Beach Trip (and AAC on the road)

After flying in from ISAAC late last Thursday night I had two days to unpack, regroup, and repack before we headed out for a few days at the beach with my family.  We all had a delightful time (although I sadly had to skip boogie boarding this year, for obvious reasons). Maya not only loved being with her extended family, but she loved the ocean and the beach (last year she liked the beach, but not so much the ocean).  Great times were had by all.

But there was a little problem . . . one that other high-tech AAC users might anticipate, but many others might not see coming.  If you've ever been to a beach, you know that sand has a way of getting into everything, and never leaving.  Ever.  Because of this, there was no way we were going to bring the talker to the beach, with or without its fancy case (to be clear, we took it to the hotel, but not out on the actual beach).  And so I scrambled to come up with some sort of low-tech AAC system that would allow her to speak while playing in the sand and water.

What I came up with might not be perfect pedagogically speaking, but it was perfect for Maya.  And as I learn more about how to ideally incorporate AAC into daily life, I'm also learning that "ideal" is a hard place to aim if you're kind of Type A (which I sometimes am) and that maybe the most important thing is just to try everyday, to be mindful, to model, and to keep at it.

Let me show you what I came up with, explain how I did it (it's easy, you can do it too) and then point out how it can be modified to be a bit more ideal.

To put it simply, I made 3 boards, connected with a binder ring.  Here's Maya with the boards in action at the beach: 



 "I need more water in my bucket"

 "I'm in a hole" (dug with love by her daddy)

The first board consisted mainly of core vocabulary (only the core words that I thought would be most essential while playing in the sand), laid out in roughly the same orientation that she's used to on the main page of her communication app.  I also added in pictures for the family members who were on the trip with us. 

The second page was really the one that she used the most.  On this board I included fringe words that I thought she would need to talk at the beach.  I intentionally included blank spots for words that I didn't anticipate needing, and brought a few permanent markers along with me so that I could add things in on-the-go.  The words with the green backgrounds are verbs, which are colored according to the Fitzgerald key, if you're interested in that sort of thing (and they are literally colored, with a crayon, because I forgot to print them with green backgrounds and was too tired to do it again).

The organization of these words was done in a way that made sense to me---places went in a column down the left, the top row was beach-set-up stuff, verbs grouped together, etc.  This is not according to any system, I just thought it seemed organized and semi-intuitive.

(The third board, unpictured, contained tiles for all of the colors and a handful of other adjectives: hot, cold, wet, dry, clean, dirty, etc.)

If you're into the DIY details: The picture tiles were created and printed through the Custom Boards app by Smarty Ears.  The symbol language is Smarty Symbols, which is the icon language used by her communication app, Speak for Yourself (clearly, these are pretty basic boards and could be executed with any symbol language that you might be currently using). I cut the tiles out, organized them on blank sheets of computer paper, and taped them down with scotch tape.  Then I broke out the trusty lamintor, laminated & hole-punched.  (Seriously, everyone needs a laminator, especially if you're DIY-ing AAC stuff at home.)  A tip: if you're going to get homemade boards wet, hole punch the sheets of paper, then laminate, then re-hole punch, then run through the laminator again to seal the edges that you just punched.  I didn't think about this and we ended up with a little water leakage near the punch.

This system served us well, especially given the fact that we were on a 4-day vacation and I just wanted something simple that would give her words she needed without creating a system that was so complicated that she wouldn't want to engage with it on the beach (and we would all get frustrated).  Truth be told, it would have been easy to not use the boards at all--to just guess what she wanted (which isn't that hard on the beach) . . . but we're trying to encourage the most fundamental truth of using AAC---something should be there to give Maya the ability to independently say what's on her mind, instead of us guessing while she either says yes or no. 

A few other ideas: A twitter friend (and actual AAC expert) mentioned to me after returning home the possibility of laminating boards/cards/strips of words and attaching them to Styrofoam for accessibility in the water---how brilliant is that?  Then I started to think about how you could attach words to tons of things----for example, the bucket could have words taped to the side with packing tape (bucket, full, empty, fill, dump, pour, sand, water, in, out).  There are a lot of possibilities if you figure out a way to make word tiles and have clear packing tape and a laminator.

It seems to be a good idea to have some sort of low-tech back-up system in place, for beach trips or pool trips or for other messy things that aren't jumping to mind right now.  If I wanted to improve this system of pages-on-a-binder-ring, and make it more advanced, it would likely involve printing some screen shots of the pages on her app for consistency's sake.  There are some issues, though, with how much flipping it would take to build thoughts/phrases/sentences.  I'm not really sure what the ideal solution would look like at this moment (and I say "at this moment" because a low-tech solution that would be ideal for 4 year old Maya would likely be different than what would become ideal for 5 year old Maya).

