Elsie at Jabberwocky

I was usually too busy to take good pictures of Elsie while she was at camp with me and that's something I regret now because she was such a wonderful companion there. In years past she was a little shy and stuck close to me most of the day. But this year she really branched out and made friends. It was very heartwarming to see her extend a hand to help someone walk or feed a person with CP who could not feed himself. Like I said, I wish I'd taken more pictures, but here's a few I collected from other people's cameras.


Elsie would often ask about a person's particular disability and if that person could speak they would give her great answers about how their muscles worked differently than hers.


The girl in the center of this picture is named Elke. She is 13 and has a disability sort of like autism, but not quite. She and Elsie became good friends, bonding over their love of dolls and dolphin trivia. Here they are playing inside a large dollhouse type thing where they spent a lot of time. Their conversations were pretty great. Elsie, "Elke, did you know that dolphin babies are called calves?" Elke, "I am a dolphin baby." Elsie, "No, that's not true!"


Here we are at "prom night". Melissa, who communicates by moving her eyes left for "yes" and right for "no", asked me to be her date because she loves children and wanted to spend time with Elsie. Elsie was too nervous to help me feed her but later she held Melissa's hand and Melissa smiled brightly. Elsie also decided to draw all over herself with a magic marker that night.


The guy at the computer is Paul Remy, another person Elsie made a connection with. She fed him lunch and dinner a few times and worked on understanding his words.


The woman grabbing my hat is the world famous Susan Harrington. Elsie said she had seen her on tv.


The counselors made this sign was a prop for the camp play, "Fame". Note Elsie's reason for being in detention. Aww!


Sometimes Elsie would go off on field trips without me, a new and nice development. Here she is on the blueberry picking crew trying to encourage David to join in:



Elsie got to ride a horse, but only once and she would've like more chances. She trotted!



Beach time!





We want Theo and Maggie to come next year.