Molly announces the arrival of her baby brother, Stephen Michael. Stephen was born on Tuesday November 20th. Molly is very proud to be the big sister. She adores him!

Could this be another reason why we are saving Molly's second ear for new technology??? Check out this new research on how to simulate hearing via infrared laser radiation. Will be pretty wild to see what's next.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19206/page1/

It has been a fall of celebrations! Molly turned TWO in early September and last Friday marked a year of being implanted. I’m not exactly sure where this year went. We must have been on over-drive with all the changes that were taking place in Molly’s life. She is now such a big girl and full of life. Busy, Busy, Busy and into everything like a normal 2 yr old. Plus she continues to test us each day with her strong will.

Molly has finally realized that it is far more exciting to have mom/dad read to her than to sit and look at books alone. This is a good thing for me now that I am in my 8th month of pregnancy. I know that reading will help expand her auditory memory.

She has recently been very interested in colors, shapes, letters and numbers. Seems age appropriate, huh? She can say yellow, green and pink (not perfectly) and has a sound (not quite identifiable) for most of the other colors. We were taking Molly up to bed the other night and I was saying "A B C D" and Molly followed by saying "E F G". We were both stunned! Guess we don’t realize all that she is taking in and remembering. Repetition is paying off!

New phase in Molly's world:
~She has finally decided to say " yeah" as her answer to all of our yes/no questions. Seems hypocritical to correct her with a "yes" when we find ourselves saying "yeah" all the time.
~When we ask her "what does a cow (or any animal) say?", she immediately responds with the appropriate animal noise. Great way to get her to talk in public.
~Molly jabbers on and on to herself, to her toys and to us (with all kinds of hand movements and facial expressions). Makes perfect sense to her, but we can barely make out any of the words. Seems like a great foundation to building sentences.

Last week I met a mom with a one year old recently diagnosed with deafness . We were in the audiology waiting room and they were waiting to have him fitted with hearing aids. I was reminded of the constant battle of trying to keep the aids in Molly's ears, not to mention a gentle dose of her prior screaming. I dug up this video clip of Molly at 7 months. This is for you Jennifer!!! :)

Well, it’s about time I give an update to the few of you who are still checking on this blog.
I must say that Molly has come a long way in these last 3 months of not posting. We were struggling for months to get Molly to do what her speech therapist wanted her to do at home. We focused so hard on getting Molly to be attentive and listen during home therapy. I guess we began to wonder if Molly was getting enough input in her "ear" or if it was just her strong will. She does choose to do things on HER TIME. Finally, Molly had a mapping session in early May and her audiologist upped her levels significantly. This has made all the difference in the world for her. She has grown by leaps and bounds in expressive and receptive language since then.

Molly will directly imitate vowel and consonant sounds, as well as combination sounds. She has recently imitated the letters "T", "S", "P" and "K". She may not have heard these sounds prior to the mapping. Molly is now saying 7 full words and over 75 sounds/sound combinations for specific words. Her receptive language is obviously greater than this. She will respond accordingly to many commands, without visuals (from up close to across the room). Go upstairs, sit down, brush your teeth, sit on the potty, stop, throw the ball, jump, dance, pick that up, throw it in the trash, etc.... It has been a tremendous encouragement to us to see such progress. Reminds us of how blessed Molly is to have the opportunity to hear. We praise God!

Most mornings after breakfast we do what I call organized therapy in Molly’s "listening chair". When I put her in the booster seat at the table, Molly knows that she has to listen. Some days I get 5-10 minutes out of her. I don’t push it! Each week we have a lesson to follow from her speech therapist . Sometimes it is accomplished in the chair, but most of the time it is done while she is playing.
There are some kiddos who react to sound quickly. Molly is not always like this. Which makes me wonder often if her device is working properly. We are realizing that Molly is more of a "thinker". She is always busy doing many things and looks like she is not listening, but she will respond appropriately in her time. Seems really silly that we are figuring out her "learning style" at 18 mos. Guess a lot of this seems silly to all of you who are reading this!
As far as receptive/expressive language.... Molly says Hi to everyone and everything. She can identify the nose, eyes and ears on people, animals, toys, etc... She says "oh" for nose, "eyeeeee" for eye, and "eeah" for ear. She is saying "aaa eee" for Daddy and "ma eee" for Molly. Right now she seems to be obsessed with birds, which she calls "er". We bird watch out the back window each day.

Molly's cousin from Texas came to visit this past week. As seen in the photo above, the girls are bundled up for a cold day at the park.

Where do I even begin??? It is so exciting to look back over these last three months of activation and see results. Kids are little sponges. They absorb more than we think they do. With an implanted kid, you have no idea what sounds they are taking in until they spit them out.
Last night I wrote down all the sounds/words that Molly understands or at least seems to understand. To my surprise I came up with about 25. She is saying 15+ sounds for specific words. It has been so cool to see Molly’s unbelievable desire to communicate.

She is quite obsessed with "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". If I start to sing the song, without visuals, she will do most of the motions. On occasion, I find her in her highchair or carseat doing the motions and "singing" along. You know, I was singing this to her ad nauseam for the first 2 months and she showed zero interest. I took her to storytime at the library and she saw the librarian and kids singing/doing the motions and she decided it was pretty cool. Go figure!

Here is a picture of our little singer in her rocking chair.

Molly has been making some progress with her vocabulary and word recognition. We did have a few setbacks in December because of sickness and traveling. There were days where she refused to keep her external device on (constant battle with mommy). There were days where she did not babble/talk at all. This was probably due to not feeling well, out of her environment or too much background noise. I assume all of this is very typical.

Lately she has been saying "ah, ah" for up, "own" for down and "baaa" (southern drawl) for bye. She will turn to her name and "no". When we say "no"(without visuals), from across the room, she will stop and wag her finger at the object she is not allowed to touch. Silly kid!

Speaking of silly....Here is Molly playing dress-up with her cousins on New Years Day. Still Bossy!