I’m coming down with something… It figures after all of the travel and craziness of the last week.

We’re finally back in town, I finally have web access again and I promise to write more details about last week as soon as I catch up at work. But the good news is Jordan has a prosthetic that she wears, the moves and she is paying attention to. Jordan has two teeth, two arms (one myoelectric, one passive) and a new love for cheese crackers.

On the technical side of things, my final video blog is stuck on a storage drive that crashed during the trip… So blog 5 will show up eventually, I hope.

We’re in Houston and I have a great 4 and a half minute video that’s processing through Google video… After I spent all kinds of time dealing with spotty internet access on my Mac. So I’ve moved to borrowing my kind host’s computer… And waiting on Google approval to post the second blog online.

So a review of yesterday: We flew, we arrived and we went right to work on Jordan’s new prosthetic. The two lead prosthetists think Jordan has a very small amount of elbow… Today a therapist who saw Jordan thought that might be the case or there’s a ball of muscle that can do some similar motions like an elbow. Who knows. We can only wait and see as Jordan grows.

Today’s big event today was a therapy session. Jordan was getting tired and cranky by the time we started, but we did get some tips on neck exercises we can do with Jordan. If things go better in the video department, I’ll try to upload that later tonight.

So that’s the scoop for now… If we’re lucky, we could have a new prosthetic tomorrow. Our tricky and challenging little girl will be able to give this prosthetic thing a really good try.

Jordan survived another fitting. Instead of waiting and doing another fitting on the same day, we’re going back on Monday to do a final fitting before they build the actual arm. I keep wanting to write more about her visit… But I keep getting dragged into taking care of the kids, or the house or finally going to sleep. I don’t do that enough.

Anyway, Jordan and I got the fitting done with a few tears… When she was crying, I wasn’t taking pictures. She was pretty annoyed with the poking and prodding. So we’ll do it again on Monday. Hopefully we’ll get the real thing soon. Will it help her? Only time will tell.

This weekend, Grandma and Poppy came for a visit, so Jordan got all kinds of extra love. She gave me some AWESOME giggles after her first nap. I’m working really hard to get a couple of giggles. More often, she just smiles big when I’m being silly. But man, she is TALKING. She squeals if she’s happy, sad, annoyed… just about anything. It’s very cool. I love baby development.

But I’ll also miss the sweet little “goo” that she used to say.

I think Jordan discovered her little arm yesterday. After weeks of exercises and playing with her little arm, yesterday she started lifting it up to her face, touching her lips with it. I was very excited. It’s the smallest things that are very exciting.

She’s smiling and cooing to all of the family and friends she hasn’t met before as we visit Grandma and Poppy’s house. She’s also sleeping well… Even though she has to sleep in a room with her Daddy and I… And Daddy snores. Cameron would never sleep long when he knew someone else was in the room with him. So we have more proof of what a good girl she is.

Jordan seems to enjoy the extra attention she’s getting here… But I wonder if she’s getting used to extra attention. The women at her daycare give her all kinds of extra love and affection. Lucky girl.

So I seem to recall back in the day… When we traveled with Cam, he couldn’t sleep in other houses. It wasn’t much fun at all. Today, Jordan was pretty good at holding to her sleep patterns. She napped a ton and slept 11 hours last night. She gave out all kinds of smiles and attention to folks hanging out and watching the many basketball games. Tonight, she got to bed a bit late… So we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been struggling with finding ways to get her to turn her head to the left. Today we found out an answer… Although I’m not sure I like it: TV. We have four televisions running at the same time. And Jordan is very interested in the many, many flashy pictures. I might have to pull out the Baby Einstein DVDs and turn her so she watches everything to her left. I’ll pitch the idea at our next OT evaluation on Wednesday.

The Reeves and Wilkins left this morning… They are patient folks to deal with our constant feeding schedule yesterday. Today, I’m starting Jordan on my exhaustive sleep training. She’s starting to show signs of regulating sleep. So I pulled out my favorite baby book: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. I’m going to start making sure she goes down for a nap after her awake time every time. The sleep log is back. I tracked Cam for 6 months. Who knows how we’ll make it work for Jordan when she goes to day care. But I’ll try not to worry about that just yet.

I’m going to dig back into my book and catch up on the sleep parenting skills I was once so good at. Jordan is resting right now… Hopefully she’ll give me 30 minutes or so of peace while Cameron plays with a toy quietly.