Noa's Rockin' Holiday Post

Wow! Those weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas really fly! I'm bummin' that I haven't had a chance to post for a while. Oh well, such is life.

Yesterday was the holiday party at school, which Noa mostly loved: rocking out to the Christmas tunes was great. But she was NOT into Santa.... though she did like the gift he gave her. Here is a photo of Noa gettin' down with Emma her one-to-one at school (she is specifically assigned to work with Noa and they have tons of fun together... as you can see).

Below is a short clip of Noa showing off a couple of fun new tricks:
One is the open vowel sound in what we've come to know as her "singing" - she's doing a lot of experimenting with sound right now: the quality of her voice, the pitch, short bursts vs. sustaining a sound, it's really quite wonderful. Recently she has started saying "mmmm" when she signs for more, and growling when she is annoyed or mad. While it's not our favorite new skill... it does seem kinda appropriate.

And then there is the bouncing and the rocking. Yeah, it looks like stuff that any 8-month-old would do in preparing to crawl... but it is stuff that Noa has never done and it's a real sign that she knows there are other toys out there, if only she can get to them! Conceptually, this is huge because we've always felt that if Noa understood what she could accomplish if she could move herself around, then she'd get herself there. She is nothing if not driven!



In other very cool news, a good friend of our leads a choir that was doing a Holiday Concert this weekend - the theme was family - and the first part of the concernt (The Child) was dedicated to Noa with a prayers for improvement following her therapy. We took Noa to the concert and she totally rocked out to the choral music (and quite interestingly sat with her hands in a praying position throughout the first piece. I'm not kidding and we have witnesses).

So, that's the very quick update.

There is an article in this week's Newsweek about banking stem cells and it specifically references the program at Duke. I do want to respond to some of that, but I'll have to do that later has my mommy responsibilities are calling...