Kids, they grow up too fast!!

Sienna's new headband!! We love them!

Thank-you to Lily's mom for the contact info.

Sienna watching her sister wait for the bus!

Rylee excited for her 1st day in grade 1!!
I'M SO PROUD OF HER!




Sienna and her cousin Jordyn celebrating their 3rd birthday!
Sienna-August 28
Jordyn- August 14



Sienna and Rylee at Sienna's 3rd Dora birthday party!



HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY SIENNA!

CONGRATULATIONS RYLEE ON BEGINNING GRADE 1.

I'm back...to a stay at home mom!! YOUPI!

Well the last few months have been… how should I put it…well maybe I’ll skip that part, let’s just say that I am so glad to be done working full-time. With a baby arriving in September, a company needing book-keeping duties, Rylee graduating from kindergarten and Sienna’s appointments in Edmonton, I was busy; there definitely wasn’t enough “zzzzz” in my life. I look at mother's who work full-time with an entirely new perspective, don't get me wrong, I admired them before I went back to work full-time however; you don't truly know what it's about unless you live through it. Fortunely, it was a temporary position and I am very grateful that I can stay home with my children while they are young. So my praise goes out to all you working mom's!!

I have to admit that I enjoyed my time in the classroom, I loved the relationships I built with my students, I loved the creativity and the challenge it brought to my life. However, short lived with it only being 2.5 months, now I am concentrating on celebrating Sienna’s first hearing birthday (Aug 12th,2010), Rylee’s milestones with her 1st swimming lessons and beginning grade 1 in the fall and of course the arrival of our baby girl…yes I said baby girl. This will be 3 for our family and the 8th grand-daughter for my parents. Yikes, that’s a lot of girls!! Oh yes I can't forget that we are building a new home for our family of 5. My husband is a journeyman carpenter and is undertaking the project. With the foundation done, the framing has begun!!

Sienna took a break from her weekly trips to the SLP; so we are very excited to get back into it. Because of the summer holidays, we actually won’t begin our sessions until the 1st week of August. Sienna is improving so much: she is finally saying her full name (before she was missing the beginning), she is attempting new words all the time, and she is getting better at pronounciation. She is communicating so well that I’ve noticed that even those who don’t see her very often our understanding her words. I didn’t think much of it at first until I realized, WOW, my little Sienna who just began to hear a year ago can communicate with others who understand her besides her mom, dad and sister.

The summer is
bringing forth new sounds (birds, water splashing, thunder…) and new vocabulary (pool, birds, bike, outside, garden, strawberries, sandals, bathing suit,...). It is so exciting to see her hearing and speech grow. I sure love the summer time…don’t we all!!



You know she's pretty tired when she falls asleep with her CI's on!! I've never seen it happen!














Yesterday, I celebrated my birthday with my family!! I couldn't have asked for a better day!

March has come and gone!!

March came and went very quickly. Here is what we've been busy with...

*Sienna and I visited a grade 11/12 biology class to talk to them about cochlear implants, they were very interested and had great questions. I think it is so important to educate everyone around us...as many have never seen anyone with them; never mind some have never heard about it.


*Rylee had her gymnastics funmeet...she placed 1st overall. We are very proud of her! She is my shining star!


*My brother-in-law was in an awful avalanche accident in Revelstoke…he is recovering at home now, so we had taken time to go see him in Edmonton. After such a close call hitting so close to home…you can’t help but re-evaluate your priorities in life and remind yourself once again that no matter how busy and stressful life gets…FAMILY is #1.


*I am preparing for a temporary full-time position in grade 3 starting mid April. I am finishing the school year, replacing a teacher going on mat leave. As busy as life will be for our growing family, I am very excited to get back into my career and get another taste of it before the new baby comes.


*My husband is a journeyman carpenter and one of his dreams is to build his family a new house….well his dream is coming true. This past week, we moved our existing home to another spot in our yard to make room for our new house. We are living with my parents temporarily, until all the utilities are hooked up in our existing house. My husband has been hard at work, he makes me so proud. We’ll probably begin the foundation in the coming weeks.


*Last but not least, my little Sienna is doing so well. For her name, she says “enna” but the other day, at speech, she said her 3 syllable name. Yeah, she makes me smile. Her receptive language keeps growing and she tries and tries and tries to repeat everything we say. It is so cute. She is missing a lot of the beginning sounds, especially the ones she knows like “b”, “m”, “s”, “p”, so we have been practicing on that.

Sorry it has been so long, I will do my best to write more often…bye for now, hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather!

Our family is growing!!

We are adding to our StJean clan. Rylee and Sienna are going to have a baby sister or brother joining them in September. Kevin and I have always wanted to have 3 but with what we’ve gone through this past year, at one point we had decided that our 2 girls completed our family. Then, great things began to happen, Sienna began to hear, began to speak and began to walk before Christmas so we made the decision to continue our family. We see Sienna as we do any other 2.5 year old, she is learning along side of them and is no different than them accept for she needs “equipment” to help her hear. I can’t wait to see Sienna interact with her baby sister or brother; it will help her development tremendously. As for Rylee, she is a great big sis to Sienna and will be for her new sibling as well.

At our 6 month post-activation appointment, from a sound booth test, we found out Sienna hears at 20db so she can basically hear a whisper. Isn’t this truly amazing! I didn’t really need a sound booth test to tell me that cause I have whispered to her before with her back to me and she has turned around. WOW! As for how the language assessment went, we did a few fun activities with the audiologist to evaluate her perception of speech and not where she is at in her speech development. I will hopefully meet with the speech language pathologist for a formal speech evaluation on our next visit to the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital.

Sienna’s personality has changed over the last month. She is more demanding, more bratty, more persistent and yells and cries more and is having more tantrums than ever. Not sure why, she is 2.5 and I know this fits right along with the terrible twos but she has never been this mischievous before. I am wondering if it has to do with her hearing now and her speech development. She is a more confident girl now with her hearing, and she now knows her voice can get her what she wants…yells gets our attention very quickly.
Question for you CI moms-----Are any of you going through this, have you seem a change in personality? I remind her to use her words, I stick to my word cause I know they remember if you ever give in once and I try not to give her too much attention when she yells.