly, Santa neglected to leave us a D-SLR under the tree; we are trying hard not to believe we were on the naughty list). Both of the girls were thrilled to see their cousins and things got even more fun after Hallie cracked open a Christmas cracker and found a very small ball inside. She located a cardboard tube from some wrapping paper and initiated a game of 'blow the ball through the tube' with Hannah. What's notable here is that it was Hallie who came up with the idea for this game.

As usual, Hannah was thrilled to play with Hallie. She is a great older cousin and Hallie has benefited so much from being around her quite a bit this year.

Lea had a lot of fun, too. She spent a considerable amount of time at the chalkboard practicing her writing skills:

Now, while she did not in fact write the names on the board, she is really interested in writing/drawing because she sees Hallie doing it so often. She can smell a crayon a mile away and she has successfully drawn a few scribbles on our easel at home. She also enjoys biting off and swallowing the tips of crayons, so we tend to keep her away from them as much as possible.

We ended our Christmas eve soiree by going outside and scattering reindeer food for Rudolph & co. As you can see, we still had a whole lot of snow left over from the two-foot snowfall of the previous weekend. I find it much easier to believe that Santa comes flying in on his reindeer-driven sled when there is some snow to cushion the landing. And, since Sharon had been tracking Santa's progress via an app downloaded on her iPhone, we knew that the big guy was getting near and that it was time to get the kids in bed.

By the time we got back to Grammy's that night, Hallie was thoroughly exhausted. Perhaps she was coming down from a slight sugar high (her Christmas eve dinner consisted of two two-bite brownies; what they lack in nutrition, they make up for in calories). She opened her Christmas jammies, put them on, hit the bed, and crashed for the night.

As is typical, Lea completely came into her own just as Hallie was going down for the night. (This has become a source of great distress to me, by the way, since it bodes poorly for me getting my work done in the evening after Hallie goes to bed).

The first project that Lea undertook was stealing (and eating) Santa's cookies:

Then she moved on to Grammy's dish of Peppermint Patties. She found the shiny silver paper very alluring and the minty chocolate contents even more:

The kids slept in, but we finally shook them out of bed around 10:00am. Hallie clearly had no idea that Santa, Mommy and Mama, and Grammy had left a huge number of presents under the tree for her and Lea. It took a bit of time for us to manufacture the requisite excitement of opening presents on Christmas morning, but by the time Hallie was done, we think she got it. She certainly was into the presents -- which is not at all surprising and, for several weeks running, would regularly ask to open more presents from Santa. This, of course, was reinforced by the fact that we saw lots of good friends and family after Christmas was over and exchanged gifts with them then. I think that by the time New Years Day came around, Hallie was pretty convinced that every day is Christmas.

Anyway, I digress. The big ticket item that Santa got Hallie was a red guitar.

By evening Hallie was strumming away at it quite naturally. We've downloaded an iPhone app to help us tune it but we've yet to find an app that will prevent Hallie from turning the keys and loosening the strings again.

Hallie especially enjoys playing along with the Wiggles and Muno (from Yo Gabba Gabba). Lea's gotten in on the act, too. While the little red guitar is way too big for Lea (which of course does not stop her from cruising over to the guitar stand and plucking at the strings and occasionally threatening to drag the whole thing down on top of herself), she has taken to putting the guitar strap over her head (yes we watch her carefully when she does this, and the strap has a 'breakaway' feature) and playing the toy electric guitar that we inherited from brother Jake. She is so cute and so smart and reminds us a lot of Hallie in a very, very good way.

Of course, Lea got her own musical gift from Santa. Here she is unwrapping her Bee Bop Baby Band set:

She enjoyed the band set, but her real thrill came when she emptied her stocking. Here she is sampling her binkies:

In this next shot, Hallie is posing with her favorite gift of the day, which Grammy got her:

This remains her favorite and, today, several weeks after Christmas, Hallie took a bath with the Wonder Pets figures (we think she is partial to Ming Ming) and had them floating in a makeshift flyboat.

Grammy let Santa know what she was getting Hallie, so he also brought her a Super Hallie cape so that she could be just like her heroes. Unfortunately, the tight velcro around the neck bothers her, so we need to fashion a device to make it a bit looser for her. I think that one of the new mitten clips that we bought would work just fine. (Several times now Hallie has helpfully informed me, when I have inquired about the whereabouts of one of her mittens or gloves, that she 'put it on the floor' -- meaning that she had thrown yet another mitten onto the sidewalk during one of our walks. Even at three dollars a pair on sale at the Children's Place, all of these lost mittens have begun to add up so I've diverted our resources toward the purchase of super cute mitten clips from Etsy; one of them can be repurposed for our little super hero's comfort).

