During her pregnancy with Gareth, she became an avid milk drinker.  Now with her second child, she has to give it up.

Today, Gareth used an Intellikeys keyboard to write out, letter by letter, the sentence above.  This is a pretty momentous occasion as this marks the first time that Gareth has ever independently conveyed exactly what he wanted to say.

Until now, he has been limited to “speaking” via the choices we’ve given him or to the icons available on his Mercury system.  But today, he shared his thoughts.

The only assistance he received was help stabilizing his hand.

We can’t wait to see what he says next!

The old www.sirgareth.com address will continue to bring you here, so there’s no immediate need to update your bookmarks.

He was weighed as part of his two week check-up yesterday and is now at 6lbs 10oz.

Which sort of sucks, because there’s no way I can top a baby next year.

Photos are now available.

I wouldn’t expect photos until late Friday night since I don’t think Brandy wants me running off to upload the snaps so soon after delivery.  I get the impression that she would like me to hang around a bit.

The Miracle League baseball season has concluded.  We went to the closing picnic last weekend where Gareth was given his first ever trophy.  He didn’t want to let it go the rest of the day and was extremely proud to have it.  If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to ask him to show it to you.

We’ve traded in Brandy’s “I don’t want to be a soccer mom” Mazda 5 for the purchase of a 2004 Toyota Sienna with an automated wheelchair ramp and kneeling system.  I think the kneeling system is incredibly cool (it lowers the right side of the van before deploying the ramp), but it doesn’t buy us much of an advantage and it increases the time waiting for the ramp to deploy, so we don’t use that feature.  And no, it can’t be wired to bounce the van up and down as though we were starring in a Dr. Dre video.

In less than two weeks, Collin will be born and will get to move into his patiently waiting nursery.  Things continue to go well, and we’re still on track to deliver in State College.  Brandy and I will be traveling to Danville on Friday to meet with yet another doctor there, just in case.  We’re struggling with the idea of experiencing a relatively normal birth and the challenges of a child without challenges.  You’d think we’d be pretty well battle worn, but we’ve spent the last nearly seven years tuned to what Gareth requires in care and are wholly unprepared for normalcy.

Anne (my mother) has moved in with us since the last blog entry.  She’s helping us with Gareth while we help her with support.  By October 26th, we’ll have six people and a cat in our house every night.  It’s starting to feel like Charlie Bucket’s house.

Those are the big items from the past month.  It has been far busier than we would have liked, but we’re just about out of it in time to have our second child.  Can we take 2009 off?

• Peanut Butter Jelly Time
• The Star Spangled Banner
• Macarena
• Die Zauberflöte Act II: Die Hölle Rache (Königin)

Each of them makes him crack up.  I’m sure his nurse is thankful that she no longer has to listen to “Hollaback Girl” (she was offended by the profanity), but something tells me these aren’t going to make her any happier to listen to music in the morning.