Life is Bliss - Lily's Cochlear Implant Journey

Baby Lab - 30 months

Lily Observations in the Baby Lab. 

1.  Lily continues to expand the length of her spontaneous utterances.  Some new complexity observed.

    a.  Embedded "wh" pronoun and past irregular - "Look what I found"

    b.  Semi-auxiliary - "Lemme see; Lemme stand"

    c.  Consistency increasing for +s on plurals and tz on possessives  - "comb baby's hair"

    d.  New forms of negation - "I have no crackers."

    e.  Reflexive pronouns - "by myself"

    f.  Noun phrase elaboration - "Your big spoon"

2.  Nice verbal planning observed today! -  "I gonna heat it up"  "Lemme heat up my soup"  "Now eat my soup"

3.  Exciting to see how specific her vocabulary is and how rapidly she picks up new words (jeans, pacifiers, alphabet soup).

    a.  Strong phonological (speech) development supports word learning.

    b.  She attempts difficult words - "Alphabet soup"

4.  Mom continues to provide beautiful recasts - You are filling in the details in your models that sets the stage for additional grammar.

5.  Some complex ideas emerging in her language.  "I know..."  "Now I...(time concept)"  "What else?"

6.  Speech intelligibility is strong for her age - It may vary when attempting a mouthful of ideas.

7.  Additional colloquial ideas - "There ya go, babe"

Audiology Report - 18 months post implants

Here are the highlights from our latest audiology visit in November. 

Results from today's testing indicated speech awareness thresholds (SATs) at 25db HL for the right side and 30 dB HL for the left side. Additionally, speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) were obtained at 20 dB HL for the right ear and at 20-25 dB HL for the left ear.  In the bilateral condition, an SRT was obtained at 20dB HL.  (For the audiologists that read this blog, we're always open to suggestions on how to make this better)

Responses to narrowband noise were obtained today at 30 dB HL and at 35 dBHL with the left processor.  Lily appeared to tire of testing before a more complete audiogram could be obtained.   An audiogram done in May was consistent with these findings. 

The NU-Chips test was administered.  Right CI only - 14/15 - 93%, Left CI only - 100%, Bilateral CIs 14/15 (93%).  The two Lily missed were comb and she touched ham instead of hand.   

Modifications to the Map:  Lily's maps have been stable for quite some time. At this visit, the T and M levels were globally increased approximately 5 cu's on both sides. 

COMMENTS:    Lily continues to make exceptional progress with her cochlear implants.  She is now able to participate in closed-set speech perception tasks. On the NU-CHIPS, which is a task that required Lily to identify words with the same number of syllables, similar vowel and varying consonant, she scored 93%-100%  Lily is ready for a more difficult closed-set task at her next appointment. 

Holiday Listening and Language Activities

We have done loads of holiday activities with Lily's teachers to learn about Christmas and all its parts. Here are a few that Lily loved:

1)  Two sets of foam stocking ornaments and all the parts.  Lily had to tell her teacher what she wanted on her stocking, like a cuff, buttons and a wreath, and then her teacher told Lily what she wanted on her stocking.  A language and listening activity.

2)  Clifford's First Christmas Book - A new favorite!

3)  Building a candy cane out of beads and a pipe cleaner, which became an ornament.

4)  A listening activity where we had foam tags and wrote activities on them.  Then Lily would either pull them off or put them on the tree and do the corresponding activity.  Of course the string that was supposed to hook the ornaments on the tree suddenly became a jump rope.   Lily loved jumping over (at 2-3 inches) and crawling under the rope.

5)  A small tree with hundreds of mini ornaments, garland, stars, etc. which we sorted through and discussed.  

6)  Fisher Price Christmas scene with Santa and his sleigh, a hot chocolate stand and an ice skating rink.

7)  Matching cards of kids doing things with the objects they wanted for Christmas and putting them in the mailbox for Santa Claus.  

Made To Order

We eat out a lot. More than we should, but at least it gives Lily an opportunity to practice talking and listening in public. Today Lily ordered her entire meal as the waiter asked her what she wanted from the kid's menu, including main dish, side dish and drink (hot dog, pineapple, and chocolate milk no less). I love that she's a confident kid who asks for what she wants... and mostly gets it - just like her mother ;-)

Christmas Vocab

We've been learning a lot of Christmas and holiday vocabulary such as wreath, stockings, ornaments, tinsel, reindeer, sleigh, Christmas tree, on and on and on. and we've tried to experience all the traditions and experiences to enhance that learning.  Here Lily is making cookies and putting together a gingerbread house.  Her favorite part was sampling the products. 

MacArthur Bates Word Inventory - 28.5 Months

For Lily’s latest scores on the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MBCDI), she was credited with 603 words. 

