Then Something Amazing Happened!

Amazing bond!

Lily's first language is ASL, she has been using sign language since she was 5 months old.  After she received her cochlear implants we introduced her to spoken English.  It has been a really confusing battle on some fronts for us as a family.  Most of the medical professionals we came in contact with insisted that we should not sign with Lily because it would slow her speech development.  However, I have many deaf family members who do not have cochlear implants and use sign language to communicate.  We felt it was very important for Lily to continue to learn ASL and be able to live in both worlds, the hearing world and the deaf world.  This was somewhat difficult for us because we are hearing parents.  We are learning sign to keep up with Lily, but she is a fast learner.  Obviously the biggest part missing is that we are unfamiliar with the deaf culture.  To truly be in both worlds she needs the language and culture from both, right?

Lots of learning through play in this picture!

A few months ago we were introduced to Stacy, who would soon become our family’s deaf mentor, through ASDB's toddler class that Lily attended this year.  She had come in to give parents information about the deaf mentor program.  Right away I knew it was something we were interested in!  Within a few weeks we had our first home visit.  We did not have an interpreter, but given the knowledge we currently had as a family with sign language we were able to communicate pretty effectively. Stacy was AMAZING at making sure we understood what she was signing.  Soon we had a second visit with Stacy and this is where something happened that we had never seen before....Lily loved her!  Lily is very shy and even still won't talk and interact with family outside of the members who live in our home.  To see her sit in Stacy's lap, sign with her, and interact like she does with family almost made me cry.  My daughter was connecting with someone she had only met once before and it was like she had known Stacy all of her life.  I think both Stacy and I agreed that Lily knew they were alike and their personalities meshed amazingly well.  Shortly after our third home visit I realized Lily was learning sign language incidentally during our visits.  We had been told this happens with spoken language and assumed it must be the same with sign language, but had not realized it so obviously before.  Stacy had brought a game called ASL Word Match to the third visit.  Lily sat with us for most of the game while we played and eventually got up to go play with her baby dolls.  We were all sitting on the floor playing and after Stacy had won the game she showed the boys how to sign "hahaha".  Lily was in her own world playing so I would have never guessed that she picked that sign up.  Little did we know she did pick it up and used it just a few days later!  Lily has also picked up Stacy's sign name and uses it regularly when talking about her.  Stacy has become a beloved member of Lily's world very quickly!

 

We have had regular home visits with Stacy over the last several months and it has been a great experience for our family.  This program has given a great support system to help us understand the deaf culture, to help us in learning more ASL through immersion, and Stacy recently supported us with the IEP process which was all new to us.  It was great to have a deaf persons perspective and not only that, but a parent of deaf children's perspective.  It can all be very confusing and overwhelming, especially when you know you have to fight for what is most appropriate for your child.  Stacy was a great resource when we had questions about learning both languages, what appropriate goals might be for school, and she gave us a lot of information on the IEP laws and how they pertain to deaf students.  We are proud to say this helped us to place Lily at PDSD for preschool next year!  We feel that the knowledge of deaf culture, ASL, and the relationship that we have been able to expose Lily to have been invaluable with this program!  Stacy has quickly become a true mentor to Lily and our family and we will forever be grateful for the experience and knowledge!

A home visit with Stacy where she was teaching Lily how to fingerspell "Anna".

While we really wish this program would have been available when Lily was much younger, we are so happy that it is available now.  We hope that the program continues to grow and many families like ours can benefit from it!

Signing ASL books with Lily

The Next Big Step!

 
Can you believe Lily will be going to preschool this next Fall?  Where did the time go?  This is a big step and created a hard decision for our family.  We have been big promoters of Lily being bilingual/bimodal with ASL and spoken English as her two main forms of communication.  This presented a big challenge for us in trying to figure out what the best option might be for our little bug.  So far her language has included sign from ages birth to 12 months and from that point forward has been spoken English with signed support.  She has learned both languages side by side and we want to ensure that this continues for her.  This made the decision making process more complicated than for parents who only wish for their child to use spoken language.

