In a Month and a Half..

Nolan turns one! As we live rather far from family and have no one visiting in late August, his birthday will be a rather small affair. My biggest challenge is to find great toys that we don't already have, owing to the fact that we have a 2 1/2 year old who has amassed an assortment of Duplos and cars, toy tools and bikes.

I went through our toys and got rid of the ones that Nolan is now too old for (the walker, the baby gym, and the bouncy chair). Going through our stock of toys, I tried to find toys we are lacking, and ones that would be good for Nolan's speech and language development. Any ideas are welcomed, from those who have toddlers and have a toy that they love! My ideas so far are:

• A Little Tikes "Jungle Jamboree" piano. We don't have any real music-making toys.
• The Fisher Price Little People farm
• A toy lawn mower (we have one, but we have two boys)!
• Richard Priddy books (we have three)
• A toy with a "repeat speaker" built into it- it repeats what the child says.
• A toy telephone (amazingly, we don't have one)
• A See and Say

We have a good set of unit blocks that my little guys play with all the time (probably THE favorite toy), so I might get the castle-shaped extension set for those.

I am also going to make a "learning to listen" sound box, but I don't want that to be for the little guy's birthday. He repeated the "aaaaa" I made for "airplane" the other day, and it totally rocked my world. We seem to have lost our "B," "M," and "N" sounds, and I'm hoping that's just a phase. We have "D," "L," and "A." Usually Nolan wanders around making a "ldldldldldl" noise, which is impossible for any of us to reproduce. In the meantime, I'm working extra hard on "MAMA" since he seems to have the "dadada" sound down pat. Matthew FINALLY says mama, after 2 1/2 years of work! Hopefully Nolan will say it a little sooner than that!

Pre-CPSE Meeting and Hearing Test Scheduled

Matthew at Panama Rocks

We had Matthew's pre-CPSE (Committe on Preschool Special Education) meeting at the local school district last Thursday. This was not an official affair, but just a "hello" to the school district and make them aware that Matthew has a likelihood of transitioning to the local school district for speech services.



We aren't quite sure if he will be declassified when he goes through his next round of early intervention testing or not. His receptive and expressive language are age appropriate now, but his articulation is still fairly atrocious. For example, take the following phrase:


"Go leet. Die. Ge'in car. See peet in wa. Wa. Too pie wie. Go peet."

For those who can't translate Matthew-ese, that's:

"Go to the lake. Drive. Get in the car. See fish in the water. Too far away. Go to the fish."

If he comes out with a "moderate" as opposed to "severe" articulation disorder, then he will not qualify for further services. I did request that he get another audiological evaluation to verify there is no hearing loss as a cause for his articulation issues, especially if he ends up with a declassification recommendation.

Luckily we brought Nolan in for the meeting, so they could see the whole family situation. They readily agreed that we should have Matthew's hearing tested since he speaks more Klingon than English.

Nolan with Grandpa at Cook Forest

Nolan has guaranteed services due to his hearing loss, so the CPSE chair was happy to meet him and told us her TOD would be glad to be working as a TOD again (the TOD is currently working with students who need speech therapy, but there are not other kids with hearing loss in our school district).

We also saw the audiologist this week, to pick up earmolds and more dessicant (darn that humidity). Our audiologist scheduled another hearing test for August 7th, so we will be taking impressions for earmolds on July 28, doing a hearing test August 7th, and going in for the MRI (pending insurance approval) on August 11th. I am reassured our audiologist is keeping good tabs on Nolan's hearing levels, especially since he seemed to lose a small amount of high frequency hearing between his ABR and first booth test.

Oh, yeah- and Nolan took his first steps. I can't believe my little guy is starting to walk!

It looks like we are on for a busy August and September, but then things should slow down and we will get back to our normal pace of life.

Meeting New Friends

The Optimist Club in Jamestown sponsored a Jr. Deaf Club event at a local camp on Chautauqua Lake. It was absolutely wonderful to meet a group of parents who have "been there and done that." All of the deaf and hard of hearing youth were older than Nolan by at least 5 or 6 years, but it is nice to have the shared experience and collective knowledge in how to get the most out of our early intervention/special education services.

We had hot dogs, talked, and the kids all played wonderfully together. I didn't get any pictures because we were too busy just relaxing and talking to the other parents. There were a variety of communication methods used (all the kids were oral, but most also used some sign as well). We get to meet again in late August, this time at a park near our house.



In the meantime, we have been exploring various local places and learning lots of new vocabulary words (mostly for Matt, but Nolan picks this stuff up while in my front pack). Here are some new words for the week:


From Panama Rocks:

Matt: Slippery, boulder, roots, moss, fungus, streaming light, sharp, crevasse.
Nolan: Rock, tree, chipmunk, light, dark (and all the other words overheard).

From the zoo:

Matt: Rotate, tunnel, camouflage, exhibit, chimes, smelly.
Nolan: Ice cream, dirty, warthog, polar bear, mister.

From the Overlook Park:

Matt: Colorful, mushroom, poisonous, slimy, steep, drenched.
Nolan: Well, Nolan slept for most of this little hike!


We're having a great time exploring some local hiking trails and getting the kids introduced to the woods. Let's just hope we hold off the introduction to poison ivy for quite some time!