For girls at 28 months, this word score places her between the 75th and 80th percentile. These are normally hearing kids/girls - Whooo Hoo!!!   The MBCDI ends at 30 months of age – and they see ceiling effects (kids are learning lots of words that are not represented on the scale). 

While this is not a test of overall language proficiency, speech or listening, it is a very interesting measure in language/vocabulary growth. 

Lily's First Movie Theater Experience - Fantastic Mr Fox

This past weekend we went to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Lily's first movie at an actual movie theater.  She loved it.  The movie was a perfect mix between a kids' puppet cartoon, although it is stop-motion animation, and sophisticated adult humor with Latin name references and deep emotional struggles.   The primary narration was done by the fantastic George Clooney. 

Lily spent some of the movie climbing up and down on her chair and sitting on the small fence in front of us and was also filled full of popcorn and licorice, but overall she watched and listened to the movie like a champ.  It was difficult to know how much of the movie/language she could understand, but I think this will come as she gets older.

At the end of the night, Lily walk out the big movie theater doors and announced, "I had a great time."  So did we!!  Lily's Dad is now dreaming of the day when we can start going to movies in the theater again on a regular basis.

Dreaming of Cake and Ice Cream

We got to celebrate our little friend Elena's third birthday at a Princess-Batman party last weekend.  It was great fun and Lily was able to try on the birthday girl's dress up clothes.  This cowgirl outfit was a hold over from Halloween, which apparently WalMart drastically reduces immediately following the holiday.  Who knew?  Lots of language opportunities with costumes!

The picture captures Lily's excitement perfectly for the outfit and the party.  Lily continues to talk non-stop especially when it is something she wants to do such asking the birthday girl's uncle to move so she could have his chair (he very generously changed seats), asking the birthday girl's Great Grandparents for the icing roses off their cake (they were all over this request) and singing the Kindermusik goodbye song as we left the party. 

Before we arrived, I was telling Lily that we would eat cake and ice cream at the party, but first she had to take a nap.  She responded, "Then I will dream about cake and ice cream."  Too fun!

Lily Sings Her ABC's

Lily made a quick recording on my iPhone of her singing the ABC song. American Idol here we come.

Download Lily Sings ABCs

Blog Friends

I am an active reader of many CI kid blogs but don't comment much.  Occasionally, in the early days, I would send off emails asking questions and hoping I too would have a CI Rock Star kid. 

One of our favorite blogs was and still is Turn on My Ears, featuring Drew and his amazing family.  We met them this summer at the Moog Parents Workshop, although I felt like I already knew them.  Then we had the opportunity to meet them again in Columbus, OH last week.  Drew is doing amazingly well.  

One of the first things that Drew's Mom said to us was something like don't you wish we could have fast forwarded to this day to know that they would be talking AMAZINGLY well already.  We could have saved months of crying in those early days.   YES!  Lily's Dad and I totally agree!!

Here are Drew and Lily talking about being "King of the World." 

We are also thinking about our friend Landri who we met through our Blog and was activated with her CI this week.  Can't wait to hear this little one tell us she's "King of the World."  It won't be long.

Santa Claus at the Gas Station

We've started teaching Lily Christmas vocabulary.  Actually with simple exposure to words once or twice, she is able to understand the meaning and use the words immediately.  She is already talking about Christmas decorations, snow angels and candy canes. 

Lily is also trying to figure out Santa Claus.  She knows Santa brings toys to kids and that he wears a big fur coat.  This basic information got us into a little bit of trouble when Lily and I were in the gas station recently. 

There was a very tall woman, maybe from Africa, with a huge shoulder to toe fur coat.  Lily saw her immediately and said "Santa Claus!!!"  The woman with some sort of accent said, "What did she say?"  I said, "She thinks you are Santa Claus."  "What," she said confused.  I responded again, "She said she likes your coat."  The woman responded "I like her coat too!"  Lily was wearing her leopard print coat with hot pink accessories.   

You never know where Santa may be or the friends Lily will make with all this talking. 

Fun With A Flashlight

Last night we were reading Goodnight Gorilla, one of Lily's favorite books (special thanks to Uncle Chris for picking this one out). The story is about a mischievous monkey who escapes and unlocks the cages of all the other animals in the zoo as they follow the zookeeper home for a good night's sleep. The zookeeper has a flashlight and Lily likes to follow along in the book while she points her own flashlight. After a couple of readings Lily began pointing the flashlight all over the room stopping at each item and naming them - "Lamp... door... another door... fan... dresser." What a fun vocabulary game. 

Upcoming Moog Center Workshops

As you may remember we had a fantastic experience this summer attending the "Helping Your Children Learn to Talk" workshop in St. Louis. It was without a doubt one of the best couple days you can spend and well worth the investment. Well, the Moog Center is taking applications for this summer's training and offering a variety of other programs for parents and educators alike. Here's a listing. Check it out and don't forget to tell your educational professionals as well.