After we finished unwrapping our gifts and had time to test all of them out, Aunt Laura and Uncle Bryan and the extended family brought over Christmas dinner. The kids had a blast playing together and Hallie was very much part of the mix. Here, Hallie is playing with her cousins Hannah and Adam and their cousin, Quinn. The three older kids got Nintendo DS's for Christmas and Hannah shared hers with Hallie after Hallie asked for a turn. Hallie loved being part of the older kids' games.

She also really enjoyed pretending to be one of the five little monkey jumping on the bed and alternatively rough housing and cuddling with her cousin. Hannah makes Hallie very happy and I know that the feeling is quite mutual:

Lea also enjoyed playing with her cousins in her own Lea-like way. Here she is running her hands through Adam's hair (which is super thick). Adam was great because he also tolerated lots of face-patting (and slapping) and hair pulling from his littlest cousin.

We left Grammy's exhausted and in good spirits. The next day, more fun was in store because we had Boxing Day plans with Anne, Eliza Grace, and her Nana. Hallie was super excited when we pulled up at Nana's condominium complex. She knew exactly where we were (she has a phenomenal memory and sense of direction; perhaps she can get us out of all of those jams where we get lost and circle round and round when she gets a bit older). And she was thrilled to be there.

Here's a lovely shot of Anne with Hallie and Eliza:

We hung out all day, exchanged gifts, played hard, ate a couple of meals together and generally enjoyed the company of good friends. We love it that we manage to get Hallie and Eliza together pretty regularly and wish only that we all lived even closer to one another.

The girls ended the day with a nice bath and had a brilliant time splashing around in the tub and playing with Eliza's excellent array of tub toys:

After her bath, though, Hallie's face got very flushed--which is always a sign of a fever--and I became a bit worried. She seemed a tiny bit warm, but the condo was very hot (we had the oven on to cook dinner), and we attributed her slightly more subdued nature to lots of play and no nap. Hallie kept wanting to pretend to take a nap in Eliza's bed, and I suspect that she really did want to sleep, but there was too much going on to really settle down.

That was the evening that Hallie came down with pneumonia. Thankfully that's a thing of the past...at least where Hallie is concerned. Now let's keep our fingers crossed that Nadia (our nanny) recovers in time to take over for me when I need to return to work on Tuesday...

Stay tuned for more (and hopefully shorter and less delayed) developments in the life of our little family during the month of January....

Social Stories and the Importance of Experiencing Rituals

Chanukah is behind us and Christmas is right around the corner. We are a sort-of hybrid family: I was raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition but have always loved the holiday decorations we were never permitted to have; hence, I am a big fan of Christmas trees, jack-o-lanterns and spooky spiders, and could be easily convinced to array our home in turkeys and bunny rabbits, too. Sharon is a 'mutt' (her phrasing, not mine) whose ancestors include Ukrainian Jews, Anabaptists from Germany, and Catholics from Ireland. Her dad was raised Protestant (his family was not a big fan of either Jews or Catholics); her mom was raised Catholic but by a Jewish mother who never converted; and she and her sister attended Catholic school as kids, celebrated Chanukah and Passover with their Jewish cousins as kids and Christmas at home, and both now identify as Jewish but this is more of a cultural (read: food) identity than a purely religious one. Anyway, since holiday traditions are important to the family, we are interested in sharing these with our children.

The sticky part is that children on the spectrum (or at least Hallie; as the old adage goes, if you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person) don't always 'get it' when you discuss traditions with them. Indeed, it's sometimes unclear to us what Hallie understands when we tell her stuff. She is clearly bright, and she clearly knows so much (to recap again, well before she turned two she identified all letters of the alphabet; could match colors and shapes and identify them by name--though not speak their names; could count to twenty (some of her first words were numbers); and is okay with following simple directions when you ask her to do something tangible (as long as she 'hears' you and doesn't get distracted). But she has auditory processing issues, is a visual learner, and most likely has some variety of Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder. She still cannot answer simple questions effectively and it's not clear that she gets abstract concepts at all. So, for example, if you ask Hallie what her favorite color is, she'll just tell you what color she is wearing that day. And, if you have just explained to her the entire Santa story (Santa brings toys for good girls and boys; he comes down the chimney on a sleigh that is pulled by reindeers; he eats cookies and milk; and he leaves the presents under the tree) she might a. bring you a stuffed Santa; b. bring you a stuffed reindeer; c. point to the Christmas tree in our living room and say "My tree! I love my tree!" and d. unwrap a present if you are unwise enough to have one under the tree already.

