Progress Report

Kiddo:

This kid's speech is at the point now where he's singing.  Seriously.  The other night he sang to me The Wheels on the Bus.  I couldn't bear to stop him to get my camera to record it, maybe next time I'll be prepared.  He sings parts of Old MacDonald Had a Farm and Jesus Loves Me and Rain Rain Go Away.  And the most surprising of all, was that he sang this song for me on my birthday.  Way to make this mama feel special, Kiddo.

Conversations:

Kiddo: Mommy go shopping?
Me: Yes I did.
Kiddo: Buy more popcorn?
Me: Yes, I did.
Kiddo: Yay!  Good job Mommy!  High five.
And the kid precedes to give me a high five.  Way to make me feel appreciated, Kiddo.

Me: Who's your best friend at school?
Kiddo: (insert girl's name here)
Me: Do you play with her?
Kiddo: Yes.  Play.  Hold hands.  Learn.
Me: Oh.  Is she your girlfriend?
Kiddo: Yes.

Me: Do you want to be an astronaut when you grow up?
Kiddo: No.  Big big like Daddy.

Me: I love you Buddy.
Kiddo: I love you too, Mommy.

He also has started to say the prayers for us before meals.  We don't catch every word he says, but there's always the words "Thank you Jesus" in it, and every time we hear that little mouth so those precious words, Hubster and I are thinking the exact same thing. :)

Little Brother:

Little Brother has struggled with colors for a while.  He called most colors pink, or at least we thought it was pink, it's possible he was saying paint.  But, he's caught on now, and knows most of his colors now, whoo hoo!  My favorite ones he says are "yeow", "geen", "pupo", and "ooj".

He's also getting the hang of the sequence of counting.  Before we heard lots of "1,2,8,9,8,5" sort of thing.  He's got it down from one to ten with prompting.  Six and seven really seem to throw him off, but he's catching on.

He can identify his letters and is starting to identify them as words.  Every time we stop at a stop sign I hear "S-T-O-P, Stop!"  He's starting to write the letters of his name and will proudly show them off to me with a "Look!"  He also drew a happy face for the first time this morning.  It led to this conversation:

Me: Oh, is that a happy face?
Little Brother: Yes.  Mouth.  Eyes.  Nose.
Me: Good job Buddy!
Little Brother then draws something on each side of the happy face's head.
Me: Are those ears?
Little Brother: No.
Me: Hair?
Little Brother: No.  Cheeks!!
Haha, this kid has such big cheeks, he probably does think they needed to be added on.  The kid scribbled all over it though before I could get a picture of the happy face.  :(

He says lots of two word phrases now.  Eat pizza.  Go play.  More swing.  More drink.  White doggie.  Go away.  Go bye bye?  School bus.  Go school?  What's this?  Okie dokie (pronounced O dokie).  Go shopping?  Ten Monkeys (his favorite book).  Pete Cat (His favorite book series).

Both Kiddo and Little Brother ask questions by using that questioning inflection at the end of a word, but now Little Brother is using "w" question words!  His two questions are "What's this?" and "Why?"  And though I hear them often, they have yet to exasperate me.  I am so proud to have a child who can ask questions and I'm happy to provide the answers.  That may change one day, but for now, I'm treasuring it.

He can jump now!  And he jumps a lot.  Off of curbs.  Down the hallway.  Over cracks in the sidewalk.  For a long time on the trampoline  This kid love to jump.

I'm sure there's a lot more I could report, but that's it for now.  We're making progress, and it is beautiful to see. :)

Progress Report

Little Brother:  Wow, time outs are doing wonders for this kid.  We've had lots of problems with disobedience, and though we tried several different discipline tactics nothing worked, until we discovered calling time outs "stuck" did the trick.  This kid does not like being stuck, in fact, "tuck" was one of his first words.  A minute or two "being stuck" for every act of disobedience/unkindness has made him much more compliant, and done wonders for my stress and frustration level, haha.  Now he follows directions much better, and is no longer hitting or biting poor Kiddo.  The throwing toys at Kiddo still happens, but is getting less frequent.

Not much to report when it comes to his speech, but wow, this kid is great at jumping. :)

Kiddo:  Hubster and I are amazed every day at the progress we see and hear.  Some of Kiddos words and phrases and SENTENCES, are getting longer, more complex, and clearer!  Other people are starting to be able to understand some of the things he says without me having to translate, who hoo!

