Ahhh! summertime. Nothing beats the long days at the beach, road trips, smells of people grilling out in the neighborhood, and fireworks. This summer we decided to forgo Scarlet's IBI therapy as we were pretty busy and felt she needed to have time to just be a kid. We left for Tennessee as soon as school was over and spent a week with Nana. Our good friend Mary accompanied us and made the trip even more fun. Scarlet saw her first fireworks display in the heart of Nashville on the 4th of July. I was worried about the noise level, but she laughed and looked on in awe with the rest of us. The great thing is she was oblivious to the brief stint of time we spent in the projects looking for a way out of a gridlocked city. There were days at the pool and a trip to the aquarium in Chattanooga. She took everything in stride. We came back to Ontario for Day Camp at the church where she participated in the mornings and a couple of afternoons. She LOVED Day Camp and was waiting very impatiently for us to leave every morning. It was so great to see her excited about the songs and activities. We left the day after Day Camp for Prince Edward Island and managed to arrive just for her birthday. Scarlet was so excited about going to PEI that she even said the words "PEI" twice in the car. We spent many hours at the beach and took a day at Avonlea village which is always a highlight. We went to Charlottetown on the rainy day and watched the young theatre company put on their musical about PEI history, the smile on her face was worth the whole trip. A man sitting beside us happened to have a foundation in PEI for autism, the only one on the island, he commented at how well she did. She sat for the whole presentation... with a lot of help from me. This is something we would have avoided just two years ago for fear of making a scene. It is just so nice to be able to enjoy some "normal" activities as a family. Perhaps the best part of this summer story is what happened upon our arrival home. We came home to some messages on the phone, one of which was from Kinark, the government agency that is responsible for funding Scarlet. She has been on their wait list for funding for three years... I found out today, that she has now reached the end of the wait list and has been taken on as a funded kid... we have finally arrived!!!!! Hip Hip Hooray!!!!
I have mentioned in the past that Scarlet has been given a voice output device. She was started on a device called the GoTalk which is very low tech, but good for starters. It has room for 5 pages of choices. Her choices include her favorite t.v. shows, her favorite books, and some therapy pictures. Scarlet's speech path put her in for a trial period for a high tech device called a springboard light. Scarlet has quickly outgrown the capacity for the GoTalk and needs another device. We were given this high tech device for two weeks to show that Scarlet could use it. During this trial time, I was to mark down every time she used the device and how it was used. The new device was like a porsche! It was super quick and had tons more choices. Scarlet took to it right away and was using it well. Our trial period happened to fall during our trip to Nashville so we took it with us wherever we went. On our way down to TN we stopped at a rest stop to eat our packed lunches and had the device with us. There were several people around us eating their lunches and they had noticed what we were doing. As we were finishing up I told Mary, our wonderful traveling buddy, that I was just going to feed Scarlet pears and then we could go. At this point, Scarlet pushed the "eat" button which audibly says "eat" followed by the "pears" button so that everyone around us heard her just respond to what I had said. You could hear the gasps from the people around us as they were amazed by a little girl who seems to have nothing going on, but is more than meets the eye. Unfortunately the new device had to be returned and we were left without a voice out put device at all, but thanks to Jesus who always meets our needs, and a little gentle persuasion, we were loaned another Go Talk until the end of August. Unfortunately it takes a couple of months for the "committee" to decide to loan us the springboard light, but we are waiting on God, not them, and his timing is always just right.
