Happy Belated Easter!! The boys had a ball doing easter egg hunts. Landon even got into it. He got a lot of good listening toys from the Easter Bunny. This past weekend we had Connor's 6th birthday party. He has grown up too fast!! He had it at the movie theater - we saw "Horton Hears A Who". It went great with his Transformer themed party :) The kids all seemed to have a ball. Of course we had to open all his "loot" as soon as we got home. Whoever invented those plastic twist ties could not have been a parent!

We went Wednesday for another mapping and booth test. She didn't change his programs too much, since the others had seemed to bother him. She did give us a new map to try in noisy places, to help take out some of the background noise. He is testing between the 15-25 db. She thinks he is better than what he is showing for some but it's hard to test him. After about a minute he's had enough and is ready to get out. I may see if we can bring some toys in or something next time to try and keep him participating longer.

He did great in therapy today and is picking up some new things in the last week or two.

1. Made the SSsss for the snake - he was just doing a very high pitched Aahh every time for it but he actually did the S for the first time today.
   
2. Did a much closer Moo sound for the cow - usually we just get him copying the duration.
3. We have bunnies (therapist has frogs) that jump when you push down on the back. We try to get him to cue the sound Hop (or his version of it) first then we make it jump. He started doing it this week - and actually did it for therapy. Usually I tell her what he is doing but he won't "perform" for her.
4. He had 2 listening toys on his tray and she asked him for one sound and he started to do the wrong one then switched to the correct toy (without any prompting from us) and put it in the bucket. That's one of our goals right now - getting him to pick out the correct toy for the sound.
5. He did the hands when she started singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider". He also does Pat-a-cake now - but he skips the clapping part. When you start to sing he starts rolling his arms around for the "roll 'em up" part.
6. Started saying DaDa - he won't do it for Eric but he does it for me and he did it for Eric's sister on Easter.
7. When I was opening Connor's presents, one was a Hot Wheels car. I handed it to Landon and he immediately starting doing the raspberry we do for the car. Hasn't done the Beep Beep part but it's something.
8. When I was cooking the other night, I asked him "Where's Connor and Garrett? You want to play with your brothers?" He got down ( he was standing against the fridge playing with magnets) and crawled on out of the kitchen to the boys room. That was the second time I've told him something to that effect and he's stopped what he was doing and goes and finds them.
   

I know there was more - she had a good list today of stuff - but I can't remember it right now. Too many kids trying to get Mom's attention :)

Easter Bunny

Here's Landon's picture with the Easter Bunny. I couldn't get the other boys to take one - I guess they think they are too big for that. The only reason I got one of Connor with Santa Claus is because I told him he had to take a picture so he could tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas.

Landon has started doing his sounds more often when I'm working with him. It used to be a one shot deal - he would make it once and that was all I would get. He also did his whee for the first time during therapy Monday. We do the kids with the slide and go up-up-up whee. He's been doing the up-up-up part but he's never done the wheee and he did it Monday. Me and Shelley (his AVT) were both excited. He did it a couple of times, too. Today when I started singing the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" without the hand motions, he started doing his hands together and up in the air for the first time. I haven' t been able to get him to say DaDa yet. He has MaMa - and knows I'm a sucker for it. If I walk by him and don't pick him up he'll start hollering MaMaMaMa and crawl after me - who can resist that :)

We got his processors back from Cochlear today. We just mailed them the Saturday before last so they are definitely fast on their repairs and shipping. Now we are ready for our mapping next Wednesday. Hopefully he'll cooperate in the booth more this time. He is usually too busy looking at all the lights to give real clear-cut responses. He's only done it twice so I'm sure he'll get better as he gets older.

He has a voice - and knows how to use it!!

In the last week or two, Landon has developed an extremely LOUD screech that he has been doing all the time. He does it when he's happy and when he is mad. I also don't think it has anything to do with him being deaf. Garrett did the same thing at this age. Luckily he seems to have grown out of it, although it does reappear every once in a while when he doesn't get his way. It was one of the things that clued us in to Landon's hearing loss. He would be sound asleep in the bassinet and Garrett would let one loose right next to him and Landon wouldn't flinch. The only problem is we are so excited for Landon to be using his voice and trying to imitate sounds we hate to have to tell him Shhh. It makes it easy to find him though :

We had a couple of new things in therapy this week. For the most part, we are just listening for him to repeat duration, pitch, that type of thing - we aren't listening for him to repeat what we say exactly. When we did quack, quack, quack with the ducks, he repeated it a couple of times. When we did the whispered PtPtPtPt for the boat at first he would do BuBuBuBu and get the duration then he did it once where he just moved his mouth but didn't make any sound with it - his attempt at a whisper I guess.

We are starting to pick up on words that Landon understands. If you say "Yeah!" he starts clapping. If you say "No No" he'll shake his finger at you - of course he goes right back to what he was doing but most kids do that :) If you say "Shh" he'll put his finger on his mouth. When you say "Bye Bye" he starts waving his hand. He is also saying MaMa and knows it's me. At first I thought he was just getting a new consonant sound but Eric was holding him and I walked through the room and he started calling it and then came after me. We've also heard him put a couple of consonants together when he is babbling instead of just saying one over and over. He just started this week blowing. He's always been good at raspberries but now he'll just blow air. Pretty soon he is going to want to start having a turn with the bubbles too.

On an equipment note, we had to send our first set of processors back. The connection where we hook in either the babyworn cable or the battery pack has gotten loose so if it moved at all when he was wearing them they would cut off. We also had to move his next mapping up. After I bumped him up to his P3 map, I noticed he was starting to do a lot of eye blinking when we would put his ears on and was starting to pull them off a lot more. I asked his audiologist about it and she thinks his maps may be too strong for him. We are going back at the end of this month - to give his processors time to come back in. We had to switch to his backup processors when we sent the others in and these have his old maps on it so he's using those for now. He seems to be back to his old self with these.

It's working!!

Therapy this week went great - Landon was doing so much his therapist joked she was running out of room to write it on his chart. The day before, I was working with him with the tops - doing "round and around and around" and he imitated the pitch change and duration perfectly. When he does something correct, I'll say "That's right!". Now when I say it he starts clapping yeah. He's also started going "Mmm, Mmm,Mmm" when he is eating. Usually he just sits through therapy playing with all the stuff but doesn't talk very much. I'll tell her all the stuff he has done at home but he won't "perform" any of his tricks for her. Hopefully I can remember everything he did in therapy:

1. He performed his Aaahhh for her with the airplane.
2. When we did the boat he imitated the duration - he didn't whisper it but he got the short bursts right and it was the first time he's tried to copy us on it.
3. When we worked with the animals he did MMmm when we did Moo for the cow and also tried the Baa when we did the sheep. He also started saying it with the hand cue. We put the animal in our hand then put our hand to our mouth and say it and Landon would wait until I put my hand with the animal by his mouth and would then try and say the sound. He did it a couple of times with both animals too.
4. When we did the Ssssss for the snake, he made a much higher pitched sound with it. She said he was definitely trying to do it - he just doesn't know how to make the S yet. She tested him a couple of times doing other sounds in between and every time she would do the Sss he would go to this higher pitch and do it.
5. We did the bunny hopping over two fences saying "hop, hop, hop" and he would tap the bunny over the fence and make three short burst sounds.

He did everything a couple of times so it wasn't a one time fluke - even though Shelley keeps saying we need to give him credit even if he only does it one time. It was definitely his most talkative therapy yet. He did great for about 45 minutes then when we started with the Mr. Potato Head he just wanted to eat the parts and lay his head on my lap. Guess all that hard work wore him out.