Brotherly "Love"

Playing tag

Oops! Umm.. let me help you put this back in!

Forget it, bro. I'll put it back in myself!

Booth Test Results

Nolan cooperated really nicely for his booth test yesterday. With the exception of being very chatty (we had to shove his mouth full of cookies to get him to quiet down), he habituated quickly to the dancing puppy and koala and dutifully squealed with delight every time the animals lit up. We got great results as far as accuracy is concerned. As far as hearing level...

We've had a drop. A big one in the high frequencies. Twenty decibels gone in three months' time. We've gone from having a rising audiogram to a nearly flat audiogram, and now we have a "reverse cookie bite" audiogram. In the moderate to moderately severe range.

We're lucky that his hearing aids are more than capable of handling any configuration and almost any loss level (they are good all the way down to the severe range). We don't know why Nolan has his hearing loss, though our audi did ask if he had his eyes checked yet. That's the only test that hasn't been done yet (they can't really test for that particular syndrome until they're toddlers). Nolan's not at risk for type 1 Usher's, but there are two other variants that have moderate or progressive hearing losses associated. I doubt that's the case, and we'll probably just never know why his hair cells are dying.

Anyway, his last results (from May) were:

500Hz: 50dB

1000Hz:40dB

2000Hz: 35-40dB (depending on the ear)

4000Hz: 35dB

I don't have the official report yet, but I saw his audiogram in the office. Our results are now:

500Hz: 55-60dB

1000Hz: 50-55dB

2000Hz: 40-45dB

4000Hz: 55dB

I did have a moment of relief when I saw that his tymps were flat, but our audiologist quickly told me that he has tubes and they were looking to make sure one of the numbers was high enough to show the tubes were open. His tubes are open and functioning beautifully. So its a true loss and not anything complicated by a conductive component.

Nolan's aids were adjusted and he can hear those "f," "th," and "s" sounds again. We'll be going in every three months for hearing tests to monitor his levels. Hopefully he'll stabilize, but if he doesn't- at least we have a great audiologist who is really proactive and a great set of aids that can compensate for his current level of loss.

Happy Birthday Nolan!

Well, day-after-your-birthday. I can't believe my little boy is one year old!

And boy, am I glad we removed his hearing aids before he got into his cake:

Showing Off

I finally got some video of Nolan saying "ball." It comes out as "da!" because our "B" sound has been on hiatus for a while.




I also have a video of Matt "reading" the Hungriest Caterpillar. His speech has come a tremendous way in the past two months!

Using Our Library

I have been faithfully taking the boys to "story time" at the local library, and now that the session has ended I am still hitting the library every week for new books. Matthew likes the same book read 800 times in a row, so it is nice to know that it gets to go back to the library in a fairly short period of time. Anyway, this week we're reading:

• Bus Stops by Taro Gomi. A bus stops at various locations, including a beach, a baseball park, a building site, and a hospital. This one is great for language opoportunities, but is better for the 2+ set since it has rather abstract pictures. Matthew LOVES this one, but Nolan would rather chew on it than look at it.
• Ten Seeds by Ruth Brown. This one is great for both kids. Very short wording and great illustrations. A boy plants ten seeds and due to a sequence of events, only one seed remains to produce a flower... which produces 10 seeds! There are several animals and good plant based vocabulary that you can introduce (roots, seedlings, shoots). I can point-and-label with Nolan, and practice counting with Matthew.
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (board book). Another great one for both kids. I should be ashamed that we don't own this one! Counting, days of the week, life cycle of the butterfly....this book is great!

I have to come up with three more books I want to check out for next week. I used to just browse and select books at random, but I've come home with some doozies. One day Matt was running amok and Nolan was crying, so I just grabbed three books that didn't have too much text and left. One was "A Fish In His Pocket" by Denys Cazet. About a bear who looks into a pond and drops his book into the pond on the way to school. When he gets to school he finds a dead fish in the book and carries it around in his pocket all day before giving it a fish funeral in a paper boat on the pond. Not exactly great material for a two year old! Let's just say I'll be consulting my Read Aloud Handbook before the next trip!

*Regarding Nolan's nose: the Rudolph look is because he fell on the playground by the library while chasing his brother. Proving that reading can, indeed, evolve into a contact sport!

Starting to Talk

Since my firstborn child refused to utter a single word until he was a full 2 years old, it seems amazing that my little one is already starting to talk! Talk about the power of early intervention- my hard of hearing little boy is talking a full year earlier than his hearing brother did. Nolan says two words consistently: "uh" for uh-oh, and "dah!" for ball. We have no "b" sounds at the moment, so "dah" is as close as we'll get for the time being. He asked for the ball several times today during speech therapy, to which I remarked:

"Isn't this kind of early for speech?"

Our speech therapist smiled and reminded me that average kids have a few words by one year. True, I know, but I wasn't really expecting anything for another year or so with Matthew's delayed speech. It looks like Nolan is going to fall in the normal range for speech development, which is cause for great relief (a 2 year old with no communication skills is a very frustrating situation- trust me)!

We are also doing some sign language with him (he signs "more" and "ball" in addition to his spoken words). It is a lot of fun to see how fast their brains grow at this age.

MRI Results

I'm not a patient person. I totally accept that about myself and decided to call the ENT to see if the MRI results were in, and if they'd let me know the results over the phone.

They called me right back and said the report was just faxed over and placed into Nolan's file today. The report indicates "no masses or lesions" in the inner auditory canal. Essentially, the MRI is normal. The ENT is going to review the images herself and with a team of other radiologists and ENT's on August 21, but I doubt they'll find anything that the initial radiologist didn't see.

Nolan's our little mystery (no cause whatsoever for his hearing loss), and it doesn't seem like anything else (syndromic) is involved.

Now we can get back to "real life" and just keep tabs on his hearing levels every so often. I'm glad to be done with the doctor appointments!