All Things Electrical

Playing Playstation with Isaiah

Felix has still been sick over the past couple of days. I ended up taking him to the Doctor yesterday and found out he has two ear infections and a throat infection. No wonder he has had such a high temperature! He must have an incredibly high pain tolerance, because apart from being a bit restless at night time and sleeping more than usual during the day, he hasn't given us any indication that he has been in pain. He's one tough little guy. Now if we could just get him to take his antibiotics without spitting them out, he might start to get better.

Felix likes to turn on the CD player

I was worried about ear infections even before Felix started swimming lessons.  I asked a lot of parents of kids with Down Syndrome what their experiences had been with swimming and half of them said their kids had trouble with infections and the other half said they hadn't had any problems. As this is the first time Felix has ever had an ear infection, we have to try and work out whether it's because of the pool (and his narrow ear canals) or if it's just because he's a kid who has happened to get sick. There are four more classes left this term so we'll see how he goes with the rest of them. (Obviously he's still sick so he won't be going this Saturday).

Despite being sick, Felix has still amazed us with the new things he learns each day. This afternoon I was taking some photos of him and accidentally dropped the lens cap onto the floor. Felix picked it up, stood himself up and very casually put it back on the end of the lens. I had no idea that he had even noticed me taking it off and putting it back on before (although I do take thousands of photos of him so I probably shouldn't be surprised). He notices so many little things without me even realising.

Fascinated by the computer

Another little thing my cheeky monkey did for the first time today was to put my little netbook (small laptop) on his lap and pry it open. He looked very pleased with himself and was disappointed when I quickly grabbed it before he could pull off another one of the keys ( I have adjusted to typing with a missing 'L' key). I am happy for him to play with my phone because there are no keys to pull off. Unfortunately though, some of his baby game applications on my Android phone have no child lock, so I will sometimes find the alarm set to strange times or see that he has managed to Google something on the internet. Yesterday I received a call from our eldest daughter, Amy, telling me she was returning my call. My call? I hadn't called her. After I thought for a couple of seconds, I realised that Felix, the cute little culprit, had been playing with my phone an hour before when the call was made.

It's funny how males are born with a fascination for all things electrical (all of our boys and their Dad certainly were). Felix had his back to the TV this morning when Nathan passed him the Xbox controller. Straight away he turned himself around, looked down at the controller and back up to the TV to see if he was making anything happen on the screen. He's not that interested in watching TV, but he's definitely interested in what he can make the TV screen do. He regularly changes the channel with the remote, and we've discovered that not only has he recorded some TV shows, but he has also series linked them so they record every week. I'm sure he does that completely by accident, but it's hilarious to see what programs we end up recording.

Trying to get to the Xbox

Since he has learnt to point his finger over the last couple of weeks, Felix is getting very good at using touch-screen games. He knows that he can slide his finger across the screen to make certain things happen. He will concentrate very hard to drag certain shapes to where he wants them to be. A lot of people I have spoken to have had a lot of success using ipads as both educational and communication tools for their children with Down Syndrome so we are hoping to purchase one for Felix soon. It may seem a bit crazy to some people to buy something that extravagant for a not-quite-two year old, but why not take advantage of living in the computer-age to help develop his fine motor skills and communication? I'm sure our other kids will be more than happy to 'help' Felix to learn how to use it ;)