This is actually Big Girl's bath chair, but it doubles as a beach/lounge chair in the summer. We put it in the sprinkler for her to keep cool while Big Boy splashed in the pool and I pulled weeds in the garden. She loved being outside with us and playing with the water. We also put the chair in the deep part of the pool sometimes so she could just soak and splash with Big Boy.
Big Girl is trying to feed herself a little. This was the first time she tried to hold her own cup and I actually had a camera with me to capture the moment. She still has trouble not tipping the cup over and pushing it away. One of these days I'm going to try velcroing the bottom of the cup and the top of her tray to see if that will help. 
I made this poncho for her, and she loves it. It's adult-sized, so it covers her legs really well. It is SO much easier than trying to put a coat on her under all the positioning equipment she has on this wheelchair. Instead of unbuckling everything, wrestling the coat on, adjusting all the straps for the bulk of the coat, and then buckling everything back, I just throw the poncho over the top and tuck it in all the way around! Takes about 1/8 of the time!
We took the kids trick-or-treating at a retirement/assisted living home this year. Big Girl enjoyed dressing up like a princess and using her Dynavox, but she preferred to tell people all about herself instead of saying "trick or treat" and "thank you!" I had to keep bringing her back to the trick or treat screen.
If Big Girl gets upset, bringing out her Dynavox almost always brings a smile back to her face. Here she is telling me a joke and laughing to herself about it. One night recently, the battery was dead on the device, so I left it home charging while we went to a dinner. Big Girl fell apart, and without it, we couldn't recover. She was mad because she couldn't use it to tell us what was wrong, and possibly because she wanted to talk to people and had no way to do so. We had to leave early and she still cried the whole way home. That's a mistake I won't make again! I'll bring the power cord if I have to. But she has officially made it her voice and we can't go anywhere without it. Makes sense, really.
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I didn't get anything done on my projects this weekend. Friday night was that dinner I told you about, then Saturday my mom and I drove the girls to visit my sister and her new baby. Her church has an annual Ladies' Christmas Tea that we all attended. Big Girl loved eating the cookies, and Little Girl did pretty well munching on the pumpkin bread. My sister really enjoyed getting out with her baby to a social event. Fortunately, ny niece was doing MUCH better. The doctor thinks she has acid reflux, and it seems that he may be right because she had a great day Saturday on her new medicine.
That reminds me. I need to call and tell her a secret way I learned from pediatric nurses for getting babies to swallow medicine. If you put the medicine in their mouth, squeeze their cheeks together, and then gently blow on their face, they will catch their breath and swallow involuntarily. Works great! Unfortunately, they do eventually grow out of this reflex (it no longer works for Big Girl).
Anyway, Sunday we had a pizza dinner after church, then decorated for Christmas and worked on the set for our Christmas program, and then I went to see "Pride and Prejudice" with a couple girlfriends. It was so nice to go out for a little while and see a good movie. But I was exhausted by the time I got home, and poor Scott didn't know what to do with me. I was an emotional roller coaster and flipped from good mood to bad in a split second. Today has been better, but I slept pretty well last night and caught a cat nap this afternoon. Big Boy actually told me he was tired at lunch time. He ate most of his lunch and then said he wanted to take a nap! He slept from 12:30 until 3. Totally backwards from normal, but when the boy says he needs a nap, I put him to bed.
Time to make dinner. I also need to finalize our Christmas letter and start printing. I want to get my cards out this week.
