Communicating

From Left to right: Lotte, her sister and a friend.... COMMUNICATING, HAVING FUN

Signs

Funny thing happened yesterday

Lotte is using less sign as her vocabulary grows. Same with us. We speak to her but we'll sign when she doesn't understand and if she understands the sign, we'll say the word/sentence again.

But Lotte is doing the same!
My wife didn't understand what she was saying and this time it was Lotte who used sign to explain what she meant.

It's great to be able to use sign. We feel that it helped her stay secure with communication while learning to hear, to listen and speak.
Obviously we have no referance if her progress would be faster when we would not have used sign, but that doesn't matter. We know we did the right thing.

We actually realised today that Lotte has still been deaf longer then hearing. She got CI when she was 2¼ years old. She has only had CI for 1¾ years....
Amazing! 

(From AllDeaf messageboard.)

Medicine

Just sharing another experience:

Lotte has an infection on her toe (bit her nail a bit too much and/or tore the nail into the flesh) and is administered penniciline.
This she needs 3 times a day, which while in childcare is difficult.
So we give her in the morning, the afternoon and at midnight. First the medicine, then a glass of juice that she really likes. She's fine with it even though the tast is horrible.

Midnight is the difficult one because she is fast asleep. Trying to wake her up is difficult because she turns away from the light, and clings on to me.
Signing is therefore not possibble.
So we use the CI. We put it on while she's still asleep and tell her that she needs to get her medicine. And this helps. She realises what's going to happen and is cooperating.
Wonderful!!
(From AllDeaf messageboard.)

Whispering

We had a great experience this morning with Lotte.

Sitting at breakfast, I ticked on a bottle with water, making a nice sound. Started a game with her where she would say "yes" when she heared it. At 2m distance (6-7 feet) she could hear just the touch of my nail on the bottle. My mother-in-law who wears hearing-aids (sitting atg 3ft) could not hear it.

Was great fun and showed how well she could hear.

Same with whispering.
When we wisper to her, she'll wisper back. It's beautiful to see that response and it took a while before we realised that "whispering" is not a deaf activity.

(From AllDeaf messageboard)
We are learning every day.!!

Wired for Sound!

Wave - EighT

A beautiful day out here. 26 degrees (centigrade) so it's like summer.
Lotte wearing her dress, looking cute, playing in the garde.







She was sitting on the slide, me taking pictures, and I say to her, without sign, "Hi Lotte, Wave" and guess what... she waved..

These are the "tests" we sometimes do just to see how much she understands. I wasn't sure if she would, because I was 5m (15ft) away, with the sun in my back. But she understood.




Eight
Another example from a couple of days ago.
She sat in the car with my wife, straight behind her chair. Lotte was going through the numbers, one to nine. At eight she said "eigh", and my wife (in the car, motor on, no visual clues) said eigh-T pronouncing the T at the end. Lotte repeated that straight after it...

So great to get these beautiful moments.