For now, this was good enough.

A few other beach pictures:

Boogie boarder in training

Maya & Dave

Feeding the seagulls

All 3.8 of us

  
Disclaimer: As always, I am not an SLP or an AAC specialist, I'm just the mom of an AAC user and I'm primarily figuring out and teaching her how to use her system on my own.  I'm sharing what I've figured out in an effort to help the other parents who are driving their own AAC buses, but take what I do with a grain of salt----I try to use all of the best practices that I've learned/seen, but I'm probably making mistakes as I go. Also, I am not affiliated with (nor do I make any money from) the apps mentioned in this post.

 

When (semi) good pictures go (painfully) bad

We just got back from a fantastically relaxing beach trip with my family.  Maya had fun playing with her cousins, and the extra adults around meant that we had 3 cameras out and about for spontaneous photoshoots.  On the last night we were there, my dad used my camera and took the following series of photos.

(Right before we took these I said to Dave "I'll be in the stupid pictures, but I'm not using them on the blog or framing them or anything---this shirt is too billowy and unflattering, and my hair is all beachy and wind-tangled.  (grumble)"   But then . . . well, you'll see . . . so I'm swallowing my pride and sharing them anyway . . .)

Dana: Cheese!

Dave: Cheese!

Maya: Cheese!

Dana: Cheese!

Dave: Cheese!

Maya: Cheese!

Dana: Cheese!

Dave: Cheese!

Maya: Guys, this is kind of getting old.

 Dana: Cheese!

Dave: Cheese!

Maya:  Seriously.  I'm getting really bored.  Can we do something else?

Dana: (sigh) Cheese (sigh)

Dave: Cheese!

Maya: Really . . .anything else.  There must be something else to do up here.

Dana: Cheese!

 Dave: Cheese!

Maya: Hey!  Mommy, I'm over your head!  I think I can even reach your hair!

Dana: Chee---Hey, is something on my head?

Dave: Cheese!

Maya: I CAN REACH YOUR HAIR!!!!!! 

Dana: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Dave: Pictures are so relaxing . . .

Maya: Gotcha!  (cackling)  I told you guys I was bored!  Take that!

Dana:  Ayyyyyyyyyy!!!  My hair!  I need to save the hair I have left!

Dave: I wonder what we'll do tomorrow.  I hope we go back to the beach.  I should open my eyes but I'm just too relaxed.

Maya: Hair is like a handle for your head.  This is SO FUN! 

Dana: Seriously, I have tears in my eyes.  Someone get this child to release me.

Dave: Wait.  What's going on here?  Dana, stop making that face.  We're supposed to be taking pictures.

Maya: I'm not letting go.  Ever.

(Giveaway coming sometime between now and Monday.  It's not a big prize, but it's something fun---one of Maya's favorite things.)

Time out

This blog will resume after a brief beach-y hiatus.

(A few pics may appear on the Facebook page if I can swing it from the iPad.)

:)

Lessons learned on vacation

We spent a long weekend visiting family and learned several important lessons:

1.  Maya learned that if Daddy says "Sure, you can drive" it likely means we're just sitting in the car and not moving (but it's still pretty fun).

2.  I learned that if I need to rinse out the milk bottle and Dave says "Dude, just roll down the window and dump it out.  It won't fly back up at the car." he is being sarcastic.  Very sarcastic.

That says "extensive splatter".  A phrase typically reserved for crime scenes somehow fits our vacation photos.  Also, milk + 90 degree heat = a delicious smelling car.

3.  Dave learned that Maya's got jokes.  You think he would already have learned that, but I guess not.  This was the first time ever that he played his favorite kid joke on her (if you know him in real life, you've probably seen this one in action) . . . and she showed him.  "Fool me once, shame on you . . . fool me twice, there will be payback."

A few vacation pics, and a hearing non-update

We had our big hearing evaluation on Tuesday.  The good news is that her hearing appears to be better than we thought after the ABR . . . she may not even need hearing aids (that's yet to be determined).  The tricky news is that we did 3 different types of evaluations, and each yielded different data . . . so, what does that mean?  Basically it means that, per usual, we remain in some sort of undiagnosed limbo with more testing on the horizon.  Hmm, that feels familiar.  The next appointment is tomorrow.

