Trippin'

Yep, had a field trip today...third graders! And I have to brag on them, from what I saw, they all behaved so well!! They watched a performance of Bye Bye Birdie, ate pizza, and played at a park. Gage came back home w/me but I hear they were getting back just in time for PE which is the last class of the day. Gage and I had to go grab me a new camera, mine broke, and I will not go w/out a camera!!

(taken via cell phone)

I didn't ask for special accommodations like preferential seating in the theater (will do next time) we lucked up and had middle of mid section anyway. He did quite well!!

Brook found a hitch-hiking inch worm....

She is my gardener. She gets that from the Blakely side of the family, she's started her very first flower bed.

She wants big ones like these

Horray for IEPs for next year!

Quick and painless as usual is all I can say. When one kid is not yet 9 and has an expressive and receptive language level of 10yr 10 mos....I'd say, we're in a good place...
Other kiddo has also surpassed her benchmark for K so other than your basic hearing impaired/deaf/ci kid needs, (static guard mat for under computers, closed captioning, small group ARMT, SAT testing, your basics)...we are good! My main classroom concern is voice quality of the teacher, all the teachers are more than capable and I'd work well w/any of them but soft spoken ladies and my hearing impaired kids just won't work out. So I ask for some loud mouths (just kidding, kinda). I'm very satisfied, but should something come up, I will be glad to call them back in for another revision meeting....no problem!

You have no idea how glad I was when she settled for this outfit. I can live w/the orange Halloween socks, but a Christmas dress and Halloween socks made me sweat! Luckily she respects her brother's opinion (not mine!) and he informed her it was "kinda ridiculous!" But this we can live with so we're glad she changed!

A rabid child...

There's just no other explanation. She doesn't earn a good girl picture here today, for doing well at the dentist. She foamed at the mouth, spit was flying everywhere and someone got bit (so sorry lady!). I think Brook has some sort of flag by her name there, everyone seems to be prepared when she comes in, wearing their game faces (masks, gloves, and face shields) and clamps on the table to keep her from biting people's fingers, but she did get one in before the clamps were secure. In her fighting, I was holding her body down and as she had requested, holding her hands...she grabbed onto what she thought was my shirt but was my scar, where I'd recently had skin cancer removed. She's strong! Tears formed in my eyes, and they tried to console me, "we're almost done Mom, I know it's tough." I had to tell her, I wasn't feeling sorry for the rabid child, she's about to pop open my skin where I just had surgery. "Am I bleeding?" I ask. I was not. But I'm still hurting! I'm not convinced I'm taking her back for a while, she has great teeth and brushes well so I may skip her next appt and see them in a year.
Moving right along, because I've already wasted too much energy on that one dental trip I can't forget fast enough!!! Cochlear came in to see Gage and we may have some results from that testing as early as next week, but they didn't have to turn any more electrodes off today, and his next mapping is next month. Dental wise, Gage may 'make do' with some retainer type mouth pieces that will have teeth attached in areas where he will have none. So he's happy about that (from what he understands of it, he's not seen one yet). Dental implants will come in late teen years. I need to go to bed early. B needs to go to bed early. And I'm sure we'll all be friends again in the morning. (she has apologized to me, but is remaining in her room til bed time which is 2 hrs away, she's resting, watching a movie, but I do not feel bad for her, sorry-even if Gage is out riding 4wheelers, where she wants to be...if you know us in person, you can understand...girl has got to learn)
Just a bad day....

...but yesterday was great! And I'm sure tomorrow will be too!

Caution...

So last night, out of nowhere Brook says,"Mama, on the bus and in the lunchroom, people were laughing at Gage's ears."
silence
"How do you know? Did he hear them?"
"No, but I saw them pointing and laughing."
Me: giving the laughing child the benefit of the doubt, "maybe they were smiling at him for other reasons."
Brook: "No, it was his ears."
With flames in my eyes (a mother's natural reaction) I tell her, "You need to tell the teacher monitoring the lunchroom that! Don't let someone sit there and point and laugh at him!"
"I did, I said that girl was smiling at Gage and Mrs. M said maybe they were being friendly." But Brook knew better.
We talked about how it was not nice to run and tell a person that they are being made fun of, that accomplishes nothing more than hurting their feelings. I explained to her that she didn't give the teacher all of the information. I know how the bus can be as well. That bus driver will do nothing. I don't make my kids ride it unless it is a necessity! However, my kids, average ears or not, need to learn to show appropriate reactions, stand up for themselves and each other, just like we all had to do. And all I'm saying is....you don't want to mess with this....

If she says to stop laughing, my advice would be to stop laughing. She has the ability to move from sad to mad really really quick. I've known her for six years. This will likely serve as one of her best qualities if used properly. She will likely be a really really good friend to have on your side, she's got your back...but if you cross her...

a note

I found this in my lunchbox...I was subbing at the high school today and loved my note from home...even if I discovered she had a U (unsatisfactory) in conduct this week. Love my girl who misses me so bad, even when I cut grass I have to take a break after an hour just so she can hug me.

I'm writing to remind myself how adorable she CAN be...we have a dentist trip on Monday. (smile...click here if you've never heard of our dentist trips)

And we visit w/Cochlear after that and see if we can come up with any idea of what may be happening with Gage's right ear.

