Torrefaction

Speaking of soy, here is a video of Charlie noshing on some soy butter.  He's not going near a peanut until he's 4 years old, with so many sensitivities already.



He's still working on the talky talky but as you can see he's mastered the basics. (Om nom nom is what I say when I am eating his toes, of course. )

Um, I do occasionally comb his hair. Honest!

Here's a video demonstrating the creepiness of the Leapfrog laptop.

Charlie loves it even more now that I've set it up to say his name, of course. 


Link here for those who prefer non-embedded vids.

This is the song they play when the Blackhawks score, or have a parade, or what have you.  It will never, ever, ever stop being stuck in my head after the past few days.  Fortunately it's a good song.  Also the video is full of pretty burlesque girls, so +1 for those of us who like that sort of thing. ( Cut in case burlesque girls are not your thing )

Because pnkrokhockeymom demanded it, here is a video of Charlie fake-sneezing.  Whenever I sneeze, he fake-sneezes and laughs (This is an improvement on his previous reaction, which was crying and clinging to me in fear).  Here I am fake-sneezing too, for the benefit of the camera, but this being springtime, I real-sneeze all the time, which makes for an amused (and amusing) toddler.  Coughing usually elicits more fakery but here he is too busy cracking up to bother with that.

non-HD-quality video is here if your browser doesn't like the embedded HD vid below.

We think "guh-GUH-guh" is Charlie-speak for "Gorilla" but we're not sure (he has sometimes said it when he wanted us to read "Good Night, Gorilla.")  He's only got a couple of words thus far (sigh) but recently he's starting to play more with baby talk.  At the beginning of this conversation we were both saying 3 syllables but he modified it to Guh GAAAH to amuse himself.  Or because he's trying to tell me something in Charlie-speak that I'm not getting!


[embedded video of me and Charlie saying Guh GUH Guh]

Here's Charlie testing out his prosthetic arm for the first time, while we and the RIC team try to decide if he should have a fixed elbow or a ratcheting hinge elbow.



Normally they want the kids to learn one joint at a time, so they start with a hinged thumb and a fixed elbow and then when he's learned to work with a wired thumb (that opens and closes through movement in a shoulder harness) they move on to a wired elbow. But the occupational therapists wanted to see how he'd do with a ratcheting elbow, that locks into 3 or 4 positions and then unlocks when it's bent all the way in to the shoulder. Based on how well it seemed to work when Charlie was crawling with it, we and the RIC team opted for the ratcheting elbow. It was cool to see the discussion and decision making process between the prostheticist and the OT who came to this session--they were very respectful and took turns explaining their thinking on the subject, and although the prostheticist was leaning away from the idea of the ratcheting elbow at first, she made up the arm with one for testing and after she saw him with it she was convinced and helped to convince us. Across the board, the people who are working with Charlie on this are really talented and professional, and everyone's been very flexible and seems excited to work with him. Toddler upper-limb prosthetics are still kind of unusual, particularly with elbow involvement--it's much more common, apparently, to be born missing a hand than to be missing both the hand and the elbow. So everyone we talk to is jumping at the chance to see and/or work with Charlie, which makes everything much easier.

The dinosaur-embellished version of the arm will be ready in a couple of weeks, when we go for his final fitting. What he's wearing here is the inner layer but there will be an outer layer that covers most of the hinge.

The "Literal Video Version" of  "Total Eclipse of the Heart" *


*Tori Amos did an awesome cover of this on one of her bootleg albums, by the way.

Everyone else posts their favorite youtubery in their blogs, so I'm going to jump on the bandwagon! However, I don't like coy linkage so I'm going to be all crazy and actually tell you what this video is before you click it.

This is Kate Bush and David Gilmour doing "Running Up That Hill" live. The synth parts from the album track are done here by Gilmour on guitar. Joy.


Normal link here.