That aside, we had a fantastic mini-vacation upstate for the long holiday weekend.  (Even Parker came and enjoyed).  A few pictures from a hike we took:

A hiking girl

(Re)united and it feels so good . . .*

We had an awesome weekend. 

Our first ever weekend road trip since Maya was born, and Maya's first hotel stay.  On Friday night we drove to my sister's place, where Maya ran (and fell) in the yard with her cousins nonstop for 4 hours straight.   I would have taken pictures, but I don't think it would have been physically possible to get all of the kids in the same frame anyway . . . and I was too busy stuffing myself with lobster rolls and homemade desserts to try :)  The running may have overtired her a bit, as she cried hysterically for most of the remaining drive to the hotel. 

We were a little nervous about her sleeping abilities in hotel room port-a-crib (pack n play), but she was super psyched to see a "special crib":

My own room?!?  And a special crib?!?  This is fantastic!

Saturday morning we went over to an old friend's house for a brunch playdate . . . which sounds normal enough.  Except for the fact that we've never met before.  Or spoken on the phone.  She's a friend that I "met" online---a few years back, and have since traded email, chatted online, etc. 

I'm betting that half of the people reading this are thinking "Cool!  I wish I could meet up with some of my online friends!" and the other half are thinking "Isn't talking to strangers on the internet an activity reserved for homicidal maniacs and pedophiles?"  

But really, I'm lucky enough to have "met" a bunch of amazing online friends (remember those awesome cardboard party animals?  They came from one.  And when we needed extra scrabble tiles to add Parker's name to Dave's scrabble plaque another internet buddy sent some over.).  And besides just mailing me stuff (lol), these are people who celebrate each other's victories and lend a lot of support in times of struggles.  So don't knock "imaginary" friends until you've tested the waters.

Hello, friend.  (See, we don't look that weird.  No homicidial maniacs here.)

And Maya loved playing with some new friends, too.  Every time that we're around other kids I feel some inner part of me holding my breath for Maya.  A little voice that thinks "Will they think it's weird that she doesn't talk to them?  Or that she walks a little bit differently than they do?" But her two (adorable) girls were oh-so-ready to play with Maya . . . they ran, played with chalk, jumped (or bounced, in Maya's case) on a trampoline :) They had even learned some signs to do with her . . . how sweet is that?

Ok, ladies, we've got the chalk.  What's the game plan here?  A landscape scene?  Animals?  Scribbles, perhaps?

After brunch, it was on to my 10 year college reunion.  An afternoon of running on the green and catching up with friends, followed by an evening of dinner, drinks and on-campus fun.  My dad came up to babysit Maya at the hotel so we could have a child-free evening (and Dave's parents babysat Parker for the weekend, so we were dog-free as well).

We returned this morning and I went out to check the pigeon (I had a feeling the hatching would be soon, because some other pigeon was visiting last Thurs & Friday---I had never seen him/her before, and I thought it might be a sign that something was changing).  Sure enough, one of the eggs had hatched---apparently just before we got in---the chick was still wet and wiggly.

Baby pigeon butt sticking out from under mom, with the other (unhatched) egg in the foreground

I left the video camera running for a while, with the hopes of catching footage of the other egg hatching.  No dice, but I did get to see Mama Pigeon (MP) pushing the egg back under her, which was pretty cool:




I think I mentioned before that baby pigeons are seriously the weirdest looking animals ever---bright yellow, gangly, awkward.  You may have nightmares.  You've been warned.

I had to refill Parker's dog food container tonight, which really bugs MP (you may remember that this refilling procedure was what first outed her prescence to us).  Anyway, sure enough, she flew onto the terrace railing while I refilled . . . and of course, I had my camera and video camera ready just in case she decided to leave.  I slipped off my rings and put them next to the baby for a size comparison---it's tiny and so weird looking:

Here it is wiggling:

(Don't worry, MP was back on the nest as soon as I walked away.  She picked an unfortunately high traffic area for her nest, but she seems to have quickly gotten used to Dave and I puttering around.)

We're waiting to see if the other egg hatches too.  I feel like I don't have time to do any cool animal behavior stuff anymore, so the universe has brought me my own little case study, right onto my terrace :)

A fantastic trip from start to finish :)

In other news, Maya's ABR is on Tuesday.  I'm nervous, and I feel bad for her poor little unsuspecting self.  But I'm going to not think too much about it until tomorrow night.

Honestly, who sits like that

(Maya's fever was better today--much lower (101ish) and she was fever free for a chunk in the middle of the day.  I'm hoping tomorrow may be the end of it.)