On Siblings

People often ask me what Matthew thinks about Nolan's hearing aids. And does he mind all the trips to Buffalo (2 hours each way)? And what will happen if Matthew graduates early intervention and doesn't get the "special attention" that Nolan gets during therapy sessions? Does he mess with Nolan's hearing aids?

It is hard to balance the time required by a baby, much less a baby who has so many appointments, with the urgent demands from a toddler who does not like to wait for attention. On the whole, though, Matthew seems fairly oblivious to it all. Perhaps due to his own language delays. Or due to the fact that he's a little boy who is much more interested in frogs and finding out what happens when one puts a remote control in the microwave* than in his brother's ears.

I actually think that he regards hearing aids as the "normal" appearance of his brother's ears. When Nolan's ears are without aids (bathtime, e.g.), Matthew will point to them and say, "ew!" Nolan's ears look no different than anyone else's, but Matthew views the earmolds as the way Nolan's ears should look.

Currently, Matt gets speech therapy at the same intervals that Nolan does. This may change in the future, since Matt now has 3-4 word sentences. His articulation is still questionable, so we will have to see what happens. We have a great speech therapist who tries to include him in the activities we do with Nolan. Matthew learns some new signs each week, and he also really likes the "sound or no sound" game. It is quite funny to see our 2 1/2 year old pick up a rattle, shake it, and say in a lilting tone, "I hear that!"

On a side note, Nolan thinks there is something missing from Matt's ears, too. He constantly pulls on Matthew's ears and tries to look into them. It would seem we have a bit of an ear obsession at our house as of late, born out of the curiosity of children too young to verbalize questions as to why one has "hear-ay" and the other doesn't.

In an attempt to make sure that Matt gets some special attention, we have enrolled him in a toddler class called "2x2's." Once a week, the 2 year old children and their mothers go to preschool. Half of the class is mommy-and-me, and the second half involves the mothers getting a cup of coffee while the children learn to separate and have a typical preschool class setting. Nolan will be in daycare for this 2 hour period each week (this also comes along with the program), giving Matthew his own special activity and attention.

I don't think Matt really thinks about these things on a deep level, so we just try to balance things as best we can. Who knows? Maybe all the exposure to hearing aids and the associated therapies will lead Matt into audiology, or into AVT, or into becoming a TOD one day!

*the circuit boards in a remote control will fry in less than three seconds in a microwave. And will smell REALLY bad!

Frustration

Keeping those hearing aids in has become a full time job! With the weather getting hot and humid, the pilot caps have been put into early retirement- which leaves those ears exposed to curious fingers! Nolan doesn't mind his aids at all, but is in a major exploration phase and once he finds them, pulls them out and puts them into his mouth. I've thought about making this into a song for AVT:

"You take the left one out, I put the left one in!

You take the right one out, and you put it in your mouth!

We do the hokey pokey and we get those aids back in.

That's what its all about!"

Saliva makes a wonderful solvent for audiology glue, so the tubing frequently gets detached from the earmold. This causes the earmold to come loose from the aid and turns it into a choking hazard. To combat this, we've taken to using Krazy Glue. No, not on Nolan's ears (don't think I haven't thought about it), but on the earmold/tubing junction (not recommended unless you talk to your audi first- ours has given the OK to use it). At least the earmold doesn't separate from the hearing aid anymore, though we still don't have a solution for keeping those aids in his ears!

Anyway, we do have a new nursery rhyme that Nolan really loves:

"Round and Round the garden goes the little mouse.

Up up up he creeps into his little house!"

You circle the little tyke's belly button and say the first line, then creep your fingers up their bellies and tickle their necks for the second line.

In the Nolan vs. Mom with hearing aids battle, Mom comes out the winner every time!

Nolan's "More" Sign

Nolan's "more" sign is starting to take shape and is looking like the actual sign. I still need to get his "uh-oh" word on tape, but that one is a bit harder (since he only says it at random intervals).

First Sign and Verbal Imitation!

We went to the Erie Zoo on Sunday to check out the new wild dog exhibit and had two wonderful language events occur. We ate lunch at Panera Bread and Nolan signed "more" to request more bread. His version of the sign is clapping, which is pretty cute.

Later that day he dropped a toy out of his stroller. I said, "uh-oh!" Nolan looked at me and said, "uh!" Now if we say uh-oh or up, he'll imitate and say, "uh!" Very exciting stuff in this house!

We had more speech therapy today and obtained a few more games to play with Nolan. One is sound vs. no sound. This one is very easy and we simply shake an object which makes sound and say, "I hear it" while pointing to our ear. If the object doesn't make any noise, then we say, "no sound." She also gave us some ideas for creating sound opportunities at home, like setting the timer when I'm in the kitchen. When it goes off, I can say, "I heard that! It's time to ...." and then fill in the blank with whatever I was going to do next. We can also have Dennis ring the doorbell when he comes home, and I can say, "I heard that! Who is at the door?"

We also learned some new signs today: uh-oh, again, off, and on. Our SLP is going to bring some sign books by tomorrow so we can look at ASL vs. SEE and start really considering communication choices. We're taking a lot from the auditory-verbal camp, but we're also using some sign language. It is so hard to know what choice is the "right" choice and which one will work the best for our child.

Our former SLP had never really delved into this, so we were flying by the seat of our pants and not really doing much of anything (I was taking some sign language lessons and we had the speech therapist, but there wasn't any real "method" or "plan").