 What do you do in this situation...our choices were an intensive oral school for deaf and hard of hearing children, a community preschool with all hearing children and no other deaf children, the preschool at the school for the deaf, and a developmental preschool in our school district.  The big thing is the IEP meeting and making sure we express our thoughts and concerns for Lily's language acquisition.  It took us a while to wrap our heads around how to go about expressing our concerns and Lily's needs when it comes to the rest of the IEP team.  How do you explain to a team that Lily is doing so great with speech yet ask for a classroom with signed support?  This seemed to be our biggest challenge and may still be.  Lily's hearing ability has not effected her cognitive learning.  She knows her ABC's, numbers from 1-20, colors, and shapes in both ASL and spoken English.  So, obviously this is going to create a challenge in getting what we want for her as far as the type of preschool classroom we want for her.  So here is what we are hoping for her at this point.  We had to go with our hearts and not our heads on this a little.  We want her in a signed support preschool classroom.  We also want to see her spoken English develop on track.  Our plans, if we can convince the team to agree, are for Lily to attend two schools.  The school for the deaf preschool so that she has that signed support to encourage her continued use of asl and the community preschool to support her spoken English.  We plan to do this in two parts.  Lily would attend the school for the deaf in the mornings the first half of her 3 year old year.  The second half she would attend the school for the deaf in the morning and the community preschool in the afternoon.  We are really hoping that our IEP team can agree with our goals for Lily.

With this decision being so hard I can only imagine what it will be like to figure out kindergarten!  The one thing we do know is we want both languages fostered on an even level and will be doing so inside of our home and in Lily's school life as much as possible.  With access to both languages our little Lily will move mountains one day!

What Did You Say?!?

The device that allows bug to hear

In a matter of just a few weeks we have started hearing sentences come out of Lily's mouth.  We often look at her and say "what did you say?'.  We are still in awe when we hear her speak in sentences.  She has also started to put more than one sign together when she signs.  It seems like just yesterday she was startled by the fact that she could suddenly hear.

Some of her most used sentences as of late include "Where it go", "That is Mommy's", "That is Daddy's", "Where ...insert name here", and "This is mine".  She has many more that she uses as well these just happen to be the ones she uses the most.  Her new favorite game on car rides is to ask where mommy, daddy, Leland, and Christian are.  After we answer where we are we ask her where bug is and she responds with "here".

Lily has also developed a great love for playing at the park.  When she sees we are near a park or playground she says "I want to play" while signing play.  She gets along great with other kids and loves to say "hi" to all of the other kids she sees.  She is very shy around adults and we are completely okay with that!

Here are some pictures that show, CI or not, she is like every other kid.  Except when the slide is a bit of a bumpy ride she might lose a processor.

She Will Move Mountains!

Our super hero...She will move mountains in her life!

It has been way too long since I have posted updates about Lily's world.  So let me start with Halloween!  Once again our little bug was dressed as a super hero for Halloween.  This year we chose Batgirl...why?  Because it was so adorable and fit Lily's personality so well!  By the second day she had her costume she was signing bat and then girl and saying Batgirl.  We even got her to sing "nah nah nah nah batgirl".  She wasn't completely in love with wearing the mask that I made her, but she warmed up to it after we finally got it on her.

Excited to go trick or treat!

Lily has started a toddler class here at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf and this made learning some cool Halloween signs/words really fun!   We learned the signs for pumpkin, bat, vampire, ghost, and spider.  Lily really enjoys the company of the other kids, though she is pretty shy.  She is starting to open up and play more with her classmates and she is starting to interact with her teacher more as well.  It is just amazing to watch Lily pick up so much language!

signing cracker

We love that smile!

Lily's favorite brothers! (They are her only brothers too)

Happy Late Halloween!

Bug Turned 2 And Had Her First Road Trip!

Lily's amazing 2nd birthday cake!

It seems like such a long time since my last post and I have so many things to share that I will probably be making more than one post.  First off, our Lilybug turned 2!  This was of course a very bittersweet moment for me.  I have 4 kids who all got another year older in May and Lily's cochlear implant surgery was a week after her first birthday, on May 30th.  So the month of May in general is a very emotional month for this mama!

Goodbye Arizona

We left Arizona 3 days before Lily's birthday to go visit family, many had never met Lily, in Indiana.  One of the first things we did was go to Walmart and order the cutest cupcake cake ever for bugs special day.  The cake just seemed to fit her perfectly.  The day of her birthday we went out to lunch with some family and friends and Lily got to experience her first crepe as her birthday desert from the restaurant. Later we picked up her cake from the store and she had the most amazing expression at the sight of her cake.  She really just wanted to eat a cupcake, but I can pretend she was as overjoyed with her adorable cake as I was, right? 

Lily's very first crepe!

 We had a baseball game to attend for my nephew the night of Lily's birthday so we chose to have the cupcakes at the game so the whole family could celebrate together.  Also I am one of those moms who doesn't like the mess of cupcakes so outside worked out great!  It was nice and warm too so I just took off Lily's shirt to keep it clean as she shoved her cupcake in her mouth and covered her face with icing.  All I had to clean up in the end was her face!

Bite one of her cake!

Lilybug approved!

 Sadly our week and a half in Indiana went by way too fast!  It was really hard to leave our family there, but Bobby and I were so ready to be back in our own bed.  Lily enjoyed the ride home a little bit more than the ride there, but we stopped quite a bit more on the way home to let her run and play.  I think Lily will be much more excited about road trips as she gets older and her communication skills develop!

