Therapy, Jacob's Ride, and Diamondbacks...OH MY!!!

 

"Are we going to see Cheryl yet mom?"

With all the excitement this week I wasn't sure where I wanted to start, but I figured let's start at the beginning!  We took our weekly trip to Zimmerman Speech & Hearing to see Miss Cheryl and Lily was pretty excited.  Though she was a bit tired since she kept waking up intermittently the night before.  Still Lily seems to love Cheryl and she greeted her with a huge smile when we walked in the door!  It was great to be able to discuss Lily's progress with Cheryl and find out how she is doing from the "guideline" stand point.  It is great to have a therapist that is so helpful in ensuring my understanding of what we are doing and how much it is helping.  The fabulous progress we see helps as well of course!

So this week Lily was a bit on the ornery side and slightly less cooperative, but she still showed off some amazing verbalization and recognition of understanding.  I have made sure to include the best ones in the video this week!  One of the cutest ones I saw this week was when Cheryl did the "wah wah" for the baby and Lily pointed right to the baby and looked at us like "Hello the baby is there".  I know I say this probably every week, but I just can't help but be amazed at the progress these kids can make in such a short amount of time!  I can not say enough how much I appreciate that we have such good therapists working with Lily.  Especially therapists that Lily really LOVES!

So after all of the excitement of seeing Cheryl on Tuesday we added even more excitement on Wednesday!  We took Lily to meet Jacob Landis, at our local BEA gathering, who is currently riding his bicycle to all 30 major league baseball stadiums to raise money for cochlear implants for kids who are in need.  I must say that it was absolutely amazing to meet Jacob and speak to him about his reasons behind this awesome journey!  He is quite an amazing young man!  Lily got her picture taken with Jacob and even got his autograph on her D-backs ticket for the game that followed the gathering.  I hope to hear that Jacob met his goal when his super long bike ride is done and if you are interested in meeting him or helping support his cause you can visit his site at:  http://www.jacobsride.com/.  I love to see people paying it forward!

Jacob Landis, Lily, and her Daddy!

After meeting Jacob we headed over to the Chase stadium to enjoy the game with our family.  Once we were seated we got to see the pregame introduction of Jacob Landis!  Lily was very antsy at first, but seemed to settle down after a bit.  We weren't able to sit for the whole time though because Lily just wasn't having that.  So we took all of the kids up to see Baxter, the D-backs mascot, during the forth inning and they got autographs and pictures with Baxter!  Lily wasn't so sure about Baxter, she kind of looked at him like "what are you?".

Jacob's Ride Introduction

 Christian with Baxter

 Lily and Leland with Baxter

Alex with Baxter

Christian had Baxter autograph his D-backs poster and the other three got their Advanced Bionics hats autographed!  We also got a picture in front of the biggest "piggy" bank I have ever seen!  Leland is 5' 9" and the bank is just a tiny bit shorter than he is.

Big Piggy Bank!

When we finally got back to our seats I caught a pretty silly picture of Christian playing with the little Melody and Buddy monkeys.  He absolutely loves these monkeys and I am sure it helps that he loves monkeys in general.

Christian with Melody and Buddy

Lily loves Melody and Buddy as well and there was much crying from Lily over Christian having them.  As soon as we snapped the picture Lily had Melody in her hands and was happy as can be!  She is a child that knows what she wants and will make sure you know too.

Lily is so happy now that she has Melody!

We ended up leaving the game shortly after the 8th inning started due to Lily not wanting to sit in the hot stadium anymore.  I don't blame her at all when you get so many people close together like that it tends to get a little humid.  All in all she really enjoyed all the festivities of the night and was asleep in her carseat within 5 minutes of us leaving the parking garage!

Lily trying to figure out what all the cheering is about

Stay tuned next week for Lily's next visit to see Cheryl and news about her 3rd mapping and hearing progress!

Lily Shows Off Her New Skills!

 

Miss Lilybug had a very busy week this week.  On Tuesday we visited Cheryl at Zimmerman Speech & Hearing Center and on Thursday we got a visit from Cati, Lily's parent adviser from AZDB!

Lily, as always, thoroughly enjoyed her visit with Cheryl and we learned some more new routines that we can do at home.  Lily's favorite seemed to be the clapping song.  As you will see in the video from this week Lily even signed "more" so that we would sing the song again.  She also wowed Cheryl with her fabulous imitation of "fllllyyyy"!  Lily is picking up much more than we thought she would at this point in her journey.  She has become such a little vocalizer and listener!

On Thursday it took Lily a few minutes to warm up to Cati again, but once she did she really showed off some of her new skills.  Lily even allowed Cati to do some of her speech therapy routines with her.  Lily really shined when she showed Cati how to make the baby listen to her vocalizations!  I think Lily's favorite thing with Cati was the bubbles.  Lily used to be so afraid of bubbles, but now that they have been introduced into her therapy routine she doesn't seem to mind them so much.  It is great to really see her come out of her shell!

