News from Noa-land

This is just a fun video. Noa playing with her favorite toys: blocks. You can see in video that there is a real maturity to her face and her way of moving now. She's really not a toddler anymore! And boy can she throw! She loves to hit different things that make different noises and, of course, she loves it with she hits me and I say "ouch."

I'm trying to get a good video of all her talking but its hard. Like any kid she seems to know when there is a camera and then she clams up. But she is going through a fantastic phase of trying to repeat almost everything: words, sighs, the other day she even repeated a burp. She likes to count along with us: she is great at one, two, three and four but five and seven seems to be problematic (though often hysterical). She is also learning a lot of new signs. I can't even keep up with them in my sign book at this point!

Last week she suddenly became enamoured of this stuffed dog that she's had for over a year (its the first big stuffed animal she's taken a shine to) so we made a sign for him: Big Dog. I taught it to her once and the next day she asked for Big Dog. AND later that day signed that she was a Big Girl - which is huge because its putting together two signs all by herself (I taught her Good Girl and Big Dog but she figured out she was Big Girl).

I'm also hoping to post some video from her swim lessons later today, just have to get it off my phone - but she's doing really great with her swim teacher Eddie.

On a bummer note: got the results from the MRI on my shoulder. Apparently I managed to mess up every working part of my right shoulder (which I only messed up because I was overcompensating for having messed up my left shoulder). Most of it seems like stuff that will heal EXCEPT for the part where I tore my Labrum, which is the cartledge suction cup that holds your arm in that ball joint at your shoulder. Apparently that is one of those things that doesn't heal, and it's hard to strengthen that area enough to really protect it so I'll always have to be careful. Of course, before I can think of strengthening it I have to let it heal. The doctor said 4-6 MORE weeks of not lifting (of course he knows that's not totally possible, but actually Noa's walking is getting better and that helps... also if she collapses, I let her collapse now).

So all this leading to the difficult, but good for everyone choices of leaving Noa here with Daddy while Mommy goes to Idaho in June. Luckily we have a really great support network here and Noa will actually be in school the whole time. Considering how well she is doing there it would be a shame to pull her out. Still... kind of hard for Mommy to fathom. Ben and Noa will come out after school finishes for Noa on June 25th and we'll have some real vacation time then.