Medical Experiments

He's got a silver award now.
Yes indeed, the local university phoned up again asking if Joseph would like to be prodded and poked and generally made unhappy in the name of science.
That's not quite true. They did ring up, but as it's the psychology department they're not actually allowed to do any prodding or poking and there are plenty of toys so no discomfort allowed.
This time it was very simple and quick. Joseph was sat on my knee and we sat in a dark cubby looking at a big screen. A voice said "Look!" and Joseph was shown two pictures while a word was said, relating to one of the pictures. It's all about word recognition at that age - do babies understand the word and the object it relates to specifically or is it just about sounds and shapes? The example she gave me was - does Joseph understand that a banana is a banana or does he think the sound applies to crescent shapes?
It was fun, he didn't misbehave and this time I think they might actually end up with some usable data.
If we're asked back again he gets a free t-shirt.
It's a shame I never get to see the results of these studies, but you never know. One of them might just be of such significance that it makes it on the news and I can sit smugly at home thinking "I helped!" Or rather, Joseph helped and I... sat there and stopped him wiggling away.
This afternoon it was all going so well. He likes to play with our multimedia cabinet thingy that Andy made to house all our stuff with wires. It has a flappy front door that hides the shelf with the keyboard and mouse on it. Joseph has often played with this and come to no harm, but today was different. The door opens downwards and the hinge drops as it does so. Joseph seems to be keen to try and crush his fingers in many things at the moment and he did a good job today. His poor little finger on his left hand did go rather pink and it was quite some time before he calmed down. I'm on a heightened state of alert now, as he tried to squash his fingers in Grannys CD cupboard yesterday as well. It's probably a good job that the only doors he has access to are usually kept quite shut.
I shall leave off now, my son is supposed to be feeding himself a healthy tea of cheesy biscuit (home made), lettuce, carrot and a little cheese. He's not doing so well.