 

This week at home we have started to notice Lily really picking up the sounds we all make.  Her two favorites to mimic are kisses and blowing raspberries.  You can be anywhere in the room with her and make either of those two noises and within a few seconds she will start mimicking them.  A new one we have heard this week from her is "ahhhhh".  We discovered this one during her mid afternoon yogurt snack.  I happened to say "Lily say ahhhh" and she in turn said "ahhhhh" and got her bite of yogurt!  We are looking at this little girl that we thought would never hear our voices and seeing a girl who is so obviously hearing our voices every day now!

Stay tuned for more exciting developments next week!  Lily will be attending the BEA gathering where Jacob Landis will be and then attending her first baseball game right afterwards!

Watch the Lilybud Blossom!

 

Playtime while we wait to see Cheryl

Lily had a great visit with Cheryl at Zimmerman Speech & Hearing Center yesterday!  She showed off her new skills that even mommy hadn't seen yet.  It is pretty amazing to see the progression kids make once they get cochlear implants.  It is almost like watching a baby learn to speak, but I can honestly say it is also quite a bit different.  It makes me so happy that we made the choice to get cochlear implants for Lily.

Lily absolutely loves going to see Cheryl every week!  I couldn't believe she actually let Cheryl hold her hand and walk her to the lobby yesterday.  Of course, I missed the picture moment!  Lily is a pretty shy little girl who is timid about people, outside of her immediate family, touching her.  So you can see why this is so cool and speaks volumes about Cheryl!  Lily trusts Cheryl enough to let her walk her to the lobby holding hands.  What a special moment!

So now let me see if I can recap the amazing things that Cheryl and I saw yesterday.  Well maybe I will wait and let you discover them in the video I am going to attach to this post.  It is so much more fun to see the end results of weeks of practice isn't it?  I think it is!

So there you have it!  Lily is doing phenomenally!  She loves going to see Cheryl every week and learning all of these new sounds!  We can't wait to see what the future holds for Lily on this hearing journey of hers!

Lily loves this dollhouse so much she wanted to play "in" it!

Exciting Second Mapping for Our Blossoming Lilybud!

Lily had her second post activation mapping on July 3, 2013!  This one was pretty exciting because Lily got 3 brand new programs.  It was also a little sad because the new programs startled Lily just like when she was initially stimulated.  However, Lily dealt with it like a trooper!  She only cried for a few minutes and then she was being her happy self again and playing with her big brother Leland.

Lily had her sound booth testing done again and did phenomenal!  She was responding to spoken words and tones below 35 dB.  The only problem we had was that the tones scared her and she wouldn't look towards them.  We knew she heard them because her cute little brow furrowed every time she heard one.  Her audiologist, Lisa, said she is fairly certain Lily is hearing much better than she did in her testing on June 19th, 35 to 45 dB range, but she was just so scared of the noises that she wasn't physically looking for them.  She was pretty much suctioned to me and wasn't going to let go!

It has been a whole new experience for us the last few days watching Lily respond every time we make a noise.  She now looks at us when we call her name, she is starting to mimic sounds we make, and she is babbling so much more!  We can definitely see a difference in just the few short weeks since her initial stimulation.  Our little Lilybug is turning into a beautiful blossoming Lily-bud!

We can not wait to see what next weeks visit with Cheryl at Zimmerman Speech & Hearing will bring!  I bet Lily will blow Cheryl's mind with her skills she is picking up everyday!

Another Amazing Visit With Zimmerman Speech & Hearing Center!

Lily waiting to see Cheryl

We had our second visit with Cheryl at Zimmerman Speech & Hearing today!  Lily responded very well and learned about some new sounds.  She learned "bang" with the hammer, "knock" by knocking on an object, and "up up up down" with the froggy!  She responded several times during our ling sound listening exercises which was pretty exciting to see.  She even dropped a lid into the container after hearing a sound.  Lily also shared her babbling skills with Cheryl during the session!

Lily doing "round and round" with Cheryl

It is really exciting to watch Lily pick up these new skills at this stage.  I know for most parents it is exciting, but since Lily couldn't hear for the first 12 months of her life it is super exciting to see her hear, speak, and acknowledge sound for the first time!  It is pretty amazing!  Then again Lily is pretty amazing (I know I am biased)!

Lily was so excited to play with the big dollhouse today!

Look at that smile!

After Lily did so well in her session today she got some play time!  She had been waiting so patiently to play with the big dollhouse.  So we unleashed the Lilybug and she couldn't have been happier.

We look forward to many more fantastic sessions at Zimmerman Speech & Hearing Center in the future!  Hopefully next week we can get some more video of Lily's fantastic new skills!