“Tell Santa what you want, Honey”

We went to an Easter Seals sponsored Santa event a week ago, and Nea was very disappointed that there wasn’t enough time to use her talker to tell Santa what she wanted. I programmed it to say “I want Lightning McQueen for Christmas” and “I want a racetrack for Christmas” and “I love you, Santa Claus.” (It has separate buttons for “please” and “thank you.”)

I mean, the Easter Seals event was nice enough. Irish dancers, cookies, a chorus of developmentally delayed adults that rang bells and sang. Nea pointed out that the soloist sounded just like Bert from Sesame Street. He really did. I thought that was a valid observation. But the meet-and-greet with Santa was really just a photo op. He didn’t have time to linger.

So today when Santa showed up at the preschool, and I just happened to be there, and we just happened to have the talker in her backpack, since Nea has her other school in the afternoon, and then we JUST HAPPENED to be able to tell him what we wanted. She was very happy and proud, and she navigated from the main page to the special topics page to the holidays page to the December page* and found her buttons and was all ready before it was her turn.

And I tried really hard not to cry.

*I told you that $7000 thing sucks.