Happy 2nd Hearing Birthday, Sienna!

It has now been 2 years post-activation and I have to say she has come along way. If you would have told me that in 2 years , since she was first activated, Sienna would be where she’s at today, I would have had trouble believing you. Here are some stories about how awesome our little girl is doing!

1. She was eating her plate of supper…I told her in French “Quand tu as fini souper, tu peux aller jouer au parc”, so she turns to her English speaking cousin and says, “When I’m all done supper, I can go play.” WOW!
2. Just last month, she sang “Frere Jacques” a French lullaby to her great-grandma while her uncle was playing the guitar…she didn’t have all the words or the tune but it was so cute that she did it!
3. While in the other room, I told Rylee, her older sister, to go upstairs and get dressed. Sibling competition, drove Sienna out of that room and upstairs beating her older sister. (She listens and understands even if she isn’t face to face with the person!)
4. She sat down for the first time ever through a story about a girl and a boy on a canoe ride. Then a few days later while everyone else is telling stories by the fire, she turns to me and says I would like to talk and tell a story. So we got everyone’s attention and she told the story of the girl and boy on their canoe ride. She was missing parts but everyone got the main idea of the story.
5. She’ll pick up a book and will make up a story while looking at the pictures.
6. She had her very first phone conversation which made sense! With my mom! In English!
7. Many, many more!!!

There are many more moments that I am very proud of…these are just a few!

We just returned from our 2nd year post-activation at the Glenrose in Edmonton and they are just as proud of her as we are. She is still hearing at a 15-20db and all 22 electrodes are working on both sides. We also did a language assessment. First part was in French. She repeated words which I said on the other side of the booth while covering my mouth so she wouldn’t lip read. A French SLP wrote them down as she would pronounce them. There were 3 lists, one list for the right CI, one for the left and then one for both. She did amazing and better when she had her 2 CI’s on, just goes to show how important bilateral is! Then she followed French orders with Mr. Potato Head and missed a few but did well. The last part of our long morning was an English recorded comprehension test. Our audiologist asked if we wanted to try an English test and I said we can just not sure how much English she really understands. Well, she blew us away! Example, the recording would say something like, “Help me with my shoes please!” and there would be a picture of a boy eating, a boy washing his hands and a boy putting his shoes on and Sienna would have to pick out the one that made sense. I can’t wait to get the report back and share it with you. Stay tuned!

Now I’m off to prepare for Sienna’s 4th birthday party! The ladybug celebration is Sunday, August 28th. It’s so exciting to see her face and excitement as we talk about it. She is 4 and NOW understands that her birthday is in 3 sleeps!

OMGoodness it’s been a while!!

OMGoddness it's been a while!! First I need to say MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL. I have been very busy since Kendra came into our world that I have not had the time…or I guess I should say have made the time to blog. Between Kendra's arrival, Rylee and Sienna both starting school, children sick from the common colds, building our new house and Christmas it's been crazy around here. So here it goes!!

Sienna welcomed a little sister on September 14, 2010, Kendra Lou. She is now 3.5 months and growing fast.

Sienna began preschool at Ecole Heritage, the Francophone school in town, every Tuesday and Thursday mornings. She began at the beginning of October and settled in very well. We were well taken care of from the start. Her teacher, Mme Marthe, is an energetic educator who understands children with disabilities especially one with a hearing loss as her son had a hearing loss on one side. At the beginning of December, PUF enabled them to hire a full-time aid for Sienna to help her with her language skills. I am very pleased with the dedication and teamwork involving as many as 6 adults including myself…all working together to help Sienna reach her full potential. I'm in awe to see that these people are so dedicated in seeing my child succeed and will do what it takes to ensure that. However; I am sad to say good-bye to our speech language pathologist, Lindsay. Sienna had weekly speech therapy with Lindsay for almost 2 years now with only a few breaks throughout. What doesn't make sense to me is that because we are accessing PUF funding now, she no longer gets her weekly speech therapy sessions with a qualified speech therapist, one who has worked with Sienna weekly for just about 2 years. Through the school, she is now seeing a SLP from Edmonton who will visit 3 times during her school year. The expectation is that her aid will do her "speech therapy". Don't get me wrong, her aid is eager to learn and wants to see Sienna succeed. It's just that she was doing so well with Lindsay that I feel like we are taking a step back from the speech therapy. I could hire a private SLP who could see Sienna once a week but seeing that we live in a northern rural area, there are none to be found. Since beginning preschool, Sienna has made so many gains and I am very excited to see what kind of gains will come. Apart from the speech therapy that she will receive at school; Sienna is learning to socialize, to be more independent, and to follow classroom routines. School is by far the best thing for her, it's just I wish the government would see that things are different up here in Northern Alberta; we don't have the resources or the qualified people like the cities do.

Sienna has come so far since August, it's not even funny. I look back at her SLP's goals and we have achieved them in so little time. Our goals were and still are:

Speech Perception Goals

1. Sienna will identify 2+key words in the middle of a sentence. Ex: What is flying in the sky? (key words…flying and sky). 2.
2. Sienna will discriminate between two words with only a single sound difference ex: cat vs hat

Speech Production Goals

1. Sienna will be able to correctly sequence the sounds required to produce a C1VC2V word ex: piggy, doggie. Sienna was repeating the initial consonant in the middle of the word like mimmens instead of mittens or moomie instead of movie; words where the middle consonant changes.
2. Sienna will correctly produce the initial consonant in one syllable words. Sienna is doing much better at this but we often need to have her repeat the word with the correct initial consonant.
   

