Fall Craft

Junior loved the murals made from grapes when we visited the Grape Festival recently.
This pic is my sis and Junior(the pictures are all made from grapes, nuts, or grains grown in our area)
Today we decided to start fall off with a mural of our own. We used dried beans instead of grapes so it would last(lots cheaper also).
I drew a pumpkin on a piece of foam board(I am not and artist so don't look too close)
We painted glue on the part we were going to put beans on. Junior used garbonzo beans on the stem.
White beans for the pumpkin(we will later paint it orange),yellow/red split peas would have been perfect but I didn't have any.
Split peas around the bottom
Partly done, we will work on this all week

Video Chat - oh the possibilities

I know a lot of people use video chat all the time but last night was a first for us. I know this doesn't fall under true adaption but it is a way to open the world for a child who is at times stuck in the house for months at a time.

My parents live in NC, we are in CA and many of our other relatives are out of state as well.
Junior and grandma are very close and if anything happens (good or bad) he right away wants to call "a-ah"(grandma) and tell her.
His new computer recently arrived from the school district so yesterday I downloaded oovoo and we gave it a try. That try turned into a few hours hanging out with grandma. Junior loved it. He could see her face to face and that way she could see his face and know what he was answering herself. She could see his eye gaze and not depend on me to interpret and tell her what he was saying like we do during phone calls. He can't wait to show her what he is doing in school and his latest art projects. Of course he is looking forward to showing her how he does on his ipad as well. So many possibilities with video chat and I can't wait to see what ways we can find to use it in the coming school year.
Here are Junior and grandma chatting for the first time on video chat
Watching a tv program together
Grandma is going to start reading to him over video chat a few evenings a week which will be so neat for him. We are reading the Hardy Boys books at the moment so they are going to read the Little House series.

G Tube Pads - Belly Buttons

Junior turned 13 this past Saturday and one of his gifts was some Spiderman and Transformer g-tube pads. He thought they were very cool.

Ever since getting his GJ tube we have dealt with leaking and redness of Junior's tube site. A few months ago I tried some cloth pads and they made a big difference. His tube site looks much better. The cloth pads we got at that time did not hold up well and the material started to unravel.
We found Belly Buttons on FB and ordered some to try. As soon as we received them I could see that their construction was far superior to our other pads. The edges are finished so they can't unravel. The bottom is soft fleece with a fun pattern on the top, there is a small piece of velcro to hold them around the tube. Ours have been washed a few times now and still look new. Stop by
Belly Buttons on FB to see the many patterns. With the reasonable prices I will certainly be ordering more Belly Buttons in the future.

Junior's Belly Buttons
Junior also received some other fun gtube pads and I will share about those tomorrow.

I put this post on Junior's regular blog and since it deals with an adaption of sorts I thought I would share it here. It was Junior's first real experience using his head switch with his ipad via the switch interface.


I hope everyone had a very nice Labor Day.
We relaxed here at home and Junior enjoyed playing on his computer and Ipad.

Playing baseball
My goofy kid scored a run in the second inning and then turned to his ipad and told me he won.
Right after Junior told he won the computer froze so we had to stop. I then pulled out the ipad and his switch interface. With it taking us forever to get it figured out and then Junior being ill he hadn't tried it out yet.
We started with an app called Tap Sequence. I had recorded one of Junior's transformer books on it and added pics. Poor Junior the pics are ones that were in the app so don't match the story. Junior was very excited to be able to turn his own pages while listening to the story. Look at that face, I think he was trying to figure out how those pics could possibly go with the story.
The little black thing on his tray is the wireless switch interface that connects his head switch to the ipad.


Before getting out of his stander we tried out the Sounding Board app with his switch. Sounding Board is a communication app that is switch accessible. It is not what he uses so I hadn't programmed it for him. We just used one of the pre programed boards. I showed him what he needed to do to make his choice and then pulled up a leisure board. I asked what he wanted to do when he gets out of his stander. The highlighted box moves to a new symbol every 3 seconds and he clicks the switch when it gets to what he wants. Junior quickly chose "I want to watch tv". Being his very first time using this program I wanted to be sure he really understood and hadn't just hit his switch and it happen to be on the tv. I asked him to please show me one more time what he wanted. He sat and patiently waited for it to get back to " I want to watch tv" and then quickly hit the switch again(there were 9 choices on the screen). He very clearly got it and was very proud of himself. It was so neat to be able to have that large number of choices on the screen at one time and not worry about whether I could see what he was looking at. I just waited to hear his "voice" giving me his choice.
I then pulled up the yes/no board and asked if he wanted to get down(not sure why they have a black box for yes). He told me yes, several times. I think he wanted to make sure I realized he did indeed "get it", smart guy.
Now if there were just more switch accessible apps. Hopefully soon, very soon. We are looking forward to his current communication app(the one he uses with eye gaze) being made switch accessible(it is in the works).

Tomorrow Junior has therapy in the morning then a visit to Shriners for a cast change. Busy day.

And of course we are to 5 days in our countdown to Junior turning 13.