January 21-22, 2010 - $300 

Pediatric Cochlear Implant Programming 

A workshop for cochlear implant audiologists who work with infants and children. This workshop will focus on cochlear implant programming techniques for optimizing access to sound for infants and young children.  Protocols for monitoring progress in children at various developmental levels will be discussed.  Instruction will include live demonstrations, videos, and presentation of relevant case studies.  Seating for this interactive workshop is limited. CEU’s available.  Contact:  Connie Ciavirella at 314-692-7172 or cciavirella@moogcenter.org 

 

February 18-20, 2010 - $350 

The Earlier They Get Started, The Faster They Learn To Talk. 

For teachers and SLPs providing early intervention services to children with hearing loss. This workshop will focus on techniques for helping parents work with their own children and strategies for professionals working with very young children to develop spoken language skills.  Instruction will include live demonstrations, videos and hands-on opportunities.  Seating is limited. CEU’s available.  Contact:  Betsy Moog Brooks at 314-692-7172 or bbrooks@moogcenter.org 

 

July 7-11, 2010 - $150 

Helping Your Child Learn To Talk 

A Workshop for Parents of Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, ages 2 to 5 

This four-day workshop will provide parents with opportunities to learn strategies to help their children learn to talk while their children receive daily individualized instruction by a staff member of the Moog Center.  Each day is packed full of activities for the children and information for the parents.  Children over age 3 may receive speech and language evaluations, for an additional fee.  Contact:  Betsy Moog Brooks at 314-692-7172 or bbrooks@moogcenter.org 

 

September 2010 – Date to be determined. $150 

Strategies for Professionals of Mainstreamed Students with Hearing Loss 

For SLPs and teachers who have a student with hearing loss in their classroom. Learn effective strategies that work with students with hearing loss who are mainstreamed into your school setting.  Topics to be 

discussed include:  hearing loss and effects on language, academic difficulties, assistive listening devices, and support services. Contact:  Connie Ciavirella at 314-692-7172 or cciavirella@moogcenter.org 

 

October 2010 – Date to be determined. $300 

From Assessment to Practice:  Developing Spoken Language Skills in Children with Hearing Loss For SLPs and Teachers of the Deaf 

This workshop will focus on accurately assessing language levels, identifying areas for language instruction, selecting appropriate goals and objectives, and planning lessons for children with hearing loss.  Topics include:  Using norm-referenced language evaluation tools to diagnose strengths and weaknesses, using criterion-referenced language rating forms to select goals and mark progress, and implementing targets into a variety of language lessons. CEUs available. Contact:  Connie Ciavirella at 314-692-7172 or cciavirella@moogcenter.org 

 

November 2010 – Date to be determined. $300 

Conversational Language Activities for Deaf Children For SLPs and Teachers of the Deaf 

This workshop will focus on implementing language goals into a variety of conversational language activities for children with hearing loss.  Topics include:  Modeling and imitation techniques for correction and expansion of language, selecting appropriate language goals, planning conversational language activities to meet language goals and a variety of ideas for many different kinds of conversational activities.  This workshop will also include classroom observations and some hands-on practice. CEUs available.  Contact:  Connie Ciavirella at 314-692-7172 or cciavirella@moogcenter.org 

 

For your convenience, the Moog Center offers onsite workshops for larger groups.  If your staff or district is interested in scheduling one of the above workshops onsite, please contact Connie Ciavirella at 314-692-7172 or cciavirella@moogcenter.org 

 

Visit the website at www.moogcenter.org for complete workshop listings and information about the Moog Center’s publications.

Baby Lab - 28.5 months

I can't believe that Lily's had her Advanced Bionics Cochlear Implants for 18 months already.  She speaks very well and non-stop these days. 

Lily comes up with original thoughts, long compound sentences and can make up complex pretend sequences which are amazing Mary Pat in the Babylab. 

Here is our latest report.

1.  Lily built off mom's model and asked her first "why" question in the lab.

2.  Great job of supporting "thinking and feeling" words and supporting Lily's recall (remember when...)

3.  I heard her talk about "pretend" using the word for pretend.  Wow!

4.  You support her imagination in such interesting ways.  She is captivated when you pretend together.

5.  She is able to navigate this pretend world with your support, which results in a lot of talk not tied to here and now. 

6.  What interesting problem solving - sit on Mommy's lap to avoid the truck traffic.

7.  Very diverse vocabulary use - (neighbors) - with a lot of specifics.  I heard many adjectives today in her noun phrases. 

