House of Testosterone: November 2008

Gearing up for Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping here. Kids are good. I am trying(and have been trying) to teach Alex his numbers. For some reason he always counts 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, no matter how many times I correct him. Oh well. Have also been trying to teach him how to write some letters, mainly his name. Not doing so good with that either ;) He can write an A somewhat. Maybe I am just trying to teach things above and beyond his skill level. He knows his shapes, his colors, recognizes some numbers, some letters, but has a good memory for stories. He can pick up any book and tell me what each page is about, so we are good there :)

Aidan is doing good. He walks all over the place now and is getting to be more of a toddler than a baby. Doing a little better at leaving his cochlear implant on. He is responding to really loud noises like the spoon on the mixing bowl. But still doesn't respond to other things, or our voices. He is currently hearing at 45(or maybe it was 40) decibels. That is the level at which you can hear people talking, so we do believe he can hear us. The main thing is teaching him to discriminate between important sounds(us talking, sounds from toys, dogs) vs things that are unimportant(dishwasher running, tv). So he can't pick out sounds yet so he doesn't know where things are coming from. The speech therapist has us getting on his level and having him watch our mouths move when we talk so that he will imitate that movement, thus creating more sound from him. Different sounds feel different on the throat so once we can get him to make his mouth move in a different position AND make noise at the same time, he should recognize a different sound coming from him. Anyway, the ST thinks he is behind in a few other areas than language. Namely in his ability to imitate things. I personally do not think he is as behind as she thinks he is. He does imitate things I do--he puts a toy phone to his ear(even though he can't hear anything), he tries to give Andrew food, he waves(although only after you wave to him, not of his own accord). We are teaching him to point. He will do it but does not do it for something he wants. He will jusy point at the wall :) and think it is funny. So we are working more on that with him as well as working on more signs.

Andrew is now 3 months old. He is about 11 pounds and 25 inches. He still spits up a ton. Seems like he(and I) are always covered in foul smelling spit up, yuck. He is starting to roll over. He can roll belly to back pretty well but only does it at night. He is trying to get from back to belly but only gets about 1/2 way over(arm gets in the way). Well, after after another spit up and change of clothes he actually just managed to go from his back to his belly. Yay Andrew! He smiles quite a bit now but it is so hard to get on camera. He is also starting to laugh a little bit. It will probably be at least another month before I get a full blown belly laugh but it is coming.

O, what everyone likes to see, new pictures. I took these for our 2008 Christmas card: