This month was pretty uneventful. I should mention that over the past few months we've had several appointments at Johns Hopkins Hospital to continue with the cochlear implant candidacy. We decided to go this route as we could see Patrick was not benefiting from his hearing aids enough to be able to develop the speech and listening skills that we would like him to have. We do expect him to use Cued Speech, as we have been cueing to him (in English AND Brazilian Portuguese). I would also love from him to learn ASL once he has a solid foundation of English, especially since we're already doing Brazilian Portuguese with him as well, adding a third language will be a bit much.
So far, he is a candidate for cochlear implants. His aided hearing test showed responses in the moderately severe to profound range. that's with hearing aids on, which supports what we've been seeing in the home. He does not respond to /s/ or /e/ sounds. He does respond to Ah (as in hot), and Sh quite well. Not as consistent with /m/ and /oo/ (as in moo). Patrick also had to have appointments with an auditory verbal therapist and a speech therapist. They found the same thing, but also agree that he developing normally otherwise. Everyone always comments on how happy he is, which is true. We've been very blessed.
Bryan finished his second semester at Georgetown this month. This means we get to have him home in the evenings again until the end of August. I'm so excited! This also means he only has ONE more year left. I can't believe how quickly time has flown by for us.
We had a chance to check out a convention where they had some free (and AWESOME) face painting.
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| KB kept telling us that he was a GOOD monster. |
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| He LOVES balloons. |
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| Riding a car together. |
KB had control of my phone at this point and recorded himself being a good monster :)
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| There's a place called Rita's that Kiernan loves. I always have to give him a bath afterwards though. I'm sure you can see why from this photo :) |
The boys playing with the bath toys
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| Patrick was excited to get in the toy box to play |
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| Best smile in the world. |
Having fun with my sunglasses, I love the brief cross eyed moment.
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| We have a picture of KB in this exact same outfit, same position sleeping on our bed (blue sheets though), at the same age (to the day). It's been fun to compare the two to see just how different they really are. |