8.  Very positive to hear the speech clarity.  Her words are well formed.  Blends at the end of words - whoops and ones (nz)

9.  We are hearing additional colloquial expressions.  Whoops! yup..there ya go. 

10.  Continuing to increase utterance length. This is just magical to watch.

11.  Lily said "by himself."

12.  Think about acoustic highlighting on /h/ (in here)

 

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. 

 

 

Lily's First Haircut - "That's not so bad"

Lily had an official first haircut for which she sat very still.   We were pleasantly surprised, because of our previous attempts at giving her bangs a little snip.  It must have been the big cape, the big chair and the big mirrors that captured her attention just long enough for the hairdresser to trim her blond locks.  Lily didn't really have much hair until 18 months, so we were only going for a trim. 

As the hairdresser sprayed her hair down with water, Lily said, "That tickles" which was quite amusing for the whole salon.   After finishing up and getting some candy, Lily jumped down and said "That's not so bad."  Again the entire place erupted in laughter. 

Haircuts were situations that "pre-Cochlear Implant" I wondered how we would do it so she could hear.  Fortunately, it didn't present a problem at all.  When the hairdresser was cutting one side, we just flipped the head piece down and as she moved to the other side we replaced the head piece and took the other one off.   No problem.   Lots of anxiety created over nothing.   

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!

Talking in Spanish

Yesterday, Lily's buddy Ivy was teaching her to count to 10 in Spanish.  As we drove home from a party, we could hear Ivy saying "Uno!"  Lily would respond "Uno."  "Dos" - "Dos"  and this continued until they reached "Diez."   How totally satisfying.  Lily finished by telling me that "We're talking Spanish." 

Online Music Therapy Courses and other CI Experts

Last week, I watched a free online session with Chris Barton, board certified music therapist, hosted by Advanced Bionics. Chris  is an award-winning composer, performer and music therapy guru.  I think I've raved about her before, but this online session reminded me of how well she understands kids with CIs and how music therapy/music training is a must for kids who are learning to listen and talk.

The session I attended was primarily a Q and A, but there are at least seven other free online courses with Chris Barton in Advanced Bionics's Listening Room. 

There are also lots of other sessions in their eLearning Library by some of my favorite CI experts like Dave Sindrey, Mary Koch and Amy Robbins. Specially look at Amy Robbin's intervention Activities for ITSIs (Infants and Toddlers with Cochlear Implants).  Check it out!

Learning to Fly

On our search for a Halloween costume, we stumbled upon these beautiful pink wings with glitter that falls off wherever you wander.  Lily took to the wings instantly and now believes she can fly.  Not sure what she was doing in this picture, but she was insisting that she, baby Pooh and daddy Pooh all climb into the backpack together.  Our little angel. 

You've got a Talker There

Pretty much every where we go now, someone comments on how much and well Lily is talking.  From grocery store clerks and people in the Library, to Realtors and retail check out people.  Not because they see Lily's Cochlear Implants or have any idea of what they are, but because she is talking all the time and her speech is very clear. 

The grocery store clerk said, "She talks so well and you can understand everything she says.  How old is she?"  This is at the same time another grocery store clerk is throwing balls with Lily in the aisle.  Lily is telling him to "throw the ball."  He carefully tosses the ball and she say, "Uh oh, I missed it."  No worries.  He ran and picked it up to throw it again.

The slightly odd thing is on this same trip, a man started signing to Lily.  He could hear, because he had already informed me (unsolicited), that I was debating over two metal pans that were the same.  "No," I said, "One has a lid and the other one does not."  Or as my friend Yvonne would say, "Back off."  :)

Two other people have signed to Lily once they could see her CIs which I find very interesting. Not sure if they were deaf or not.   It will be facinating to watch this new generation of kids with hearing loss and the enormous amount of opportunities that have opened up to them because of their Cochlear Implants.

ABC's And Beyond

Lily is getting a lot of practice learning her ABC's. She loves the song and sings it often. We have a magnet board with all the letters and Grandpa practices almost daily on the computer with a variety of videos and YouTube resources (what a wonderful resource the Internet is). Anyway, Lily started singing by herself last night and got through the whole song correctly (assuming LMNOP is a word/letter). 

She's also mostly mastered counting to 10 (and sometimes 11). Last week she was occasionally missing 2 and 7. This week she seems to have added the 2 consistently and is working on remembering 7. Good stuff all around!

From "Where's the Potty" to Potty Trained

Today I looked back at the blog one year ago.  At that time, I wrote how excited I was that Lily's receptive language was building.  Specifically, we were excited that she knew where the "potty" was. 

One year later, Lily has been "potty trained" for more than six weeks, except at night (almost there) and a few Fridays when her parents aren't paying as much attention, and she can carry on an extended conversation about the potty and the things surrounding it.  Her receptive language is untrackable.   My what a difference a year has made.  

