The Land of Noa has MOVED to a new site - Follow Us There!!!

The Land of Noa has moved to: http://thelandofnoa.wordpress.com/

Yes, after trying rather hopelessly to make myself love Blogger, I've mad the move to Word Press. But don't worry, I've moved everything over to the new blog (and much to my amazement it all made the journey!), and this version of the land of Noa will always be here.

If you're a resident of The Land of Noa on Blogger, you'll have to sign up to follow on the new one.
See at the new place!
-- Jeni

FUN WITH FRIENDS!!!

And so now some photos of some of our adventures in Idaho this year. One thing that was extra fun and exciting for Noa was that we had a lot of company and so she had a lot of folks to hang out with (and boss around)!

Joy Lynn, who is one of Noa's NYC BFF's spent about 10 days with us hanging out with Noa. Noa was soooo happy to have Joy Lynn around that whenever Ben or I would so much as say hello, Noa would wave us off with "Mommy Bye Bye Bye" or "Daddy Bye Bye Bye." In this photo we're actually at the home of our dear friends the Anderson/Shavers enjoying a day-long brunch. Noa's favorite part, of course, was this swing - I think they spent an hour on it!

I also love this photo of Paula and Noa. Paula and her partner Oliver spent a few weeks with us as well, hanging out in the Little Red Cabin.  Believe it or not, this is Noa's first boat ride! (I know, hard for me to believe too) - we wanted to celebrate Joy Lynn's birthday and give her a great send off (since she was leaving the next day). So we all trooped down to the boat launch only to discover that we were the only people who wanted a boat ride that day... and we didn't add up to enough people to make it worth their while. But a little wheelin' and dealin' later, we were on a private boat trip on the lake that was truly spectacular!

Noa loved the boat - it was like a giant zuzzy (vibrating toothbrush), with a built in breeze! And after days of struggling to get some water into her, Noa fell in love (only temporarily unfortunately) with a spray bottle, and hydrated herself completely!

The captain even let Joy Lynn steer the boat. It was really an great afternoon on the lake for all!

Noa had fun with Oliver too, of course. Here she's somehow managed to get Oliver to swing her in circles until he was dizzy and worn out. It always seems like a good idea, until you realize that she's not going to let you stop!

Fun with Aunt Jane!

Okay, so clearly it's taking longer than I'd wished to get some of this stuff up on the blog. Truth is I've been thinking about moving the blog to another service and kept thinking that I'd move it and then add to the blog, then I played around with the design for this one... but clearly I'm not getting things done quickly so...

Here's another great Idaho video of Noa with Aunt Jane on our Idaho porch. It's a great example of how Noa likes to have (and control) conversations, and also what she does/doesn't understand and pays attention to. For example, she is clearly interested in where the doggies are. She looks on the table when she wants to make sure they are (or are not) there. But when Jane asks who has doggie, she either doesn't get the question or just isn't terribly interested in that line of conversation - though she did learn how to sign Jane's name, so she knew it.

One of the other things I really like about this video is that it's a great example of how social Noa is. She loves to interact with people. The range of what she can really converse about is somewhat limited, but that doesn't stop her. She likes to tell you that the doggie is on the table, or finished, or whatever, as long as it's an exchange of information. This has been even more the case since we've been back from Idaho. She gets out of bed and tells us "Bed is finished" and as we make our way to the bathroom she tells us she is "finished" with everything she walks past: dresser, light, door, etc.

Idaho 2013!

Welcome to the first of what I'm sure will be a gaggle of posts covering our time Idaho this summer. As usual, I just didn't get around to posting anything while we were actually there (not internet at the house). This first video is long (4 minutes) but packed with great Noa swim-time action! And it's 4 minutes long because one of the most impressive things to share is the length of time she spends moving around independently in the water; something she enjoyed doing tremendously and made swim time at the nearby Holiday Inn a daily ritual! The pool was just the right height for Noa, with the resistance of the water providing enough support for her to walk and jump on her own.

A few highlights to watch for: Noa maneuvering from standing to floating on her back all by herself; and - when she gets near the edge of the pool - figuring it out and holding onto the side; not only does she find it, you'll notice that she repeats the word "edge" when we tell her where she is; and when we explain to her that she can get away from the edge by pushing, she does.