Some of his newest phrases and funny things:

• Every night during bedtime prayers, I say "Thank you God for ____" and he fills in the blank.  He always starts it off by saying "Eesus!"  Sometimes he's thankful for Mommy and Daddy, sometimes brother, always his own name, and sometimes random things like books, eyes, church, etc.  This kid melts my heart with his prayers.
• He demanded "pee butta jeyee! (peanut butter and jelly sandwich) one day for lunch, and I kept telling him to wait, as I was busy doing something else.  After three times of this he comes up to me, holds up one hand, says "One pee butta" holds up the other hand "One jeyee!" and then claps his hands together.  Hubster and I just laughed.  Yes Kiddo, I know how to make a PB&J, but thanks for the reminder. ;)
• He plays hide n seek now!  He tells us who should count (usually he's the counter, occasionally I get the privilege of counting).  When it's his turn he covers his eyes, but peeks a tiny bit, counts to ten and then says "Readee naw!" and comes looking for us, and when he finds us, he tells us where we are, which has been great for teaching him prepositions, and just pure fun to interact with him in a new/social way.  If it's my turn to count, well I must admit, he's a terrible hider (hint: his favorite spot is face against the wall, in plain sight) and if I ask Little Brother "Where's Kiddo?" Kiddo'll jump out and say "Boo!"  Gotta teach him that just because he can't see us doesn't mean we can't see him, but we are thrilled at how quickly he caught on to the game and how often he requests to play "Dida Seech!"
• He is really into science.  He is fascinated by the whole digestion process (we hear "eat, tummy, poo poo!) a lot.  He loves dinosaurs, weather, space, etc.  The Magic School Bus has become his new favorite TV show, which reminds me of my own childhood.
• He calls Hubster's school (Hubster's currently going to grad school) Robot School, because one time Hubster said he goes to school to learn about robots and computers and Kiddo latched onto the robot idea.
• While in speech therapy, Ms. Blessing had him playing "Don't Spill the Beans".  For each word he said five times correctly, he got the bean.  Then Ms. Blessing decided to work on sounds, rather than words.  "Say pa!" she said.  "No pa, no pa!" Kiddo insisted, "No pa, bean!"  Yes Kiddo, you are right, it is not a pa, it is a bean.
• He is starting to say hi to other people when they say hi to him!  This is huge peeps.  He plays well with other kids, but has never really interacted with them verbally, but now he tells them hi. :)
• He tries so hard to bribe me to read "boo boch!" (two books) instead of just one before bed.  One time he pulled out a copy of "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and pointed to the number two.  "Boo ish!  Boo boch!" he insisted.  Such a smarty pants.
• He's started tattling on Little Brother.  He'll come up to me while I'm in the kitchen or doing laundry, or whatever.  "Botha do doy!" (Brother throw toy!) etc.  Or, he'll take matters into his own hands and tell Little Brother what to do.  "Botha no dutch!" (no touch!) or "Botha no do doy!" 

As for gross motor, we're starting to make a little bit of progress on pedaling a bicycle, whoo hoo!  He needs a little push to get going, and then can pedal for about three or four cycles before he loses the momentum.  He can go the length of our driveway no problem since it's on a very slight incline, but can't pedal it back up.  Definitely needs more strength before he can do it, but I think he has the motor planning down for it, which is huge.  Steering, though, is a different beast.  Steering requires lots of motor planning, which his brain has no ability to process when it's working so hard on pedaling.  But I'm hopeful that he'll be strong enough to be riding his bike over the summer. :)

His core is definitely getting stronger, as evidenced by this photo.  I was doing laundry, and came out to find he had taken all the cushions off the couch and was hanging out like this.  "Mommy, cook!" (Mommy look!)  He held this position for at least 5 minutes. :)

Hopefully I'll have lots of other progress to report next month, when both kiddos get to spend two weeks visiting with their cousins!  I can't wait. :)

Speech Videos

Happy New Year!  I thought the best way to start off the blog for 2015 would be with some speech videos of the kiddos.  Easier said than done.  Life is busy, and for some reason when the camera comes out, these two get strangely uncooperative.  But finally, I got some fairly decent videos.

