Stop the clock

Where did January go? It seems like we were just celebrating Christmas and it's almost February. I'm still trying to figure out where 2010 went. The days sure fly by with 4 kids. The holidays are always a busy time for us, in the middle of all the Christmas activities we also have birthdays for 7 family members and our anniversary all crammed in the month of December.

We've been talking about the Cochlear Celebration at Disney for so long I can't believe it's almost time. Eric's parents, sister, and nephew are going so they can help us with the kids during some of the sessions. Maybe when Landon is older we'll let him do some of the activities for the kids but at this point we're not comfortable with the idea of him going off alone with strangers. We are really looking forward to all the "family" activities they offer. I've gotten to talk to several families online with kids with implants but we haven't been able to meet many in person so it will be nice to finally get the opportunity. It's going to be interesting to see how Landon reacts to seeing other kids with "ears" like his. He's only seen a few kids before with implants.

We took the kids to see a Star Wars exhibit at a nearby museum a few months ago. We were surprised to find a section on cochlear implants. They had a display showing how the technology of star wars (droids, robots, etc) translated into everyday life-like prosthetics and implants. We took a picture of Landon in front of the CI display and then Garrett walked by it and Landon told him no-those were his ears.







a little late but....hope you had a good holiday!

Cochlear Celebration-2011

We have our hotel reservations for Cochlear Celebration 2011 at Walt Disney World. After looking over some of the videos from past celebrations it looks like it is going to be a blast. We can't wait to meet some other families and see what new things Cochlear is working on. As for their latest, the Nucleus 5, we love it. It is so much easier keeping it on Landon's ears. He now wears the BTE's with no additional equipment to keep it on-no snugfits, no toupee tape, nothing. The only time it seems to fall off is when he is wrestling with his older brothers but the freedoms did that too-even with the snugfits and tape, so we can't complain.
As far as any speech improvement, we can see a huge change in his language since switching to the N5. He's at a point now we have to have another language evaluation Friday to see if he will even qualify to continue receiving speech therapy through our insurance. We had moved down to only once a month AVT sessions and insurance is saying that is maintenance which they don't cover-they only cover if there is a delay. So we'll have to see how his testing goes and decide from there what to do.

What we've been up to

These past few months have been super busy. We have a new addition in the family--my brother and sister-in-law had their first baby~~Mateo Jack. We took a quick trip to Austin, Texas to meet the cutie. It was nice to get away for a few days...and the weather in Austin was so nice compared to the 100 degree heat we've been fighting with all summer.

We had Landon's birthday party today at Chuck E. Cheese. This was the first year he really got into the whole birthday thing. All he has talked about the last 2 months is he wanted a choo-choo birthday cake at Chuck E. Cheese-so that's what he got. He had a blast. I can't believe he's going to be 4 years old tomorrow--it seems like I just had him and we started on his journey to hearing.

Here's a quick video of the last few months.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The man behind the miracle

The international Lister Medal, one of the most prestigious honors a surgeon can receive, was won by Australia's Graeme Clarke this week. We profile the man who made the 'bionic ear' a reality.

For 10 years, Graeme Clark had been working tirelessly to develop an implant that would help the deaf to hear. The theory made sense. The electronics had been developed, and the design was near finalised.

But there was one seemingly insurmountable hurdle: how to actually get the implant into the intricate spiral of the inner ear.

During one Melbourne summer in 1977, he took his young children to the beach to escape the heat. While they were playing in the shallows, Clark noticed a seashell lying on the ground - and that its helical structure was a crude replica of the human cochlea.

Inspiration hit. He pulled up some grass blades and experimented with teasing them into the shell's opening. Owing to their flexible tips and stiff bases, the blades slid smoothly into the tightening spiral. It revealed a simple solution to a complex problem.

Read the rest of the story here

App for learning to listen sounds

Eric just finished an app with the learning to listen sounds. You can see it at the itunes store here

You can also see it on his website

Landon's technology journey

Thanks to all for the kind words about Landon's iPhone application. I can tell you it was fun and frustrating experience to conceptualize and develop the application. I thought it would be neat to see how my little technologist has evolved along with his technology.

The first attempt was nothing more than a failure. Trying to get the bilaterals working with a Y connector into each ear, with you plugged into it with the parent microphone to see if there was sound was nothing less than a nightmare when working with a one year old. I was finally able to just get a normal YouTube video working to start teaching him about music, but was never able to get the equipment to work as I wanted. The first generation iPod presented its own set of challenges. The touch interface for a one year old was just too tempting. Also, I never felt I was giving him a real-world experience with that equipment. Here is our first major attempt at 1 1/2 years of age. Hot dog dance worked, but not well.

Based on the limitations of the CI's connectivity and the first generation iPod touch, I decided that the second attempt should be a web based, computer only approach. I developed The Sound Garden on the UseMyEars website. That work ok, but it was still not sufficient because a 2 year old does have problems with mouse manipulation. Yet another epic fail.

One day in Radio Shack, I go there or the Apple Store or Best Buy for lunch sometimes, I was looking at headphones when I ran across this handy gadget.

Ah finally, now we are getting somewhere, I was able to plug this into the generation 1 iPod and cut out all the wires for the CI. I access the UME website's Sound Garden and bamo, instant Ling 6 bliss. Except there was one more problem, you needed to have WiFi access for it to work. Another epic fail, but not so monumental.

Ok, so 9 months ago I was browsing the shelves of the Apple store and saw a book on Cocoa Touch. I knew about the SDK previously and attempted to write a few apps, but the iPhone was so new that documentation was sparse at best. Additionally, the growing pains for the App Store is well documented and I decided work on the app and not publish it for a while. Lots of reading, writing bad code, locking up my iPod touch, and running the program about a million times (you know the normal development process), I finally got a rock solid version of a highly mobile self-contained sound application; Ling 6 Sound App.

I am even more excited now that I see the iPod touch coming with internal speakers and the iPad version of the Ling 6 app is really nice for Landon. The sound on that device is superior to the iPhone and iPod touch. I hope that one day I can get him an iPad to keep up his "studies."

Ling 6 App for the iPhone,iPod Touch,iPad

Eric wrote an application for working on the Ling 6 for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad~~~~and it has been approved by Apple and is now available for purchase in the iTunes store. WAY TO GO ERIC!!!! We were at a point where Landon was tired of doing the typical Ling 6 test in the morning so Eric came up with the idea to do an application so Landon thinks he's playing now and loves doing the test. We can also change the volume on it so we can test his hearing at different levels. He loves to just play with the application during the day saying the sounds~~it helps me by keeping him busy in the grocery store. He's starting to show more independence with his hearing - such as coming to us when the batteries die and helping to change them - so this app will allow him when he's a little older to test his implants himself to make sure they are working properly.


You can see it at the iTunes store here



He's already got ideas for several more applications he is going to write for these devices. His next application is going to be one for teaching the learning to listen sounds. He also wants to figure out how to write one that will quiz the user--for example have it ask "what makes the aahhh sound" and then they will have to pick out the correct picture from a few choices.