Dinner with friends

Eating just a little bit of sheapards pie, followed by a massive amount of ice-cream!!!

It's so great to see her interact with our friends. Even though they (our friends) went to sign-courses, they would most likely never have had the skills to communicate fluently with her in sign. Children learn so quick and are immersed in it almost their whole waking time. We, as parents, would have been able to keep up, but for friends and relatives, catching up is very hard.
With Lotte's CI, communication is no problem....

You just have to love technology!!
Just a comment:
We have not yet used any additional systems for Lotte to listen to music or TV. We have the wires to plug straight into the BTE, but we have chosen not to use them. She understands fine without them. Help might make her lazy.
We did try to connect a MP3 player with songs and stories that she likes, but there was little reaction...
Will have to try another time..

Those little words that make up our language!!

Recently we really focused on saying for example "the tree" instead of just "tree". These little words have a lot of meaning in our language.
But recently we discovered that another word has entered her vocabulary... The word "and".

Previously she would refer to e.g. "him, her", but now she say's "him and her". We hadn't really focused on that, in fact, I never practices it with her, like we did with "the house", "the dog". She probably figured it out by herself.

Otherwise, she has problems with the "L" and pronounces it as an "N". The "R" is difficult, and obviously the Dutch "G" which appearently hurts the throat of non-dutch and non-arabics. Some other letters are difficult, like the "V" and "W" and "F".

n.b. In Norwegian, the "V" is pronounced as our Dutch "W". The "W" is not used in Norwegian. It confuses our other two children still....

Pressing the little button and Yes .... Sound !!

Over the last two years, since the activation of Lotte's CI, Lotte has gradually realised that her working ears are on her shoulder... or at least, they need to be attatched above her ear.
This realisation has slowly grown.
In the beginning she would be happy to run around with her coils loose on her back . A BTE that stopped functioning (e.g. low batteries) would not be a problem. A soundless environment has never bothered her, and it still doesn't.
Later on, especially the last half year, the lack of sound, or perhaps better said, communication with her surroundings, does bother her, and we never see her with 2 loose coils. Sometimes one falls off and she won't notice, but normally she puts them on herself quickly.

IN the last month, in the morning (Lotte being awake before us... ), she will pluck them from the medicine-cabinet (which is steel, so the CI's stick on it due to the magnets in the coils) and comes to us to have them put on.
The way to do this was to switch them on, check the program, then the "volume" and then pin them on her shoulders (don't worry, by that time she wears some sort of clothing. :-) and finally attach the coil on her head. Only then sound would come in.

This weekend I changed that routine, and actually showed her for the first time that her CI gave her sound.
I first attatched the coil, and she realised that that did not help.... no sound.
Then I showed her how I pushed the button to turn the BTE on... and her face lit up..

YES !!! sound !

Only then I put the BTE in the bag on her shoulder, after checking the program and volume.

The other BTE, I had her turn it on herself, and again it was great to see her face light up with excitement. The realisation that it was her, by pushing that little button, that gave her sound...

In a way this is a new era, where Lotte realises that sound is something that comes through a thing that needs to be turned on.