Jodi Speaks Her Mind

One of those catch-you-up posts 11/3/2008

Starting with the present and moving backwards…

We just celebrated Sophie’s 1 Year Adoption Day on Saturday, November 1. We made her a “medal” that said “I was adopted today!” and had coffee cake for breakfast and bought her a two-wheel bike (with training wheels, of course). She loved it and will hopefully be riding it well soon so we can go on short trips to the park and such.

Even better than the adoption day was that Sophie picked that day to finally poop in the potty! We have been working on this for the better part of this entire calendar year, and we were beginning to think it would never happen. She just (as in five minutes ago) did her third self-initiated poop-in-the-potty success! We are so stoked about this. Proudest parents ever! LOL

Halloween was super fun. Grandma Phillips made gorgeous mermaid costumes for both girls. I had started one for Addy last year, but that one ended up going to Sophie (too big for her but too small for Addy) and a larger one was made for Addy. I had to abandon the project last year when we suddenly learned we would be in Russia preparing to bring Sophie home. Anyhow, pictures are in the gallery (or will be soon - click Photos link at the top). We were just going to go to a church festival, but we ended up going trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood, and it was really fun. Daddy chose to dress up as a pirate!

A couple of weeks ago, I took the girls on a field trip to the pumpkin patch. It was with a home school group, and we had such a nice time. There are (or will be) pictures in the gallery of them in the hay maze, on the hayride, feeding the animals. A few days later we went back to select a pumpkin for carving as a family. It turned out really cute, and we roasted the seeds, too - Yum! Actually, they didn’t turn out that great, so we tried again when the girls decided to carve their small “Oz Pumpkins”. That batch came out better, despite being forgotten in the oven! Maybe overcooking is the trick.

We went on a family camping trip for one night in early October, and had a wonderful time. The weather was fantastic, the girls had such a good time and came up with a “family camping song”. It was Down by the Bay. Adelina was enjoying trying to make the rhymes. I think we sang it for a solid hour. We are hoping to get away for a family camping trip every month or so. It is such a great way to connect as a family and have fun without the temptations of TV, computers, and the telephone.

Addy’s Adoption Day was October 4, and we celebrated by allowing her to adopt her first pet - fish. We got a tank, gravel, plants, and all that extra stuff, got it all set up and then went back a few days later to get the fish. Unfortunately, two of them died fairly early on but we now have 3 mollies, and a baby guppie, and they all seem to be doing well. Addy is responsible for feeding them and she and Steve together will care for the water, tank, etc.

I’m home schooling Addy this year except for speech and language. She goes to public school for 30 minutes each day and gets one or the other, and I’m doing all her academics at home. It is working out to be a very good arrangement. Sophie is attending an oral preschool each afternoon for 2.5 hours and is making great progress on her speech and language, though she is still at the early stages. We are very proud of how well she is doing with her cochlear implants.

That’s all for this update. I’ll be uploading several albums of pictures in the next day or so and will let you know when they’re available.

Farewell feline friend 7/30/2008

Jake has moved on to a new home tonight. No, he isn’t dead. Far from it - he’s quite healthy and still rather spunky. Unfortunately, he and Sophie continue to be incompatible. She still can’t seem to learn to leave him be, so he was fighting back with his claws (only has back claws). The vet’s concern was that if he chose to fight back with his teeth, we could have bigger problems on our hands. She strongly recommended we find him a new home, so we set our minds on doing that. In the meantime, it happened - Jake bit her right on the face. Thankfully, it didn’t break the skin, so it healed up nicely with some neosporin, but it confirmed our need to separate these two more permanently.

Anyhow, tonight Jake went to live with a new family. We are confident that he will be loved and happy and most likely he’ll get more affection than he got in our house. Overall, it is a positive thing, but it was sad to see him go. He’s been with us for four years and had become a part of the family. Addy was sad, too, but she understood the reasons and even had her own, which is a suspicion that she may be developing a cat allergy.

Here’s one of my favorite Addy & Jake pictures.

Summer goings-on 6/10/2008

Adelina is attending two summer classes: Cooking and Writing

Sophie started her summer pre-school class (more like camp) yesterday - looks like fun! It’s only two days a week for 3 hours each time.

Adelina is making some nice progress in gymnastics.

Sophie is making some amazing progress with her CI’s. She has about 5 sounds now and is beginning to put them together in some form of babble. I love to listen to her pretend to talk!

I’m still working on navigating the busy-ness that comes with parenting two kids, especially now that I’m also trying to home school Adelina. We’ll start more “officially” in August, but we’re warming up and doing what we can to address her reading and math skills that were sorely neglected this past school year.

We’re also enjoying our new pool - such fun! We’re also trying to emphasize family time and really bonding as a family. This is both fun and positive.

That’s the update for now. Sorry for the dearth of posts. Here are a couple of pictures to keep you coming back…

This one is from a camping trip we took in March. Sophie had fun with the boots and hats they had for dress-up at the horse riding place we went to.

Adelina performed in the “Olympics” and here she is with her medal and flowers and her gorgeous smile! (taken at home after the event)

Welcome to the swim season 5/13/2008

We put a pool in over the “winter”. We bought the heater so we can enjoy it in the spring months, so we have thoroughly enjoyed it already and we are looking forward to a fun and long swim season. Here are the girls in some new swimsuits:

…Must…blog… 4/23/2008

Wow, nothing happens simply in our house.  I have so much to share.  Let’s see… do I begin with my youngest profoundly deaf daughter, who is now learning how to listen to sounds - successfully (among many other accomplishments)!?  Or with my older daughter, who is now being partially home schooled?

I guess we’ll start with Sophie… Sophie is just doing wonderfully with her new implants.  She can already imitate two speech sounds (ah and mm) and makes a very early attempt at the word “open” (mostly she just bobs her head up and down indicating two syllables, but it is a genuine attempt at the word!)  She is spending a lot of her time these days just vocalizing and “listening” to her own voice among many other sounds.  She currently goes about with an almost constant hum.

Adelina is doing quite well.  She just lost both front teeth (on the top) within 3 days of each other, so she has a big hole in her mouth right now.  What a great look!  She is doing well in gymnastics and is thoroughly enjoying our pool (as we all are).  On a slight negative, she was not doing so well at her new school, and upon investigation it became clear that it had to do with the quality of instruction.  I’m not going say more than that, but the result is we made an adjustment to her schedule so she would come home earlier and I am teaching her math, reading, and some language at home.  So far, so good, and the additional time has fostered deeper bonding between us as well.  I am really starting to get into it and will probably be posting more about it as we get going.  Things are slow right now as I am figuring out what she can and can’t do and many things she previously knew will have to re-taught because of neglect or poor instruction.

No idea what we’ll be doing next year.  We’re crossing each bridge as it comes up.

More to tell, but that’s all for today!