Up first, is Kiddo's speech video.  In this video I'm working with him on using verbs in phrases, using Nancy Kaufman's Speech to Language Workout Book.  Kiddo's reward for working on his words is to play with his Mosaic Art Puzzle.  He loves this and is awesome for fine motor practice.  Lots of progress in his speech since last year, that's for sure. :)

Kiddo, age 4 1/2

For Little Brother's video we worked on his animals and their sounds.  His favorite words are yeah and no, which you'll notice in the video. ;)

Little Brother, age 2 1/2

Kiddo's Prayer

Either Hubster or I pray with Kiddo before bed every night, but we've always taken the lead on the praying part, and then let Kiddo say Ah-eh! (Amen!) at the end.  But last night, I decided to do a fill-in-the-blank prayer.  See if he'd participate.  And I was so proud that he did.  This is how it went:

Mommy: What do you want to tell God thank you for?  Thank you for _____?
Kiddo:  Mommy.  (huge grin)
Mommy:  Good.  Thank you for ______?
Kiddo:  Daddy.  (another huge grin)
Mommy:  Thank you for ______?
Kiddo:  Baby.  (That's what he calls Little Brother).
Mommy:  Thank you for ______?
Kiddo: (points to his mouth)
Mommy:  Say it.  Thank you for _______?
Kiddo:  Tee!  (Teeth!)   Ah-eh!

I had no idea he was so appreciative of his pearly whites.

And here's a random picture of his latest craziness. Reason 1,001 why we should always have our bedroom door closed.

Update on Hearing

In a previous post I mentioned all the things we'd be doing to to help Kiddo's hearing this month.  (For those new to the blog or our hearing situation, Kiddo was born with a moderate-severe hearing loss in his right ear, and wore a hearing aid in it for about two years.)  Thank you to each of you who have asked about Kiddo and prayed for us during our two major hearing procedures/tests this month.

Ear tubes are in!

Due to negative pressure in the ears and some fluid that was causing frequent ear infections, ear ventilation tubes were the way to go.  We were supposed to get the tubes in the week before, but as luck would have it, Kiddo got a double ear infection and a fever of over 100. The doc said we should reschedule for when his temp was back to normal, so six days later we found ourselves in Children's Hospital for the procedure.  Kiddo did great!  A little overwhelmed at first, and he cried a little bit when they took him to the OR since we weren't allowed to go with him, but about 15 minutes after they took him to the OR, the doc was out to talk to us, telling us all went well, that there was lots of fluid and that we needed to administer drops in his ears twice a day for the next week.  They brought him to us shortly after that in the recovery room, and Kiddo was content to snuggle with Daddy while Mommy hunted for something to drink for the thirsty boy, since he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the day before.  He sipped on his apple juice while watching Mickey Mouse on TV, and about an hour later we were on our way home.  He demanded to "eat, eat, eat!" and so we stopped at Chick-fil-A where he devoured his lunch and when we made it home, was running around with Little Brother as if nothing had ever happened.  Such a trooper!

Hearing test was a success!
Yesterday was not only Apraxia Awareness Day, but the day we got the big hearing test that would show us not only if the tubes were helping, but if he should be wearing his hearing aid again.  Due to all the pressure and fluid before the tubes, his left ear was hearing at a mild hearing loss range, and his right ear, at a severe-profound range (essentially he couldn't hear anything at all out of that ear except for a few frequencies).  I'm happy to report that after the tubes his left ear is now hearing normal again (Yay!) and his right ear at moderate-severe loss range.  That's where it has been since birth and until all the fluid took residence.  Which means, he does NOT need to wear his hearing aid.  Wahoo!  In fact, the awesome audiologist I met yesterday said they no longer recommend hearing aids for one ear if the other has normal hearing after a few studies have been run.  The studies revealed that language can develop naturally with perfect hearing in only one ear, that only having one hearing aid doesn't help the hearing as much as having two but can actually begin to impact the hearing of the good ear.  So with three audiologists saying he's fine without the hearing aid, we are totally convinced and are thrilled that we no longer need to wonder about if he should be wearing it.  Also, instead of me having to take him to both an ENT and an audiologist every three months (as I've been doing since he was born), we now will go twice a year, just to ensure his good ear is still hearing well.  I like having less appointments to go to. ;)

Happy Better Hearing and Speech Month!