Life is Bliss - Lily's Cochlear Implant Journey

The Halloween Experience

There is not much Lily missed about Halloween.  We had the whole experience including making cookies, reading loads of books, attending lots of wonderful Halloween parties and of course Trick or Treating.  Thanks to everyone who added to the flavor. 

Lily learned all about skeletons with bony fingers, cackling witches that say "Hee Hee Hee" and that a "Thank You.  Happy Halloween" always follows the neighbors filling your basket with candy.  We shared many fun experiences with our friends and family and Lily is already plotting next year's costume. 

 

 

Pre-Halloween Experiences - Costumes, Books and Song

Lily has been getting lots of pre-Halloween experiences.  She's read a dozen books about haunted houses, pumpkin patches and bony skeleton fingers.  And the big news is that she decided to be a "puppy dog" for Halloween.  Very cute pictures to come soon. 

Here Lily and Barb, from the Omaha Hearing School, are trying to decide what Lily should be for Halloween.  Maybe a ghost?   Then they read/sang a book.  Each page was a Halloween picture. This one was the Ugly Witch - The witch goes "Hee Hee Hee" and of course they made an ugly face.    

The final picture demonstrates that it is getting colder here and Lily is dressed so stylishly in her leapord print and hot pink accessories.  Pretty fancy!

Are You Fancy? No, I'm Just Lily.

Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor is a big hit in our house this week.  Faye, Lily's hearing resource teacher, brought us the book.  She reasoned that if Lily loved fairy wings, she'd love Fancy Nancy.  She was right. 

Fancy Nancy loves to make everything fancy including her family members and she loves to eat parfaits.  Both are things Lily loves too.     

If we ask Lily if she is fancy, she says "No, I'm just Lily Bliss." 

Lily Goes to School

Lily spends a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  While she's there, she attends "Papas" school.  They read lots of books, talk about colors, numbers, shapes and letters.  Lily has mastered most of the colors, the basic shapes, one through ten although two and seven are often missing, and many letters in the alphabet including A, B, L and I.   Many of the lessons are on the computer.  Her reward for good work of course includes M&Ms.  Yes she knows the letter M as well.  Thanks for your help!

Carl's Birthday - Reading Without Words

Last week Faye brought Lily a couple of books to read during the week. Her favorite is Carl's Birthday about a big dog and the baby Madeline who go on an adventure. It's actually a series of books. They are marvelously illustrated, but except for the first page or so, no words appear on the pages. One of the things we learned early on in our journey was to read, read, read to Lily, but not to always be restricted to the words on the page. The Carl books are excellent at helping us do this. Lily loves looking at the pictures as we make up the dialog and explanations on each page. It's been an excellent way to try new language, expand vocabulary, and ask questions. 

Tonight we went to the mall and Lily kept telling us she wanted to go to the "bookstore" (she likes playing with the train set they have in the children's book area). We left with Good Dog, Carl to add to the collection.

  

Hearing Journey Posters, A New Book and Listening Tests

Faye, our Hearing Resource Teacher, has brought a couple of great posters from AB's Hearing Journey website including the Sleepy Time Poster and the "I Heard That" Farm Poster that Lily has loved to explore and talk about. 

She also brought a book from Eric Carle called Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me.  It involved a father climbing up a ladder, on top of a mountain, to get the Moon for his daughter -- something Lily's Dad would definitely do.  Lily soaked the book up as we read it, but didn't react too much.   Then later that same day, as her Dad was holding her, she tried to reach and grab the moon herself.   She's already an independent woman and definitely understood and could apply what she had read.

Lily's languauge continues to grow everyday.  She repeats everything and many of her words and sounds are getting clearer.  Today our SLP Staci was doing a listening test where she would ask Lily to point to the box with the Baby, Ball and Star or Book, Blocks and Heart, etc.  After the exercise was completed, our SLP said Lily had done fabulously and that she usually waits until kids are three to do these exercises, but that Lily was definitely ready for them.  Too fun!

Lily's Memory - It's growing

Everyday we can see Lily making the connection between items in one place and the same item somewhere else in maybe a slightly different form. 

These examples come out often when we are reading and we read a lot.   For example we were talking about a parrot and Lily went into the playroom and pulled out the Curious George book with the parrot in it. 

Another example was when we were talking about sheep and Lily got into the book bag and pulled out the Ba Ba Black Sheep book. 