Learning about Jokes

Tonight we were working on the concept of "joke."  We filled Daddy's sink up with bubbles and toys and then I told Lily that we played a joke on Daddy. Lily thought this was very funny and was eager to tell Daddy, "We played a joke on you."  Daddy asked, "What did you do?"  Lily responded, "We put bubbles in sink."  Not sure she got the whole concept, but she was certainly a willing participant in the idea of a "joke."

521 Words +++ and New Phrases

We have one last time to fill out the MacArthur-Bates Word inventory.  Last week's results came to 521 words.  Lily has hundreds of words beyond this.  Perhaps more than 1200?  I'll have to check in with the word gurus to see where this places Lily on her vocabulary.  Mary Pat said they typically stop with the inventory after a child is 30 months.  There are still at least 50+ words Lily does not know.  Lots of the prepositions, pronouns, verbs, and words about time.  

She has learned many of fun phrases recently.  Not sure if she put these together or if she's heard them.  The phrases include:

- It's not so bad

- Go get him

- That is not very good.  I don't like it.

- Just a minute

- Good night, Sleep tight

- She is so nice

- Good idea

- It's too far.  Carry me!

- I think so.

- I want to see my friend Ivy.

I Have Something To Say

This may have been a first, but I'm sure it won't be the last. The other night Lily's Mom and I were having a conversation. After a few minutes Lily decided to interrupt us by saying, "I have something to say." We stopped and turned our attention to her and asked her what was on her mind. You could see her thinking as she said "Hmmm". It was like you could see her thinking, "Wow, that worked at getting them to focus on me. Now what?" She responded with "Blah, blah, blah." It was quite a funny and proud moment. 

Daddy, I Want Play Baby Lab

Last night Lily rushed into the house saying "Daddy, I want play Baby Lab." She asked me to put on her "vest" and get her babies. At the baby lab in Boys Town Lily wears a vest that has microphones built into it so that Mary Pat and gang can hear and record her utterances during the lab. We found a vest and went to our play room. She then told me I was "pretend Mary Pat" and we had a grand time playing games and practicing saying words. Who knew speech therapy could be so fun ;-) 

Talking at the Zoo

Lily and I have been trying to soak up every last ounce of summer.  Last week we made quick trip to the Children's Zoo for a little fun.  The highlight on this trip was Lily's horse ride.  She was a real "Cowgirl" with her horse named Jack. 

There was so much at the zoo to talk about.  From the "hay" the horses eat, to the "caterpillars and the spiderwebs" that Lily climbs on.  She loves to watch and then talk about everything.  For example, we talked about the "Zoo Keepers" and how they were the same as in the Good Night, Gorilla book.  We also found out that the seal has the same name as our neighbor Tony.  

Lily is making more remote connections and drawing things from her distant memory. She is quickly becoming a little girl and no longer our little baby.  Of course she still tells me "I baby," followed by a "wah wah." 

Baby Lab - 27 months old

Here are the results of the latest Baby lab study.  Lily got some rave reviews!  She also wore her pink tutu for our trip to Omaha, so maybe that helped her chat it up.  Mary Pat said no other kid had ever shown up with a pink tutu.  We thought it would make studying Lily's tape a little more exciting for the researchers.  :)

1.  Lily was such a chatterbox today.   [Is that the highest complement or what?]

2.  Asked lots of questions - who? what that?  what do?  which one? where barb (outside here and now)? Where Goofy? What do now? What wrong? Mommy?  Yes/No (Mommy you want a feed her?)

3.  Vocabulary explosion very evident in number of different words and concepts she is using.

4.  Another nice jump in speech skills.

    -  prosody (sure!)(counting rhythm)

    - well formed words - the average for 2 year olds is 50% intelligible; we understood >90% of multi-word utterances.

    - producing blends in lots of words.

    - nice use of ending sounds in words (can be a challenge at this age)

    - beautiful repertoire of consonants

5.  Exploding grammar

    - plurals marked

    - + ing on verbs

    - verb phrases (I'm making sausage)(want get)

    - all multi words utterances

    - tons of multi-word utterances

    - joining words "and"

    - S+V+O

    - Two verbs in lots of her verb phrases

    - Expanding pronouns (her, us, me, he, that, it)

6)  She's strategically copying Mom for new ideas (it seems)

7)  Discourse is getting colloquial "Sure" Whoops! others

8)  Mom - outstanding interactions - Airplane pretend sequence is a classic!

Talking About Lines and Animals and Weather and ...

Lily has been lining items up, then standing next to them and requesting that we take her picture. It is a very interesting observation she has made about photo shoots.  Of course we take this opportunity to talk about first, last and middle, among other photo shoot language possibilities.   Here are the animals after a dip in the sandbox. They were enjoying the nice weather between their pictures. 

