Jack's latest progress (and a few pictures)

This post is a little late, but better than never! On Dec. 20th, Jack visited his audiologist and had his processor adjusted to be in the normal hearing range and he did impressively well. We went in the sound booth, where Jack is always a bit weary, and he consistently responded to the sounds presented to him. Afterwards we went into a different room, where they connected his processor directly to the computer and presented sounds that way; he was a champ and always looked at the audiologist to tell her he had heard a sound. She responded by cheering for him and throwing her arms up in the air, so after a couple of minutes, Jack's response to a sound would be cheering for himself with arms high in the air. He is soooo entertaining. We did this for about 45 minutes and he cooperated the entire time, what a champ. They were able to find his "thresholds" on each of his electrodes, basically meaning that for example, they could tell at what level he could hear the letter "p" or "s", and make sure everything was fine-tuned. He did beautifully and his audiologist, who was training another audiologist that day, remarked how she wished Jack could come in and train her other kids to respond the way he does. She said he was the ideal outcome for a CI candidate....how blessed Jack is. I'm also impressed with his competency with the processor; if the coil (magnetic part) falls off, he knows just where to place it, to get it back on his head. The other day, while playing outside on the back patio, Jack came back into the house holding his processor in hand; turns out his battery had died and he wanted us to fix it for him! It's obvious he enjoys hearing.

I am seeing big differences in Jack by the day now, both in his comprehension of language and sound, and even in his development of some words now! We aren't sure when he lost his hearing, but since having hearing aids, he has been hearing for about 4 1/2 months now, and of those 4 months, he's been hearing with his CI for just under 2 months. I have to remind myself to not expect too much from him too fast, but sometimes he just floors me with his smarts. He understands me when I ask for "kisses," say "bye-bye," "more," "pee-u" (stinky diaper), "up," and varying sounds for vehicles and animals. I know he understands the word itself, without any kind of gesture to help; I ask him for kisses while he's turned away from me, and he turns around and kisses me, melting my heart every single time. His response to "pee-u"? He gets a diaper or feels the back of his pants.

Further showing his comprehension of certain sounds, Jack is beginning to say words on his own without someone modeling for him first. He says "up, up, up" the most often, and says it to get you to pick him up. He's also applied it to other situations, saying "up" once while watching a cartoon character fly into the air. He says "bye-bye" to his toys and people. He LOVES animals sounds and now barks, growls, moos, and clucks when he sees the picture of the appropriate animal. His favorite is barking and growling, and in fact he growled at me when I picked him up from nursery last week. He also exclaims "ahh" when spotting an airplane in the sky (we learned in speech that the airplane says "ahh"). We visited the zoo earlier in the week and Jack enjoyed putting his new animal sounds to real-life use, growling at the big animals and saying "ooo, eee" for the monkeys.

Jack and Jon in front of 2 white tigers- ensue growling...

Jack watching the penguins dive and flip around

We had a nice day at the zoo, and luckily Jon had the Monday after New Year's off, so it was crowd-free that day.