12.09.08

Okay so I have been starting to sign with Alex for at least six months now and he finally is starting to pick up on some of the signs. He will sign more, food, milk, he did puppy once, and was really good at mommy for a while but hasn't used it in a while. The biggest frustration is me learning and remembering the signs. I only knew the alphabet growing up and never took any classes in school so I am struggling to learn a new language. I talked to Amanda though and she has the Signing Time ASL set we can borrow. I am also hoping that when we start testing for him to begin preschool that we can get new hearing screening ordered. I have a feeling that his hearing is not nearly as bad as they say it is. We had a CT scan, three ABR (auditory brain response) TORTURE tests, booth tests, and like six OAE's when he was first born. They diagnosed him with a mild-to-moderate and moderate-to-severe hearing loss and he now has a hearing aide on the left side only for now. My "mom intuition" says however that his hearing is at least slightly better than they say it is. I can whisper I Love You near his ear and he will laugh and give me a kiss. I can talk in normal tones from the kitchen to downstairs to come and eat and he come crawling as fast as he can up to me. There have been other times I have noticed him respond well like that too. We have very intense speech and audiology therapy coming in home to work with him on top of physical and occupational therapy as well. I think he might do better at a booth test now that he is getting older and his reactions are getting much more obvious. Oh I can't even believe I am excited for him to start preschool. I will end up being a basketcase when he actually starts going. He is my little buddy. He is always at my feet, tearing into the cupboards and pulling everything out of the kitchen drawers. He keeps me running that's for sure but he needs the best start and the sooner he gets going to school the better off he'll be.