Other Video Opportunities

By the way, I've been slowly adding new videos to my YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/sahlkina?feature=mhee#g/u
One that I highly recommend for a smile is "Mommy" which is a video of a Mommy/Noa Idaho reunion: I'd been in Idaho three weeks before Ben, Noa (and Jes who is in the video) joined us. Then watch "Tired" which is her just 10 minutes later.

Witchy Woman

Noa didn't like her Halloween Witch costume the first time I tried to put it on her. She just kept saying "off off off off off off" and trying to pulling it up over her head. But she really liked it yesterday, and in fact insisted on wearing it - along with the hat and elbow-length gloves - for a big chunk of the afternoon. She was so cute rocking out on the piano with it that I just couldn't resist taking some video.

BUT if you really want to see something cool - scroll down to the next post which includes a video clip of Noa's fingers actually tickling the ivories. As you'll see - although it sounds random - it is anything but.

tickling the ivories

As I was shooting video of Noa playing the piano yesterday, I happened to notice her hands - and how specifically and delicately her fingers tickle the ivories and I thought it might make for a nice video - especially because if you're just listening to what she's play it's easy to think that it's all sort of random. As this video shows, Noa is clearly making specific choices. (Perhaps it's just more advanced than any of us can really appreciate ?) She is really into this "Drumkit" feature right now. For a while she was really into anything that had a good sustain to it. But this week it's the Drumkit that has really caught her Halloween fancy.

Just One Scoop...

Just a short demonstration of why meal time with Noa can take a long long time. This video is one minute long, and as you will see, includes just two bites of food. She does better than this at school - and does better than this with pretty much everybody except me. She and I are just really having a Mommy-Noa struggle with meal time these days. When she bends her fingers back and says "stretch stretch" she is asking for her gloves and finger toys (which means putting on both gloves and a finger toy on each finger - before she will take a bite). So I'm trying to move toward doing the bite first and then getting the toys as a reward... slowly building up to two or three bites, but as you can see even getting one is a bit of routine at this point. She is very polite in this video, but we've had other incidents that include her hitting herself in the face, thrashing around on her chair and screaming as if someone set her on fire. Gosh, I'm sorry you all won't get to see that (not).

And as you can also see at the end of the video - she totally knows when she finally does the bite that it's good thing worth celebrating. So hopefully we can keep building on that. Just another meal in the life of... The Land of Noa.

Sunday in the Park with Daddy

Okay, I know it looks like this is going to play sideways, but it should re-orient when you hit play.

In any case, you should be able to get the idea of what is so lovely about this little bit of video. Noa is not only propelling the walker all by herself, she even figures out how to pick it up and turn it when she runs into the curb! And she runs into the curb quite a bit. We haven't figured out if it's her or the walker that pulls to the right, but she does seem to do better with her right side overall.

In other news - we visited Noa's school last week and got to meet with all her teachers and therapists. It's amazing what a busy day she has - Ben and I were exhausted just hanging out for the morning!! Noa seems to really be enjoying school and engaging with the activities in the classroom. They sang a song about fall and the teacher dropped play leaves on the the kids heads - and Noa did a great job of helping to pick them up and even felt around on the floor in front of her when the teacher told her there were some near her feet.

Then it was time for a visit from a thearpy dog - Hearst. The teacher told the kids that they would have a visit from their friend with four legs who says "woof woof" and Noa immediately said "Sog!" It was lucky we were there to interpret for her: Sog is what she calls her stuffed animal Dog (who is actually a horse... but that's a different story). The only bummer was that I think Noa was hoping for her Sog, rather than a real-live dog. But she took it pretty well and even reached out when someone said that the dog was wagging his tail.

Also - just FYI - I posted some more video on our YouTube "channel": http://www.youtube.com/user/sahlkina?feature=mhsn#p/a/u/0/c67gFrLa1R4
I was kind of surprised to see that our video of Noa flushing the toilet had over 500 hits, and the one of us telling her it was bathtime had over 700. Apparently this was enough to make Google thing we might get enough hits to warrent selling ad space. SO I figured I ought to put more up on the site, and if you see ads in the future - hey, living in the Land of Noa ain't cheap!

Halloween Here We Come!

When Noa lost her first front tooth a few weeks ago, we were pretty sure its partner tooth wouldn't be far behind. It was already loose, and there was pretty much nothing to stablize it on either side - in fact it seemed to be in a different position every time she opened her mouth. Still, it managed to hang on for about three weeks... until Mommy finally decided to intervene (and thanks to Aunt Pate for the suggestion of rubber gloves to get a good grip on the tiny, slippery thing).

Noa took it all well. We'd been talking about it for days. She'd open her mouth and show me the tooth - and I'd say "do you want to give it to Mommy?" and she'd sign "No. No." One night even woke us up in the middle of night and was signing "help help" and showing us the tooth - though she wouldn't let me touch it.

Finally, Monday night, she had gotten to the point where she didn't want to eat or drink at all. You know when pureed food is too much to bear, it's time for the tooth to go!

Ben and I decided that we would just have to yank the tooth (we=Mommy, of course) and that it was probably best to do it in the morning before school so she could at least get some food in her. So we woke her up and started talking about the tooth - finally we told her it was time for the tooth to go bye-bye. She signed "no, no" and "finished" - but we just assured her that it was okay for the tooth to go away, that she was a big girl and all that good stuff.

While she objected to the idea of mommy touching her mouth and taking the tooth in principle, she didn't seem to object too much once it was out. And she recovered pretty quickly: just played with the empty spot for a minute, asked for a drink and then proceeded to eat a double breakfast.

And so now, just in time for Halloween, we have Vampire-Noa!