I don't remember the exact language Lily used here, but she pretty much talks non-stop now.  We have long conversations and her sentence length and complexity grows daily.  We hear sentences from three to six, even seven words on a consistent basis.    She is asking and repeating lots of questions words, is matching the intonation of language and building her vocabulary database.

Sometimes I pinch myself and think did she really just say that.  Amazing stuff. 

Jumpin' Kate = Jumpin' Lily

This weekend we went to a local community radio fund raiser, which was simply a couple of bands in someone's backyard.   Lily loved it.  She and cousin Ivy were jammin', jumpin' and groovin' to the acoustic guitar sounds of Jumpin' Kate and another guy named Mike who was also terrific, but his name was less memorable.  Lily must get her love of acoustic guitar from me and her Aunt Tiffany.   The band was gracious to wave  and smile each time  the kids ran around the dance floor. 

It was so satisfying to watch Lily dance to the music and listen to the songs.  Carefree and enjoying the sound.  The audience asked Lily questions  between sets like "How old are you" and "what is your name" and she didn't miss a beat.  This would never be possible without her Advanced Bionics Cochlear Implants.  We are so thankful.  

I Missed You Emma

Lily and Emma are good pals.  Lily looks up to Emma and watches her every move.  These two are now able to have little back and forth conversations and while Emma is much older, Lily has no problem hearing her questions, even in challenging listening environments, and then coming back with some kind of answer. 

This weekend, when Emma left for a few moments and then returned, Lily rushed up, gave her a big hug and said, "I missed you Emma."  Ahhhhh what a tender moment and certainly a demonstration that Lily understands emotions and the word "missing."

Talk Like a Pirate Day - Good Reason to Eat Cake

September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.   An observer of this holiday would greet friends not with "Hello," but with "Ahoy, me hearty!"   We have good friends that are passionate about this holiday and have already started celebrating with pirate cupcakes.   Lily took one look and said, "ARRRrrrrr."  I have no idea how she knows what a pirate says, but she is well on her way to celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day every year.  Thanks for the cake!

Stop Talking...Time To Be Quiet

I didn't think we'd ever see the day where I would want Lily to stop talking.  Well it's already happened.  At night we have to tell Lily to stop talking and go to sleep.  At just two years and three months, Lily goes on and on and on.  Last night as she was going to sleep, she even composed her own song.  It went something like this:

Go to sleep.  Go to sleep
Lay down
Mommy and Daddy
Turn on TV

There were other words in there that I didn't understand.  It was definitely to a song, that we had never sung before. Other Cochlear Implant parents said this would happen.  I just didn't realize it would happen so soon.  Pretty ironic. 

Library Story Time - Color Quiz

Last week at library story time, Miss Sue was quizzing the kids about colors.  She had put pictures of babies on the wall, each wrapped in a colorful blanket.    We always sit close to the front to make sure Lily can hear everything.  When Miss Sue asked, "What color is this blanket," Lily responded loudly, "Red."  Ohhhh the elusive red.  She knew red!  This was the color that Lily has been forgetting.  Then Miss Sue asked again.  "How about this one?"  "Blue."  "This one."  "Green."  "This one." "Blue - No Purple." "And this one?" "Yellow." "Nice job Lily!"  Then I heard someone behind me say, "How old is she?" Someone else said, "Three."  Nope. 

Go BIG Red and Other Must Know Phrases

During Nebraska football season, everything is about the Cornhuskers.  Everyone wears red, even if you have no plans of attending or watching the game. 

Last night, Aunt Kelly and Uncle Eric hosted their first game party.  It has truly been wonderful to watch how they've embraced their new home state, wearing Husker T-shirts for every event, and now even getting the game on pay-per-view.  Kelly wore a Husker N on her face and Eric built red and white corn hole boards (a game where you try and throw bean bags into a tiny hole 20 feet away).  

Lily has also embraced her Nebraskaness and chanted "Go BIG Red" for most of the game.  Aunt Kelly and friend Jill spent part of the evening teaching and photographing Lily yelling "Touch Down" with the appropriate arm movements.  So much important culture to teach. :) 

Take My Picture - A Memorable Moment

Lily and I are trying to soak up the nice weather by going for lots of walks.  Yesterday, Lily demanded that she take a few toys along for the ride.  As you can see, the stacking bucket full of stuffed birds, a teddy bear and the tree stump all joined us.  

Once Lily had climbed up in the stroller and stuffed the toys in, she told me to "take a picture."   I think she realized this was a memorable moment.   The toys actually stayed in the stroller the entire time and Lily even managed to take a little snooze.

