All playing together

My sister-in-law and Nephew are visiting this week and they haven't seen Kevin since New Years. I know that Kevin has progressed a lot in his language since then, but it has been fun seeing the reaction of them to his language. They are blown away! My Nephew is the same age as my other son, 4 years old. They have played together the entire visit and talked to each other. If Kevin says something incorrectly, my nephew gently corrects him and Kevin tries the correct way of pronouncing a word. It is really cute to witness. But, I think the best part is that despite Kevin being 2 years younger and deaf, he is not left out at all! He is right in the middle of all the action and many times takes charge and commands people to follow him. His favorite phrase is 'Kevin Do'. I think this take-charge and can-do attitude will help him overcome any obstacles that he faces. So far, his hearing loss isn't affecting him at all!

Another breakthrough

I forgot to mention another breakthrough that happened today. We were driving to Kevin's oral-deaf school and for some reason the batteries didn't charge correctly the night before. I already replaced one of them and consequently, was running late. On the way to school, Kevin said 'ear off'. I turned around and noticed that the light was blinking, but the coil was still on his head. I told him that I would fix it when we get to school and just to hang tight. He put his ear up to the coil, realized that it was still on his head and said, 'battery' (more like 'batt-y'). He knew he needed a new battery. Very exciting! He has been replacing the coil more and more when it falls off now, so I think since he realized it was still on his head, there had to be a broken battery in it. Also, since I just replaced one of them, he knew that was what was wrong. I was excited about the language he used and the correlation of events he put together. He is growing up more and more everyday!!!

Push and Mommy

2 new exciting words recently! First of all, I now have a new name. I am no longer 'mama' and am now officially 'Mommy'. I LOVE it!!! Of course, I was thrilled when Kevin started calling me 'mama'. I couldn't have been happier! But, I never really thought of me as a mama type. I always wanted to be 'Mommy'. But, I let Kevin decide and he seemed content to call me 'mama'. Well, as of a couple of days ago, I am offically 'Mommy'. I love the way he says it!!! He can finally say my 'official' name! :)

Another breakthrough was today at therapy. We have started doing more oral-motor therapy because he has the tendency to not move his mouth much when he talks. His 'b' and 'p' sounds at the beginning of words (big, pull, etc) sound like 'd' because he doesn't close his lips when he says them. Therefore, he has a lot of 'di, da, dah' words that all mean something different. He can say the sound in isolation and in the middle of a word (purple, apple), but gets lazy about the beginning of the word. Well, today we worked on 'p' and he finally said 'push'! Push!!! Wow! I was so thrilled!!! We are supposed to pick a letter of the week and work on that, so this week is all about 'p'. I think I will serve pears, peas, pizza, and other fun 'p' letters for dinner this week!

We're on a roll!!!

A child's perspective

I had an interesting conversation with my older (hearing) son tonight. He is almost 4 and very mature for his age both developmentally and linguistically. (I mention that because I think it adds emphasis to his comments). We were talking about something he heard that was loud and I said that he has sensitive ears. (He really does and I swear he makes up for Kevin's lack of hearing by how good his ears are.) He hears me say that he has sensitive ears often. He told me that is why he didn't need to wear implants. I told him that Kevin needed to wear them because his ears 'were born broken'. He then told me that he used to wear them and now he doesn't need to. I'm not sure if he really thought he used to wear them or was just testing or what, but I proceeded to tell him that he never wore them because his ears were born just fine. He then asked me when Kevin could take them off and his ears would be fine. I realized that by telling him his ears were broken, he thought this was like a cast and would 'fix' them. I explained to him that he would always need his implants to hear. We haven't talked at length with our son about deafness, partially because I thought it was too much of an abstract idea for a little kid to comprehend and partially because he had such a hard time dealing with everything when we were all going to the process of diagnosis, surgery, activation, etc. I think it is time to be more open with him and talk more freely about it. It was just a very interesting to me that he thought these were temporary. Wouldn't that be wonderful!?!?!??!

On another note, Kevin is really comprehending well these days. We took our son up skiing last weekend and Kevin hates the snow, so he stayed behind. When I got back, I asked him about the snow and where we find it and he told me 'at Lake Tahoe' in a very clear response. He stunned all of us!

2 years old!

