Snow day and Eco2 internet access

Today was a snow day.  Horray!  Except that snow days are a lot of work for parents.  Maybe a bit more work for parents of special little ones like Emma.

We did have a lot of fun today, though.  The kids played outside for a while - lots longer than it took me to get them all bundled up in their snow gear.  That's progress I tell you!  Chris built Emma a seat out of the snow and she did well in it before she started sliding out and I started to worry she would be cold.  Once that happened I decided to bring out the KidWalk and get Emma upright in the snow.  She loved it and moved her little legs all around and we helped her move since her braces don't fit in her snow boots.  When it was time to come in the children piled into the house for some hot cocoa, playing and eventually watched a Christmas movie while I baked a few Christmas cookies and Chris set about making dinner.  It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon.

I was able to get some more adorable snow photos today.  I even took a few family photos and one was selected for our Christmas card.  I ordered the cards but it seems they might take until Dec. 24th to arrive so they could be {un}fashionably late this year.  Hey, at least I pulled it together to order the cards and that's more than I thought might happen this year.

Since Emma was home with her talker we configured it to play some online games.  She received money for her birthday so we purchased the computer portion of the talker (insurance requires it to ship without the computer activated if they purchase it so there is a fee if we want to be able to use it as a computer to connect to the internet) and I was anxious to figure out how to get it working.  I'm part of an online Facebook group of parents whose children use Minspeak - the language of Emma's Eco2 talker - and they gave me lots of tips on how to get it to work and we eventually got it up and running.  Emma was able to play a game on Helpkidzlearn.com before bed and she seemed to really like it.  I also downloaded and installed the trial version of Look to Learn for her to try based on another Mom's suggestion.  I gave it a shot and it worked well and I'm excited to introduce it to Emma this week.  We have the option to activate the WiFi part of the computer for another fee but we wanted to make sure we could get the computer part to work before we spent that money so for now we are using it wired.  I forgot how unportable and annoying it is to not be able to move around with an electronic device!  I think we might consider WiFi during the holiday and use the remainder of her birthday money to active it if Emma enjoys playing with the internet.  I expect she might like the games and watching some YouTube videos and interacting with those using her eyegaze should help her get more accurate with eyegaze access for her communication.  I expect Emma will make a lot of progress with her device for communication in 2014 but it will take a lot of work from her and us to get there.  Please pray for her communication if you are so inclined.