Voice Quality - "I Love Her Voice"

Last night at the restaurant, Lily played peak-a-boo with a little girl in another booth about 15 feet away.  As that family left the restaurant, the Mom said to us,"OH I love her voice."  Lily does sounds really clear and was talking non-stop through dinner.  Of course that is after she ate a pile of Parmesan cheese, taking after her mother and cousin Emma.  Now as I reflect back on the comment, Lily does sound very cute when she talks and really very "normal."  Of course we're not biased or anything.  :)  Just a little testimonial from a stranger. 

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.

  

Pretending and Singing Mr Sun

We're having lots of fun as summer draws to a close.  It was a beautiful weekend to play outside and do all those summer kid activities like bubbles, chalk on the sidewalk and play dough on the porch. 

One funny interaction this evening was when were pretending with the play dough that we were having a picnic.  I told Lily we were pretending to eat.  Then asked, "What am I eating?"  She finally decided I was eating a strawberry.  Then I tried to change it and said, "Now I am eating an enchilada."  Lily said, "No Mommy.  It's not enchilada, it's strawberry.  Pretend strawberry." 

Lily has also been growing her singing ability.  Tonight she told me to "Stop singing Mommy.  Shoe singing."  She was playing with her pink sandal and apparently it wanted to sing.  (We don't stifle creativity here.)   Then she started into "Mr Sun, Sun, Mr Ol' (Golden) Sun, Please shine down me."  Totally amazing.  We cheered. 

Check out this article called Bringing Music to Their Bionic Ears: Nurturing Music Development in Children With Cochlear Implants.  By Christine Barton - A music therapist who we adore!

A few more fun pictures to enjoy.

Oh Drat! More Language Learning

Lily is saying a lot of funny phrases right now.  

One phrase is "Oh Drat."  She picked this up from the cartoon Oswald.  Pongo, a large gentle dragon, is always breaking things or can't do something because he is too big. Then he says all defeated, "Ohhhhhh Drat.  Sigh."  Lily will dump the cards on the floor, then look at them and say, "Oh Drat."  Or she will bump heads with Daddy and say "Oh Drat.  I am crying too."  It's sooo hilarious.

Another funny phrase is "that tickles," used of course when we tickle her or her babies. 

Lily has also just recently learned about monsters.  She'll ask "Where monster go?"  Then say "outside."  Or she'll look in a plant and say "No monster here."  If Daddy runs in the room, she'll say something like, "That's not monster, that's Daddy."   Fun times.

She Talks A Lot

We sat down with a Mom and four year old boy at the library last week to do a color page.  Because we try and read 10 books a day, we are at the library frequently. 

Lily started chatting immediately, talking about the colors, shapes, what she was drawing, the boy and his mom, on and on.  The mother said, "She talks a lot."  I smiled and said "Yeah."  Then she she said, "How old is she?" and went on to say how advanced she thought Lily was and that her language was so clear and easy to understand. 

I don't think this Mom could see or knew what Lily's CIs were.  With only the tan Advanced Bionics headpieces and nothing on the ears (BWP setup), the CIs are starting to disappear in her blond hair.   

These are the little moments that keep me going. :)

Let Our Children Hear — And Learn To Speak - South Africa Editorial

A very interesting editorial in South Africa's The Time's called Let our children hear — and learn to speak

Music Therapy and Its Link to Listening and Reading

New research on music therapy and its effectiveness at teaching listening skills, especially in noise. 

Incorporating a music therapist for kids in early intervention, for a range of issues, seems like an increasingly good public policy idea. 

"The findings strongly support the potential therapeutic and rehabilitation use of musical training to address auditory processing and communication disorders throughout the life span.....Better perception in noise was linked with better working memory and tone discrimination ability. The results imply that musical training enhances the ability to hear speech in challenging listening environments by strengthening auditory memory and the representation of important acoustic features."

The researchers have also looked at the link between music and reading.

"The Auditory Neuroscience Lab at Northwestern has helped establish the relationship between sound encoding in the brain and linguistic abilities by showing that the very neural sound transcription processes that are deficient in children with dyslexia are enhanced in people with musical experience. Based on this collective work, poor readers may show greater benefits from training programs that include music as well as speech sounds."

Singing Happy Birthday Mommy

Tonight at dinner, Lily serenaded me with "Happy Birthday Mommy, Happy Birthday Mommy, Happy Birthday to Yooooouuuuuu (vibrato)."  What more could I ask for?  Did I ever imagine Lily would be able to do this at two years old?  No.  What a great birthday. 

I received so many birthday wishes from so many special friends and family and had multiple parties, which is how birthdays should be celebrated. 

Yesterday we got to explore Omaha's Riverfront and rode the new riverboat.  Lily  couldn't wait to find that boat and "row row row the boat..."   We even climbed the new pedestrian bridge.  I have a feeling it's going to be a great new year. 