When we were in VT, we went out to eat at this awesome place called American Flatbread in Burlington (fantastic pizza, great microbrews).  Anyway, Maya was sitting across from me (I couldn't see her legs under the table) and Dave said "Oh, Maya!  Come on, sit right.  Honestly, who sits in a chair like that . . .?!"   And then he turned to look at me:

Turns out that we both sit with our left leg up (see, both of us!).  Why is that?  Some weird genetic hip thing?  If I'm driving long distances, I tend to drive with my left leg up, too (unless any of you are cops, and then I definitely don't do that).  Sometimes I sit with both legs up (which is how Maya sits in her stroller, and in the car seat).  I never sit with only my right leg up. 

Any other one-leg-up'ers out there?  Is the left leg more common or something?

I remember the happier days . . . (from Maya)

 . . . when I was on vacation.  Times of eating ice cream . . .

and gazing out at the sea . . . (ok, at the lake.  whatever.)

But now I'm home, and sick.  Bad fever sick.  Trying to sleep my way through the day (here at a doc appt) and the night too. 

But I have a feeling that my mom will be up worrying all night :(

We've returned

After a longggg day in the car, I'm not uploading and recapping now :)

But I have to throw something up to say:

1. We're back, and beat, but happy :)

2. WE HIT 200 FACEBOOK FANS!  Pretty cool stuff.

Maya and Parker want to say"Thanks for tuning in!":

Wait, that was Parker saying "Something here smells yummy" and Maya saying "Parker get your nose away from my tushie!"   Let me try again.

Hmm, this is Maya saying "Parker, you eat this grass now.  You're allowed to, I promise (wink)" and Parker saying "Maya, you are always trying to get me in trouble . . . but this does smell good."  Back to the drawing board.

Parker: Are we done yet?

Maya: Parker, look!  Now I'm a doggie, too!

(sigh)

There we go :)

Video plug. I mean, a video, and a plug.

1.  Maya's blueberry picking (and smushing) video has been uploaded to our Facebook page.  If you're not a fan already, you can get there by clicking the icon to the right, or searching "Uncommon Sense Blog" on Facebook.  (You DON'T even have to be on Facebook to see our page---because it's set to "public", so feel free to check it out even if Facebook scares you!)

2. If you're not already a Facebook fan, become one!  Just click "like"!   We're currently at 190 fans, and it would make my day week year to hit 200 fans :)  Do you know someone with a child with special needs?  Someone who likes poodles?  Someone who is losing hair?  Forward us along :)

Dolphins (?) and berries and storms, oh my! (VT, Day 4)

Yesterday Dave tried to get Maya really jazzed to go to the ECHO center in Burlington.  We had never been, but heard it was a cool hands-on aquarium for kids.  Dave told Maya all about how she'd see dolphins, maybe even a whale . . . instead, she saw a turtle: 

(Addendum: As I looked up the website to hyperlink it, I found that it is, indeed, an aquarium. But if you've ever been to any other aquarium, it's probably not what you're expecting.)

And some fish, to be fair.  But the center was kind of a bust . . . more of an eco-center, not an aquarium.  Really fun if you have a 5 or 6 year old, not so much for 2.   But we made up for it by going to Ben & Jerry's afterwards, where she got to see more (you guessed it) COWS!

After naptime, we packed a great picnic and were really excited to go to the evening blueberry picking session at Owl's Head Farm.  There was a Dixieland band under a canopy and we set up our blanket and headed out to get the berries.  Much to our surprise, Maya quickly got the idea of berry picking and was really into it:

Unfortunately, she's a quick little thing, and did some fancy fingerwork---she would pretend to drop her berry in the container, but instead would nimbly grab up 2 or 3 more berries from the bottom, and then smush them all and stare at the mess in her hand.  (Dave may have a cell phone video of this---it will be uploaded sometime soon if it came out.) So she didn't get to help pick for too long.

We noticed the sky was looking, um, ominous . . . so Dave went to quickly pick berries as I gave Maya a snack.  When he returned with berries, the sky was looking even darker.  We could hear the lightening across the valley between 2 mountains, and we were really hoping it would blow by.  We danced to the band and took some quick pics:

Dave, open your eyes

Maya, open your eyes

Ok, Maya, look a little less startled

Aw, that's sweet.  (But see the makings of the storm?)

Then it got darker and a cold wind started to blow, and we ran (ok, briskly walked----but I did yell to Dave "Forget me, save yourselves!" as he motored ahead of me with the stroller).  It rained so hard that we had to pull over driving home, because I thought we might hydroplane off the road.  We had our picnic in the car instead :)

And today?  Today was Maya's first beach trip :)