When I came downstairs, he said “Look what I’ve done!” and I saw that he’d swapped around the keys of the glockenspiel in pairs (C&D, E&F, G&A, B&C were each swapped). And he’d been playing the tune on that variant of the keyboard…

Mrs Elbeno got up at an infeasibly early hour to take him to the hospital, where they arrived at 5.30am. She called me just after 8am to tell me he’d just been taken into the OR. The procedure took a little under 2 hours and he was out in recovery and doing well.

The plan was originally that they would keep him in overnight but they had no room, so he was sent home this evening and he’s now sleeping in his own bed again. He’s a bit swollen under the cheeks and stitched and taped up there, but overall doing great. In a few weeks he’ll be right as ninepence.

“Sure, I’ll try it.” So she handed me a (cleverly disguised) blob of molten lava on a cocktail stick, and like a fool, I put it into my mouth whole. My tongue still feels rough today. Anyway, after I’d recovered, we ordered some food and mini-Elbeno actually tried some orange chicken and some broccoli beef, and liked it!

After that we went to Borders where I got Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers and used a 40% off coupon courtesy of My Coupons. Then on the way home we stopped at Marie Callender’s to get a cherry pie (on sale for $8) and at the British store for a few supplies.

Here’s your obligatory pic of the unpackaging.

I’m looking forward to speedy 4G coverage in LA and messing about with Android. I’ll shortly be updating everyone with my new mobile number.

Archie came home on Thursday and the screw-turning is now complete (we did the last couple of turns at home). He’s had one paediatrician appointment and tomorrow we’ll be making an appointment for him to get the other screw removed. With any luck that will be soon.

He’s doing well and is pretty mellow, all things considered. He’s letting us sleep pretty well in the night and the feed-burp-nappy-back-to-sleep routine is working out. One consequence of the jaw procedure seems to be that the left side of his face is palsied. It looks like there is some neural damage as there is no motor activity in his left cheek. Of course we don’t know if he can feel there or not. It’s too early to say whether this will be a long term issue or not, but this was always a risk. Unfortunately it seems to make it hard for him to close his left eye – he only gets it about 3/4 closed most of the time – which makes getting to sleep that bit harder. It doesn’t seem to interfere with eating though.

Now, we wait another 7 days for the distraction to run its course (again).

This means another 2 weeks in hospital just when we were gearing up to have him at home (otherwise he has been doing well, bottle feeding, off the IV, etc). He will have the operation at 7.30am on Friday. There will be 7 days of screw-turning this time, followed by the op to remove the external pieces again, followed by a period of convalescence which will, with luck, be shorter than before.

Archie is doing well and as you can see he’s been extubated for a day or two now. He has been in a bit of pain what with the jaw stuff coming off again, so he’s got some meds for that and also probably as a consequence of that he didn’t fully cooperate with a swallow study yesterday. Slow but steady progress is the order of the day. For the moment he still has the NG tube in, but should be bottle feeding soon.