I'll post more video and photos piece by piece - oh, and thanks to Max and Jane for staying at the Holiday Inn because otherwise we'd never have known that they have this great pool - which is, by the way, a HOT pool. And I mean very hot: like hot springs hot. Like there were days I couldn't even get into this pool hot!

Long story short: Noa had a great time in Idaho (no big surprise there). People often ask me if she remembers Idaho year to year and yes, absolutely, she definitely does. More to come...

Doin' the Crawl...

The improvements in Noa's walking are exciting and fun, but is the thing that really thrills me: crawling! Noa has never really crawled (and always hated tummy time) which in not unusual for vision impaired kids, so this is huge! Not only does she now have the control to move one leg at a time, she able to orient herself in space and figure out where I am. This makes her - for the first time - a real independent mover! Fabulous... and somewhat terrifying.

Botox Baby!

Hard to believe I'm off to Idaho tomorrow and so far behind (again) on the Noa blog. But I wanted to post this video before I left to share some of the progress we've seen in Noa since getting Botox shots in her legs last week. Yes! Botox! Apparently the Botox deadens the constant firing of the nervous system that causes Noa's legs to stay tight and "in motion" even when she appears not to be moving. You can see that she's really speeding a long here, but the biggest shift is that she's really picking up her legs which allows her to walk with a bit more control (rather than just using her tummy muscles to thrust her legs all crazy-mazy out in front of her as if she were tossing a couple of sacks of potatoes.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly...

So, the good is the photo - obviously - Ben and Noa enjoying a dip in the pool at Asser Levy on Mother's Day (my Mother's Day gift: watching and taking photos rather than having to get in the pool - not a fan of cold water!)

And to be honest, there is a heck of a lot of good going on. The more Noa is communicating the more she is enjoying her sense of humor - she loves farting and/or burping and then blaming Daddy. She thinks that is just hysterical. She also loves numbers and counting and giving things names and numbers (i.e., Monkey-Mommy-Number 1, or Doggie 2).

We've also had some success with drinking - after more than a year of not drinking at all (How is that possible? Oh, it's possible.) Noa had a cold about a month ago and we noticed that she didn't mind the grape flavored medicine we were giving her so I went out and got the purplest grape drink I could go and now she has 3 sips with every meal (kind of as if it's medicine, but she takes it out of a straw) and she seems to put up with it okay. Sure, it's not what I would have imagined giving my child - but you learn to be grateful for any progress at all.

Now for the bad. The exhausting, mystifying, emotionally wearing bad - I've written before about Noa not wanting us to pull up her pants sometimes after Potty, well this just goes on and on, day after day. It only seems to happen with me and Ben - she has no problem with anyone else - but with us she just goes on and on about wanting to be wiped. We've managed to make some progress in the mornings but only by going right from potty to bath time. Night time is the worst. Of course, she has to go to the potty - and then it can be an hour or more after of screaming and crying and kicking and insisting on more wiping, often along with weird things like wanting us to hold the wipe container with our arms around her a certain way. She insists on standing -- but also pulls on our arms like crazy. We've tried everything - and sometimes stumble upon something that works for a day or two but never really holds. I swear it's like being in a different universe when she's in that place - it's extremely painful to see her so frustrated and so unable to tell us what is happening.

I've done some research on the internet trying to see what it might be. The only thing I've found is that some kids who are visually impaired have a bit of an OCD thing about wiping - and that may what it is... but we haven't found any way to make the situation better. The stuff online didn't offer a ton of solutions I must say - and none of it involved kids who couldn't communicate, so...

Anyway - it's on my mind a lot now because I'm going to Idaho in a few weeks and so I'll be leaving Ben alone here with Noa for a few weeks and knowing that he'll be having to deal with this alone is difficult for me.

The ugly - one night in the midst of one of Noa's screaming bouts - she bit me. She's never done that before - though she sometimes bites herself or bites her shirt (most of her shirts have holes in fact) so she may have been trying to bit her shirt and got me instead but it was ugly! Broke the skin and left a bit black and blue mark.

Normally, I wouldn't write about this kind of yucky stuff or even talk about it much - Noa is doing so many great things and I tend to focus on that. But this stuff is exhausting. Just plain exhausting and demoralizing and I think it's important sometimes for me to acknowledge that.

So that's my story tonight. Now I'm going to eat some food because I'm hungry!