Language Goals

1. Sienna will be able to answer questions about herself. Others would ask her name, or her age and she would look at them with a blank face. Now Sienna is beginning to answer how old she is and what is her name?
2. Sienna will be able to verbally answer what and where questions. Sienna was having difficulties answering questions; she would just repeat the question. This is expected as we have been encouraging her repeat everything we say for the past year. Now, she answers simple questions and she is actually asking questions herself, like what are you doing? Where's dad? What is that?

She is now speaking even more clearly, so clearly that others besides me understand her. She is playing with her older sister, not just side by side but they actually play "pretend". She is speaking in short sentences like, "ouvre la porte Rylee," "Merci pour souper," "aide-moi mom s'il vous plait." I am so proud of her accomplishments and have to constantly remind myself that she has only been hearing for close to 1.5 years. She does still get very frustrated when she is not understood and tries so desperately to express herself but sometimes I just can't make out her words. She screams and has tantrums when she is not being understood. So I just remind her to use her words, to calm down and tell me what she wants.

We wish you the best of luck in the NEW YEAR!!

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!

JTC- Distant Learning- Lesson 1

We survived the holidays and I have to say it was the best Christmas ever. Why? Because Sienna’s walking, hearing, and speaking; because our children are older and the excitement and joy I live through their eyes is heart-warming; because we were surrounded by family who love us and would do anything for us.

Over the holidays, I finally completed my first distant learning lesson with the John Tracy Clinic. It is free and they are very helpful. Here is what stood out from

Lesson 1 –Informal Assessment.

· Remember to get her attention with your voice.
· TALK, TALK, TALK!! (At the beginning, I was apprehensive about this cause I didn’t want to over stimulate her but I can say now at 5 months post-activation, she is ready to hear it all… in short sentences of course!)
· When hearing a sound- point to the ear and say “I heard that!”
· Keep a binder with sections including Audiological Evaluation, Informal Assesements, etc…
· Do a Ling-Six Sound check daily.
· Always gain evidence about her receptive language and expressive language but don’t make her feel like she is being tested.
· Remember, all children with or without hearing loss, usually don’t pronounce their first words clearly. (I need to remind myself of this.)
· Remember, most hearing children are not understood by unfamiliar listeners when they first begin to talk. (I also need to remind myself of this.)
· She’ll begin with 1 word utterances, when she has between 50-100, she may attempt at producing little sentences.
· Speech sounds differ in 3 ways: duration, intensity and pitch. (They make you aware of this and to check to see if your child is doing any of these.)
· Listening should be fun!
· It takes time and repetition for her to learn that you expect her to listen. (This is so true.)
· They finished it off with some great activities!

Sienna is doing very well. She has about 10 spoken words like mom, dad, Rylee, bye, non, merci, assis, puppy, meow, and many sounds with association like a dog’s bark, a sheeps “baaaa”, an airplane goes “aaaa”, etc… As for her receptive language, she is well over 30 words. For a quiet person who doesn’t talk much, I have to remind myself to talk, talk, and talk. I also find she hasn't been repeating as much as she had been in December, she is stuck on the same 10 words. I've been told that this is a normal part in language development, which is a relief. Hopefully it is just that.

I can’t wait to begin Lesson 2- Reinforcing Behavior (Just what I need for my 2.5 year old.)

Sienna's on fire!

Just when we get discouraged,

Sienna comes around and makes us proud.

This last month has blown us away.

Her language skills are developing.

She surprises us everyday.

Everyday, I add a word to her receptive language.

She attempts to repeat difficult sounds.

She has about 15 speech sounds

and about 30 receptive words.

When I sing, she tries too, it is so neat.

We had an audiologist appointment this week at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital and they were amazed at how well Sienna is doing. She is just about 4 months post activation and she has a great start on her language development. We did a sound booth test and she is hearing sounds at a 15 db and speech sounds at a 25 db.

Sienna is doing so well because of 2 reasons,

1) She is a sponge, she loves to imitate, she is absorbing it all





2) Her older sister Rylee, she does everything Rylee does, she listens to her, she mimics her every move.

Rylee is my #1 language tool.

Rylee is her #1 idol.

Sienna's hearing progress!

Well, it'll be just about 3 months post-activation for our little Sienna.

Everyone always asks...so are they working?

Here is what I say...

Yes, my little girl can hear!

She looks right at us when we speak to her!

She looks at the phone base when the phone rings!

She recognizes certain sounds and points or acts it out!

ex: When she hears "eeee" she does a monkey.

She differentiates between sounds... for example a bark and a meow!

She dances when she hears music!

She sings our little song when it's time to wash our hands

(doesn't have any sounds right but she has the melody somewhat)!

She localizes sound!

She can hear!

The next question asked.... is she talking?

Here is what I say...

She is making new sounds, not nessarily the ones we are showing her but they're new sounds!

She does "ou", "ow", "ba" and others with no association to anything, yet!

She just started saying,"mam, mam, mam" when she is whining for me!

Its only a matter of time before we hear her first word!

We are reading to her all the time.

There's never any background noise.

We go to Peace River for speech therapy once a week.

Alot of one on one with her.

Lots of repetitions.

There is one thing Sienna has taught me through all of this, it is PATIENCE.