She learned how to walk barefoot in grass!

Lily ready for bed night 1.

Now for your viewing pleasure some pictures of Lily and Summer, they were due the same day and Summer was born at 28 weeks.  They had just met for the first time on this road trip and are cousins!  They are just too cute!

Stay tuned for more happenings from our last couple of months!

Off To Ballet And Where did Those Words Come From?!?

Our little bug started ballet last week and we are just so proud of her!  She is a bit skittish with the teacher, as she usually is with strangers, but she absolutely loves the interaction with all the other children her age.  This week was her second class and watching her in class with her biggest brother just melts my heart!  It just makes me think about what a great young man I have!

 

My baby boy and my baby girl!

This week was our first interaction about her cochlear implants in class.  It was kind of interesting because there were two older ladies sitting next to me watching their grand daughter and talking amongst themselves.  I happened to hear one of them say "Oh look, that little girl has hearing aids, that is interesting".  I didn't say anything just kept watching Lily in class with Leland and each time she would see me she would look and I would wave.  Eventually the lady's said "Is she your little girl, she is beautiful!  Are those hearing aids she has?" to which I proudly replied "Those are cochlear implants".  they were very pleasant and had even know a girl in their neighborhood who had cochlear implants like 10 years ago.  They were very interested in how she was doing with them and the technology behind them.  It turned out to be a great conversation and I love to show the world how awesome cochlear implants can be!

Laying Cinderella down for a nap...It is tiring being a princess!

So this week Lily has not ceased to amaze me!  Most of our day is in some form of conversation.  Even if not every word is understandable she carries on a pretty good conversation.  Another thing she picked up on this week is her brothers names!  I will be honest I didn't teach these to her...her big brother Christian did and when she says his name it sounds a bit like kitchen, but he'll take it!  It is amazing how two teenage boys just turn to jello with their baby sister.

Running with new friends from ballet class!

I didn't get much video footage from speech this week since my camera battery mistakenly wasn't charged the night before...so I will share some footage of Lily listening at the beginning of speech and a small clip of her in her ballet class (if you listen closely in the beginning you hear her call for her daddy)!

Lily 8 Months Post Activation!

That's our Lily!

On the 12th Lily was officially active for 8 months and my oh my how she has changed!  Not only did she grow more hair and get so much taller, but she speaks and understand so much.  She has always been a talker/babbler and now she talks almost every minute she is awake during a day.  Like a normal toddler if she is quiet you better go see what she is into!

Getting the ball for Leland!

One of the things I love to stress to people who meet her is she is like any other toddler.  A few weekends she even went out and played some catch with her brothers.  The one difference between her and other toddlers is the amount of equipment that can be damaged by a ball while playing catch.  My sons would throw the ball and Lily was suddenly very close to being hit by it.  This wasn't their fault it was more that Lily wanted the ball and as soon as they threw it she was on it!

I want to play catch too!

We sometimes get the comments that it is sad or that people are sorry that Lily is deaf.  We don't get offended by it anymore we just tell them she is like any other kid and with her cochlear implants she can "hear" like any other kid.  She is by far the most courageous kid I have had, not because she has implants, but because she knows no fear other than strangers.

Jumping with Daddy!

 Speaking of strangers...guess who is not so much of a stranger to Lily anymore?!?  Cheryl no longer has stranger qualities in Lily's mind.  We often get to the office early and we play outside until Cheryl arrives.  Starting a few weeks ago Lily now runs to Cheryl when she sees her coming down the sidewalk.  It really is one of the cuter things she does!

Waiting to see Cheryl

Over the last few weeks Lily has learned bath time words and foods!  It took Lily a little bit of time to warm up to the idea of giving the baby a bath, but eventually she got really into the concept.  After all she seems to love anything that has to do with babies.  We learned bath, bathtub, soap, water and many more fun bathtub words.  Lily has known and signed water for a few months now, but it was in the context of drinking.  It is neat to see her pick up on the other contexts of words.  Foods she had no problem with seeing as Cheryl picked so many of Lily's favorite fruits and vegetables to start with.  Lily is a fruit and vegetable fiend!  We have worked on strawberry, banana, orange, carrot, peas, yogurt, and milk!  Oh, we can't forget the eating utensils!  Lily has also picked up bowl, spoon, and cup!  Her speech is coming right along!

In this weeks video not only will you see Lily say a few of the previously mentioned words, but you will see her talk in sentences!  Where did those come from?!?  Cheryl and I were completely amazed!

 

As always we are so excited about Lily's progress and how far she has come in, what seems like, a few short months.  As Lily's daddy often says "She is amazing!"