My little baby is 2 years old today. It is hard to believe that he is already 2. He seems like such a little boy now. 2 years ago today, my husband and I were ignorant of the deaf world. We had no idea how much our life would change when Kevin was born. Everyone said things would be different with 2 children, but no one had any idea how much different. This birthday marks a big milestone for us. This is a very happy occasion. Not that his first birthday wasn't happy, but Kevin was activated 2 months prior that and we were still getting used to the equipment. We were still experimenting with saying his name to him. This birthday, Kevin essentially will say anything you ask of him and we carry on conversations with him as we do with any hearing 2 year old. Basically, he is a normal 2 year old boy. He had a train party, lots of friends, loved his cake, and got very messy from the paint at his party. He is a normal 2 year old boy! He will even tell you he is 'two years old' while holding up 2 fingers. We couldn't be prouder of him.

So much has happened since my last post. We went to Hawaii for a week and everyone had a great time. It wasn't really an issue with Kevin's CIs. That is probably due to the fact that he really didn't want to get in the water, but still, it wasn't an issue. Everything just seems to be getting easier these days.... He also seemed to have a language explosion in Hawaii. His clarity is getting better and his vocabulary is increasing daily! He learned how to say 'yes' instead of 'yeah' over there. He will tell you that he saw '2 whales' very clearly and a whole host of other words that are Hawaii specific (sting ray, shark, big boat, etc). It is just getting so much easier to talk to him.

We are finding that while things are getting easier, we still put in a lot of extra work with him for speech, equipment maintenance, and other things that go along with CIs. This will never end for us. But, to our friends and distant family, they don't see the extra work we do, they just see Kevin doing really well and seeming to be hearing and talking like a hearing child. They don't treat us any different anymore. It is strange because in a way, I liked to have people feel bad that we had to go through all this extra work and ask us about it and now that it isn't as noticable, I miss it. There are times that I still get frustrated with everything related to CIs and people have seemed to forgotten that this is an ongoing condition and we still do need to be 'checked in' on to see how everything is going. It is just strange to have gotten to this point. I guess that is why it is so important to have friends with kids with CIs because they are the only ones who can really relate with everything we are going through. I don't know if this last paragraph was worded as I was thinking it, but hopefully the gist will come across.

Anyway, our little angel is 2 and is doing incredible. What a great year this will be.

Latest testing scores

We just got back from Kevin's Dr. appts yesterday. He had a 1 hour language eval, his bilateral mapping session, and an appt. with the surgeon for a routine follow-up. Whew! We were all exhausted last night, especially after the 2.5 hour drive home!!! Well, drum roll please, the results are in for his language tests!

The test was taken from a normal hearing child language test (as opposed to a DHOH test that is usually used). That means that this is the same test that is given to hearing peers, not just DHOH peers. He scored between 3.5 and 3.11 years for receptive language!!! He scored between 2 and 2.5 years for expressive language. Kevin is currently 23 months!!! Wooo hoooo! Can you even believe it! It is utterly amazing that he caught up so quickly and is doing so well after just 1 year of hearing. I always knew he was a smart cookie!!! :) He was even amazing me during the testing. What a fun way to start the day! Hopefully he will close the gap between expressive and receptive language sooner rather than later, because I think that is causing him some frustration as he knows what is going on, but can't express it fully yet.

His mapping was the most difficult yet, as expected. He is very much a 2 year old and didn't like being without his hearing during the neural testing. He didn't want to cooperate during the behavior testing (listening game), but was finally able to give us some results. The map didn't change much, as expected. He pretty much gave us nothing during the sound booth test, but mind you that was after 3 hours of solid tests (including the language test). I think he hears pretty well though, because he mimicked the sound of air coming out of a rubber ducky after he squeezed it. Even the audi was impressed with that!

So, our little angel is doing great and seems to be on track for mainstream into preschool. We do need to start some more emphasis on articulation now that his vocab and understanding is doing well. The work never ends!!! :)

A new sound

Kevin started making a new sound today. It seems like the past week or so, he has really started to have clearer speech and tries to copy everything we say, but his sounds are the same. A lot of 'dee, dah, da, doh' etc. Today, he started saying the hard 'g' sound (like gut). He was saying it almost all day! It is fun to hear him say a new sound!!! His 'c' sounds were also clearer today.

I also took him to the zoo and he was saying all the animal names after I said them. He even said 'coyote'. That sounded like 'di-oh-tay', but he did it! It is funny how a new sound just brightens your day and really gives you a lift. I know Kevin is doing well and will be talking before we know it, but things like this are helpful confirmations!