What she will not do is put it all together. So, if you ask her, 'who pulls Santa's sleigh?' she'll echo "Santa!" If you ask her what she wants Santa to bring her, she'll answer "Christmas!" She makes connections, and she knows all the words ('present' is a favorite of hers and she loves opening packages and boxes and thinks that all of their contents are hers), but she has no sense of how these things work together and cannot grasp the abstract concept of the Santa Claus story. I suppose that this means that she will avoid the trauma of finding out that none of this is real and that mommy and mama ate all the cookies, but the problem is that we so want her to believe. This is a rite of childhood, of innocence.

I talked with her preschool teacher about this last week. Kristen brought it up with me, and not the other way around. She had the kids make some reindeer food for Rudolph & co. and Hallie had a great time playing in the oatmeal. But she had no idea what she was doing. And both of us sensed that this is a global problem, not a localized, reindeer-related one. She happily and cheerfully follows directions and transitions beautifully from one activity to the next; she loves doing what the other kids are doing during group activities and is an avid listener to stories during circle time. But she has no idea why she is doing what she is doing; she merely goes with the flow because this is what is expected of her and Hallie, if nothing else, is an aspirant teachers' pet who would like to make a good impression (except for when she wants to test her limits with us, her moms, or with Miss Flaura, her guardian angel/PCA at school). But we would like her to understand what she is doing, and not just do it.

Not understanding stuff often leads to sensory overload for Hallie once an activity is no longer quite so structured. For example, she loves music time at school beyond imaginable belief and knows all the words to songs and will sing them when she is comfortable. But she has no idea that they are planning to have the kids perform Christmas songs at the church where preschool is located in front of an audience of all the kids' families and that there is a Christmas pageant followed by a dinner. I am sure that this has been explained to all the kids, but Hallie cannot process this information. So, on Tuesday night, when this event happens, she will once more come un-moored and look for some corner in which to hide.

How do we deal with this as parents? The only thing that I think can work is constructing a very concrete social story for Hallie and using her peers (props, I suppose) to act this stuff out. I have been telling her about the performance, but I know she isn't understanding me. On Monday, should school not be canceled due to snow, I will walk her to the church where the performance will be, and will show her the dais, and have her go up on it, and will sing a couple of the songs with her there (we have a list of songs provided to us parents in the preschool family newsletter and they're pretty standard fare). I will talk to her teachers and Miss Flaura about the need to explain this social story to her, too. Maybe, if things are concrete enough (she will have been in the church, on the stage, singing) she will feel less lost this time around and won't be quite as overwhelmed as she was at the Summer Camp musical and the Hallowe'en costume parade).

Enacting the Santa ritual will be harder. It would be most helpful to be at our own home and show it to her, preferably in the company of a couple of other children who already know what they are doing, so that she has a body memory of this event. That's what really helped with Halloween. While the teachers had been talking about Halloween and had the kids make various holiday-themed crafts (they picked and decorated their own pumpkins and fashioned jack-o-lanterns out of paper bags and orange paint and spiders out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners) and had the kids parade around in costume, the significance of all of this eluded Hallie who just thought of these as regular old craft making/art and pretend play. What really worked for her was having Eliza Grace here and experiencing the magic of getting into costume and trick-or-treating alongside the other kids on our block, who were similarly decked out. That made things real for Hallie and lent them significance, and she continued to talk (in her own word-economizing fashion) about trick-or-treating with Eliza Grace for weeks after the event.

We'd love to replicate this sort of body memory production where Christmas is concerned but we don't have other kids with whom we can do this. It is kind of socially unacceptable to lure a couple of Santa-believing children to our home with promises of presents provided to them on Christmas morning just so we can make this part of things come alive for Hallie. Lea is obviously far too young to understand anything right now, though I suspect that, later on in life, Lea will probably do a lot of translating of ritual and abstraction for her big sister. And Christmas is one of those holidays where it is difficult to get people to alter their particular family practices, particularly when no one quite understands that your child, who is on the autism spectrum, isn't going to just figure this stuff out for herself because, after all, the other 99% of all children have done so with no special parental effort.

It's sometimes hard to be a parent of a kid who doesn't quite fit in to the typical world. It makes you empathize with your kid on the spectrum: it's a weird world out there with a ton of social codes and rituals that seem odd and that moves at a very fast pace. Figuring out how to slow this down and make sense of it for your child so that they can mind meaning in this bizarre universe is our job as Hallie's parents. We'll figure something out; Sharon and I always do. But there's no question that it could be, and should be, easier.

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).