Jodi Speaks Her Mind

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!

Pictures! 3/31/2008

We finally uploaded some pictures.  More are coming, but there are 3 new albums in the gallery.  Enjoy!

Sophie is listening! 3/15/2008

Sophie got both her implants activated yesterday with BTE Harmony Processors.  The 2 hour appointment was a bit trying at times and she went through periods where she did NOT want to have anything on her ears anymore.  I was getting concerned that this was going to be harder than anticipated.  Then we got to the part where we determine if she can hear.  We looked for a response - none - so the volume was slightly increased and this was repeated until we got a response.  The responses we got were grimaces and cries.  Whatever this new input was, she didn’t much like it!  But that is not unusual for the beginning days so we moved forward with the other ear and repeated the process.  Once she was disconnected from the cables and just using her newly mapped processors the same way her sister does, she seemed rather pleased with herself and tolerated them really well.

Later in the day we started exposing her to more sounds and she would giggle.  We were just amazed with how well she was doing with this new input.  Most children are implanted around age 1 and cannot understand what is happening so they are very quick to pull off the headpiece or processors in order to not have the input or just to remove the “thing” on their head or ear.  With Sophie, she had been exposed to the processor through Adelina and we had used what language she has to explain that she, too, would have processors, and they would help her to listen and hear things.  She couldn’t know what that meant but now that she is experiencing it, she has some signs to associate with it and I think it will help her “get it” way faster than is typical.  We have also prayed a lot for God to open her ears and her brain to make it all work.  God is a God of miracles, and for the deaf to hear is nothing short of a miracle! Of course, I could just be overly optimistic and she isn’t really “getting” anything yet, but she sure seems to.  Steve stood behind her at one point and called her name “Sophie!” and Sophie giggled and turned around to him.  So then she wanted to switch places and she went behind Steve and made vocalizations.  This behavior leads me to believe that she does “get it”.  Though it will still take a long time for it to all make sense and for her to actually distinguish what someone is saying.  But the die is cast and the game is on!

It is an exciting time in our house!