Not much to update, just that our consult with the neurosurgeon has been bumped up to December 18 from January 8. I'm crossing my fingers that this guy will be a bit more thorough in his explanations. It could go either way...he's seen the email I sent to Dr. M so he may feel badly for us and want to explain things well, or we may now have a big black X on Joey's file at Sick Kids as being "difficult parents". We shall see, I'm trying to stay positive about it.

In other news...here are some photos that were taken at a grocery store photo studio. I don't usually go to those after the bad experience I had with Joey (I took him at 8 months and when I told the photographer that he couldn't sit up because of a medical condition I got a big sigh, followed by "well, that will make things difficult". That was the last time we ever went somewhere to have pictures done, and not coincidentally when I bought my Canon Rebel DSLR and started taking pictures myself!) but we did this to get a picture of Joey and Ben along with cousin Ty as a gift for Gramma. I made up my mind earlier that day not to get all uptight about this, as we are only given a 20 minute allotment to get these pictures done, and we were dealing with a 9 week old, a 10 month old and a disabled 3.5 year old. I'm glad I gave myself the pep talk because this was a colossal FAIL! Joey started crying as soon as he saw Ty and that was it. Ty is a perfectly pleasant, happy and sweet 10-month old but is very busy, as all kids are at that age, and it's just too overwhelming for Joey. He takes some time to warm up to Ty every time we see him and 20 minutes in a strange place just wasn't enough. Anyway, here they are:

Photo #1: Joey only appears mildly annoyed in this one, he hadn't gotten all geared up yet. Ty is one second away from smacking Ben on the top of the head, which resulted in a a brief bit of crying but Ben's tough. I especially like the placement of Joey's right hand.




Photo # 2: Joey now appears to be in great pain, and oddly, he also appears to be a giant! Something about the perspective of this photo is waaaay off. Ty is happy about it all though :)





Photo #3: Ty has left the room! We couldn't coax a smile out of Ben, nor could we get him to actually look at the camera. And as Jason says..."gee, where have I seen a baby in a basket against a white background before?" Yeah, not very original.

Photo #4: This is actually photo #1, taken at the very beginning before Ty or Ben entered the room.

And Photo #5: This is the best that could be done to get the two of them together. Blah.

I took some great pictures for our Christmas card but I'll save the one we used for the new year, I don't want to spoil the surprise for those of you on our Christmas card list! But here are some others to tide you over:

I'm trying to post some videos of Joey and Ben together but am having technical difficulties, so I'll save those for another day.

- P, J, J and B