Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Trick-or-Tree

Like many autistic kids with ADHD, Lily cannot be captured with traditional film speeds.
Fresh from our experiences overloading Lily's senses with Wobot the previous morning, we hid him, and resolved to present him to her only in exchange for a good breakfast "performance".  But Wobot isn't the only animatronic Halloween decoration in the house, so Lily just moved on to her next obsession. . . Trick-or-Tree, which sings a little modification of the Addam's Family theme song with a trick-or-treating theme.  It's a tree that sings, with owls living in it that hoot and bob.  At this point, it's not a huge stretch to just say, read "Wobot" and insert "Trick-or-Tree" wherever you see the word Wobot. 

Emma holds Wobot so Lily can get a pic with Trick-or-Tree
It went off quite a bit more nicely than that, but it's not a huge stretch.  She ate her happy toast, but while I fed her and she continued pushing Trick-or-Tree's blister switch (he's quite a bit easier to operate than Wobot) I couldn't get any other stuff done.  But she ate, and that's the majority of our morning stress, so it helped a lot.  Also, while it seemed to me that my wife essentially just skipped the morning stress by taking so long to get ready that everyone had eaten by the time she sat at the table (she was in fact making the bed, picking up laundry, and checking the kids' schedules for the day. . . ), she wasn't around to get overloaded and yell at me.  Not that she would have.  It was a much nicer morning.

At the end of breakfast, I got her Wobot.  I don't think it takes a technical degree or a huge background in math to understand that if one animatronic Halloween decoration is awesome, then two animatronic Halloween decorations must be twice as awesome. 

whatya mean kids don't find undead moaning dogs charming?
One additional happy discovery is that Mummy Dog, yet another animatronic Halloween decoration (and a mildly unsettling one at that) holds no novelty for Lily.  She treats it as she would treat any dog, saying, "woof woof" when it moans and howls, and kicking it.  (I don't know why she tries to kick all dogs.  And not in a mean way. . . more like she thinks it's fun to play by kicking.)

2 comments:

  1. That dog is freaking me out. I would kick it, too.

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  2. he is pretty freaky. You should hear his moaning bark. It echoes and sounds like he's in pain. My oldest daughter picked it out. Everyone in the house hates it but her.

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