Outdoor Adventure at the Home of Arbor Day

We took Friday night dinner on the road this week and ended up in Nebraska City, home of Arbor Day.  It is an amazing little town, full of cool stuff to do and explore.  

The Arbor Day Farm Tree Adventure was one of the highlights.   We hiked the trails, climbed through tunnels, touched everything, ate lollipops, jumped on bridges, watched a waterfall and played with outdoor Marimbas.   Lots of outdoor language rich open-ended play.  I have a vision for an outdoor play space in our backyard.   Will need to put it on the "to do" list for this winter. 

This amazing play space is only limited by one's imagination and oh how Lily's imagination has blossomed in the last few months.  She'll pretend to fly on airplanes, drive cars, get candy, throw a ball, get out of a rain storm, talk on the phone, almost anything we can dream up together.  

The ability to pretend not only grows her mind, but also grows her language.  It enables us to have lots of conversations back and forth about what will happen next, who is coming and how it might taste, just to name a few.  What great adventures we have together. 

Memory, Experiences and Language

Today we met Lily's Daddy for lunch at one of our favorite spots.  They serve southern food out of an old gas station and have a great vibe. 

Once Lily saw the restaurant, she started talking about Choo Choos, because there are a number of trains right down the street and you can always hear the whistles.   Then we sat down and Lily asked for Mickey, because when we were here before we were entertaining Lily by making her toys "disappear"  under the big napkins. 

We haven't been at this restaurant for at least a month, yet her memories and the language surrounding those experiences, are clearly sticking.  It just reinforces for me the importance of creating magic memories to build language. 

Lily's First Phone Calls

Lily woke up today after I had left for work and was upset about me not being there. Through the tears, Mommy called me on the iPhone so that Lily could say hello. While it was marginally effective at calming her down, she quickly learned a new communication tool - the cell phone. 

Later in the afternoon, Mommy was out at a meeting while Lily was visiting Grandma's house. Grandma called Mommy to coordinate schedules and hung up the phone. Lily was none too pleased and requested Grandma to call her back to "I talk to Mommy". While on the phone Lily told Mom about her day of potty training, lunch, and swimming. Can't wait to see what happens when she gets her own phone.

426 Words +++

We've just finished filling out the MacArthur-Bates word inventory and identified 426 words that Lily knows and says.  Then of course there are hundreds of words she says that aren't on this list.  It was only a few months ago that this new word inventory seemed overwhelming.  Now it is easy to see the words she doesn't know on this list, because they are getting fewer and fewer. 

Of course learning language is never ending.  Found a word in a WSJ caption last week that I couldn't even pronounce, let alone understand.  Not sure where a kid with normal hearing would be on the word inventory list, but we're pretty excited for Lily on soaking up all this vocabulary. 

It's hard to know the words Lily knows and doesn't know.  We played "what is this" for hours today because it was so rainy.  Lily kept asking for "More."  We'd run from room to room to outside to the basement to the garden and everywhere in between asking "what is this" and "what am I doing" or some version of that.   I am sure the neighbors thought we were nuts.     

Baby Lab - 25.5 Months - "Curve Buster"

Since we returned from the Moog Center, Lily's language has exploded.  She went from one and two words, to three, four and five word sentences.    The Director of the Baby Lab Study called Lily a "curve buster," meaning that Lily is doing extremely well and "busting the curve" in her research study.  We'll take it!!  Here is the report from the Baby Lab yesterday.

1.  Mom reports major explosion in utterance length and we observed the same today.
    a.  Moog School strategy of requiring imitation of Mom's expansions and that worked.

2.  Observations today:
    a.  Nice changes in clarity of speech - Majority of words understandable and most were in multi-word phrases, which is really cool.
    b.  She is breaking into grammar big time.
          1.  a + noun
          2.  Pronouns (I, her, me)
          3.  noun+verb+object (I want cake)
          4.  all/"doin" (ing in natural form)
          5.  Location terms (on bus Mommy)
          6.  Nicely formed questions:  Where shoes go?  What's dat Mommy?  Yes-No with Nice inflections!
          7.  New function words "it" "a"
          8.  Plural endings!  Toy+s, Boot+s
   c.  Major growth in Vocabulary and range of concepts expressed.
   d.  Unbelievable pretending.  Imagining raining and running away.  Putting on pretend sunglasses.  Assigning roles to mom.
   e.  Lily using desire terms (want, need)
   f.  Mom's input is so ideal; I notice how well you shape her utterances so naturally.
   g.  Natural expressions; hey, nope.
   h.  Quality of comprehension.  WOW!  "Tap" the cup, make the cup "fly" and "smell" the shoes.