Wednesday, July 7, 2010

I Like That

Still here, and it seems to be still here so far too. It's only been like a day, but hey, every day adds up. I'm feeling tired, sometimes slightly nauseous, and ravenously hungry. I've been eating like a pig. I made an appt with the NP for tomorrow morning. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Skyler has been entertaining everyone with his most favourite sentence. Every morning I wake up to a chorus of "I like that, I like that, I like that. Yeah, yeah. . .yeah yeah yeah" and the "yeah"s are sung. He has made it into a song. It's pretty adorable. All day long as he's playing with toys "I like that!" as he's putting his shorts on his head to wear as a hat "I like that!" and his personal favourite every time I sneeze or blow my nose (which is unfortunately frequent) he giggles and says "I like that!". It's kind of funny to have a small person "liking" every time you sneeze. It's a good thing he's not on facebook or he'd be liking everyone's status and their comments too. He's practiced saying it so much that he's got it down almost perfect now.

If my camera hadn't broke on the last of school I would take a video of him saying it for you cause it's so funny and cute. I'll have to use C's camera.

Oh and I wanted to tell you guys about the phones that C got us. He is a technogeek and always wanting to spend money unnecessarily on things I usually don't think we need. Well he wanted a wireless phone set for our home phone that cost $100 (on sale from $160). At first I thought this is absurd, we already have working phones. But he pointed out that they were from the year 2000, and he'd make sure I got to buy something frivolous too. (And we won $100 on a lottery ticket like a week later so that was cool) Anyway I said fine whatever get your silly phones.

So we brought them home and he charged them up. So let me tell you a bit about them. There are four phones and a main base, and 3 other smaller bases (one for each phone). He mounted them around the apartment so we have a phone in each bedroom etc. Anyway you can program it, so all the numbers in the main phone show up in all the phones, it has an answering machine, and a bunch of other features that are kind of neat (including a bunch of alarms that say "it's time for dinner" "it's time for lunch", "it's time for bed" etc. Kind of creepy and awesome at the same time and I'll tell you why in a minute).

My favourite feature of all, one that C didn't even realize it had is that the main base actually tells you out loud who is calling. If the number is programmed into your phone with a name the main base will say "Call from mom." after each ring until you answer the phone or ignore the call. If the number is not programmed into your phone it will say "Call from 555-7891" and it says each number clearly so you can listen to see if you recognize it or not. Now why is this even remotely interesting you ask? Because we have a blind child of course. As he gets older he may eventually want to use the phone, and having a phone that automatically tells you who is calling, so that you don't have to look at the screen is fantastic! He can hear right away if it's grandma calling or whoever and he can decide if he wants to answer the phone.

It also has an option to block numbers. Annoying telemarketer calling you at all hours? Block their number! Everytime they call it will give them a busy signal and then disconnect on them. Fortunately we don't have any stalkers but we do get calls from time to time from a number that comes up as "000-000-0000" which is always some sort of telemarketer. So that's useful as well. But also the alarm feature that tells you when it's dinner time/bed time/whatever I could see that being useful for independent living for someone who is blind or even someone with other special needs. Overall I'm glad we spent the $100 on these phones, and the way I think of it is each handset cost $25, well worth it in my opinion if it's going to be helpful for Skyler. I'll just write them off as "assistive technology" because really they are! Hmm I wonder if my nana could use them as she's 82 and is now legally blind..

3 comments:

jennohara said...

That's adorable!! I dont like it, I LOVE it! ;)
Those phones sound pretty awesome too!!

Stacie said...

Those phones sound amazing and a really useful tool for Sky!

Ahhh, I love that he says, "I like it!" I hope you can get that on video.

Karen said...

Oooooh! I want to hug that boy of yours. And if he likes sneezes, I'm sure I could make him happy for quite some time.

And how cool is it that you accidentally got phones that would be perfect for Sky? Awesome!