A third example happened at speech today.  We were talking about a birthday cake. I asked Lily if she remembered what was on Zan's birthday cake. (The answer was bee or flower)  Lily said airplane, which is what we gave Zan as present.  So while the answer wasn't quite right, she still remembered what happened yesterday.  So cool. 

Experience Books

I've created two more experience books for Lily on our trip to Disney. Our hearing resource teacher Faye will be so proud.  They serve as powerful language tools and personal memmories that keep Lily's attention.  Here is a wonderful article on finding the value of experience books.

New Book: I Promise To Be A Good Parent

Karen Rossi, Director of the Omaha Hearing School, and our Oral Guru, has a new book out called I Promise to be a Good Parent - A Book for Families and Friends of Young Children.  It highlights 10 key "promises" (aka language tips) for parents to make to their children.   The promises are all based on creating meaningful interactions between parents and children and optimizing the young child's development of security, confidence, listening skills, and spoken language. The ideas are simple, yet spot-on, and highlight the fundamental language ideas that Karen has drilled into us like engaging your child, involving them in normal everyday activities, and talk, talk, talk.   It would be a beautiful gift for a new parent.

Deaf Children Can Speak - Free E-Book

I just finished reading a free e-book titled A Father's Love - Teaching a Deaf Child to Hear and Speak...Perfectly, written by the Dad of a five-year-old girl with profound hearing loss.  The book documents his family's journey to Cochlear Implants, auditory-oral learning, and beyond.  It is a book filled with answers to the questions most commonly asked by professionals to a family with a newly diagnosed hearing-impaired child.  It is the first book I've seen that gives definitive answers about WHAT to do to help your child achieve remarkable speech and listening.  He is very direct and to the point. 

We share a similar philosophy that we too are doing everything possible to help Lily acquire excellent speech, language and auditory skills.   We only get one shot and there is no time to waste.  Whatever Lily achieves will be great; however, we want to give her the best head start to life we can.   

Here is an excerpt from his website:

"This book is written for parents of deaf and hard-of-hearing children who absolutely want their child to communicate in a hearing world. It is written from the personal experience of one father who did everything possible to help his young deaf daughter acquire excellent speech, language and auditory skills. Along with exceptional hearing and speech, this remarkable child has perfect articulation and above-age-level cognitive skills! You will not find a more comprehensive, to-the-point parents’ guide that explains everything from insurance, the oral language process, the IFSP / IEP process, the necessary three to five year commitment, and everything that must be done at home. Four years of self education and searching for the right answers are in this 75 page step-by-step guide."

Hug, Hug, Hug

There is a book we read about a monkey going around looking for a hug.  He is so sad because all the other same species/animals are hugging each other.  On the last page he finds his Mom and she gives him a big hug.  There are no words in this book, except HUG, so I'm not really sure why the other animals in the jungle can't hug him, but that is a topic for another post.  Lily has just started giving really great hugs and giving them on demand.  She has been hugging her babies for quite a while (on request), but if you asked her for a hug, she would scrunch up her shoulders, run around behind you and hug your back so she wouldn't get "trapped".  But now if you say, "Can I have a hug?"   She'll run up and squeeze you tight around the neck.  Ahhhhhh.  Nothing feels better than a baby hug.  

Experience Books

A new language tool we'll be working on this week is called an experience book.  These books can come in various forms.  They can be ""Go Books" where you have photos of places you GO and then you talk about them pre/post arrival. You can have hearing books, where you include pictures of things Lily can hear, but we can't necessarily see the object like crickets, lawnmowers, planes, dogs, trucks, etc.  There are story books that help describe what we did throughout the day and then retell/document the story.  Then there are also experience books where you take an experience for the day, document it, and then on the next page, expand on it.  For example, we could use the pictures of Lily eating the tomatoes and then on the next page have pictures of things that are red, things that are round, vegetables, food she loves, etc. Whatever vocabulary we want to work on.  These can also be great keepsakes of life-long memories we are creating with Lily. 

AG Bell Presentation Materials Now Available

Susan, Lily and I had a fantastic time at the AG Bell Conference in Milwaukee this past June. Fabulous information, insights, and inspiration. For those not able to make it, AG Bell has now made the presentation materials available online. I'd highly encourage you to browse and learn from these. Great research and great info from professionals from around the world.

Also, while not a requirement to download, consider becoming an AG Bell member so resources like these can continue to be available to parents and their families. Happy surfing.