Lotte's own will.....

Having a bright young lady in the family (2 actually) that knows what she wants and is not afraid to demand it is wonderful.... It is helping her tremendously now and she will have great benefit of it later in life....

But obviously it has it's downsides.
She has a very good idea about what she wants to wear. And most of the times it is something not chosen by her mother. (allmost by default ?)
We allready made the concession that when clean clothes are to be chosen, she can pick from two sets. This will give her enough feeling that it is her choice that she will agree.
However, yesterday she was told to wear the same clothes today (poor child... ). However, she managed to dive into the closet and find a clean pair of pants. Since this would be the first hurdle of the day - we chose to look the other way. And as expected, the second hurdle was no problem. This is "how to wear her hair".

When hurdle one (cloths) has finally been taken (this can take some time, unlike today) hurdle two grows proportionally.

Today... it went smoothly. (see picture above)

Her stubburness can have something to do with her intelligence. Even though she hears a lot, there must still be a lot of moments that she realises that she doesn't understand what's going on. She knows she's missing something.
Her way to handle this is to have very fixed ways of behaving and any deviation from this can cause a demand in returning to HER way of things.

An example was today in the pre-school. Marieke brought her and instead of leaving the normal way, she left via another door. (She had to go to the admin to talk with the leader of the school) For Lotte, this was totally "out of the normal" and she reacted strongly to that. Refusing to let her mother go.
After calming her down, leaving through the "correct" door, Marieke entered the school through another door.

But it indicates Lottes strong sense to have everything in order.

Obviously, there could be another reason than a "feeling of missing something". But if this is the case, what if she had been deaf without CI.
She would have had even more the feeling of missing something. She would be able to communicate fine with us - her parents - and her siblings. Also with the other children in the kindergarten that know sign.
But she would have missed out in communication with her grandparents, with our friends, and with her siblings when the three of them watch television or a DVD.
With more activities than now from which she would have the feeling she's missing out, would she have reacted in the same way. Would she have been earlier with these kind of responses? We will never know.

What we do know is that we have a deaf girl that has no problem explaining to strangers what happened today, what she ate, the drawings she made ect. (For the strangers, understanding might have been a challenge..)
This happened yesterday as well, on the school where her siblings go. There was a celebration and Lotte chatted with everyone willing to listen.. She enjoyed herself the whole evening..
Below, she's helping her brother and sister with making a collage. She just jumped in with all these other - elder - children and started working. Chatting away..
(AllDeaf)