What would a trip to Florida be without…

Lots and lots of pictures???

Hammocks on the little “beach” between our room and the convention hall.  The lake had a bunch of fish in it, with lily pads.  At night we just sat and listened to the frogs chirping in the trees.  We don’t have many frogs here, so the sound was just weird.

This sums up quite nicely what Piper thought of the 90-some degree heat plus 90-some percent humidity.  And I have to say, I completely and totally agree with her.  However, it would be far less cute if I had similar outbursts.

This is looking down on Piper from the top of her stroller.  I had the back down as far as it would go, but it still had a fairly good incline.  She would not calm down until she rolled on her tummy.  HOW this was comfortable, I don’t know.  It worked.  She was out for the entire session.

Piper played by herself on the floor during most of the sessions fairly well.  She got bored pretty easily and ended up falling asleep in most of them. 

She didn’t, however, enjoy being looked in the eyes by other similarly-aged kiddos.  Babies were fine, bigger kids were great.  Adults?  No problem.  But other toddler-ish kids?  NO THANK YOU.  I’m not sure what it was.  The only thing I kind of wonder is if she could tell that they weren’t “stable”, and it worried her when they were topple-y.  Who knows.  We don’t get group therapies here through EI, but I guess we’ll start looking into other options.  It was really weird.  She would even instigate play (reach for their faces, touch their hands), but as soon as they looked at her, she’d start to pout.  And you knew it was coming when her little lip would start showing.  Just weird…

Saturday night, we stopped into the big dance.  It was one of the most awe-inspiring events.  Ever.  I think it was really meant for the older kids/adults with Ds, but everyone was there.  The DJ even had Ds.  All the girls got dressed up in their nice dresses (some of them even in prom dresses) and had their hair done and pretty.  There were boys asking girls to dance, dads giving their sons high-fives when they came off the dance floor, moms giving their girls the courage to go out and dance, dads dancing with daughters…  It really showed that, no matter what happens in their lives, people with Ds have an awesome and amazing life ahead of them.  I really hoped that the moms who were in our group the day before could see it.  That they’d allow themselves to see the light between the clouds.