And I'm getting super excited about the upcoming PEEPs training I have on May 11 w/great professionals contributing information/time like UAB Genetics, audiologists, AVTs, a HI (hearing impaired) teacher, more!

Released

I took this photo from my children's car line at school as I awaited the end of the school day. It felt great outside, no hustle and bustle, only cows mooing in the background. I slipped my flip flops off, laid back in the seat, windows down, and listened...to nothing. For many of stay at home moms, they arrive at school 45 min early just to be the first ones in line to pick up their precious babies because they've missed them so much. Not that I don't miss my kids, I do, but I arrive early for some ME time. At home I feel obligated to do chores, so I leave the house so I don't feel guilty about doing nothing.

As 2:30 approaches, I slip my shoes back on, sit up in my seat and I feel my whole body tighten and prepare for what follows that final bell...(rrrrriiiinnnnnnnggg)    RELEASED...
Almost in military style classes file out one by one and I spot my kiddos right away. (deep breath) "Gage and Brook" shouts the teacher as she opens my car door. Smiling like innocent angels they pile into my car and for a minute, I pretend they are. I ask the usual, "How was school? Who behaved?" and Gage gives me his standard, "I did" while Brook grabs her book bag and says, "Hmmmm, I'll check." as she looks for a check next to her name on her conduct sheet(also her standard answer and never a good sign, I assure you *smile*) And here we go.....
"Mama!" he says
"No WAIT, I was first, Mama!" says Brook
"No I said it first" says Gage
"He goes first" I intervene
"Mama, I got a new library book about foxes and they are so cute"
"Okay my turn" B interrupts
"UhUh, Mama, I was TALKING!!"
"He was still talking" and she follows with "UUUUUUggghhhh!!"
"Anyway, uh, Mama...." as he sees a man on a riding lawn mower...
"And one time on A 1000 Ways To Die, a lady..."
"Yeah" Brook interrupts, "She was mean to her husband and she got on the lawn mower..."
"No Brook, I was telling her! And anyway, Mama, on A 1000 Ways to Die, this lady died because she ran over an electrical cord with her lawn mower and it shocked her and she died. "....

and then I pull out from the car line....it becomes sensory overload! It happens fast, it happens at high volumes, and it's one thing I can count on everyday...deaf kids can hear...and deaf kids can speak. They do it often and sometimes at the same time, but I wouldn't trade 'em for the world. But I am a stay at home mom (who substitute teaches part time), who's not afraid to admit, I enjoy my quiet time, I need my quiet time, because there is a lot of information my children need to tell me...all at once...and I must prepare.

Upcoming; next week we have IEPs...meeting w/Cochlear about Gage's right ci, dentist for both kids,, and much much more...

...from Parenting Magazine

Just as a fyi, I was reading Parenting magazine and they reported in their Bites You Need To Know on page 46,

"Music to their ears
Children with cochlear implants-electronic devices that restore partial hearing to the hearing impaired-have improved speech and language skills, but now a new study shows they may have improved social lives, too. Children in the study ranked their quality of life equal to that of normally hearing peers."

I think we've all read this in other places as well but I thought it was neat to see it in the magazine!

Rough Day

We had some visitors over the weekend...

You know what it's like when you have unexpected guests...

(my neighbor got 4 new cows and they wanted to come over and play)

Anyway, the real story is Gage had a rough day yesterday. When I picked him up from school he was upset, he had got in trouble for misbehaving (nothing major, cutting up in class) and had to stay in from PE. I had already known about the not so good grade on a book he'd read in class (I get an email when he takes an AR test-love that feature!) As we discussed his day, he just became increasingly aggitated, upset, until finally he was in tears  crying (he has no tears, ever...a Goldenhar Syndrome thing) Anyway, he acted exhausted and I should have recognized why...this has happened before. When I went through his backpack, I found his FM battery cage. He never changed his battery when he went to school. Although he's bilateral, he uses only one ear w/his FM system, teacher's mic. He had exhausted himself from trying to keep up all day by listening and it had really taken a toll on his little brain. I had to send him to his room to calm down, no four wheeler, which upset him even more...but at my house, you don't get rewarded for bad behavior-regardless of your excuse. So we are hoping for a better day today, hoping he remembers to get his batteries in the FM receiver that fit in his ci. I did write the teacher a note and explained, but ask her not to immediately remind him...he needs to remember these things on his own, or try to since he is almost finished w/third grade now. Brook, as she matures will also become more responsible for getting what she needs for class. Crossing fingers for a better day today!

Pre Weekend Update

In fast forward...

Brook can now double tie her shoes....(no, I still don't have time to argue over frivolous things such as socks! lol)

Today I had fifth graders. The thing about fifth graders (as a substitute teacher) is when they ask, "Mrs. Blakely, how do you spell chihuahua?" during their writing assignment, you can't say, "that would be D, O, G !" If I have no idea, I must look it up...
I also had a refresher course in triple digit multiplication......whew, I was sweating some of those problems but they had no idea! The teacher's manual only gave me the answers and I had to show them how to work out the problems so the answer wasn't a lot of help unless you could carefully place each digit after you counted all your fingers remembered all your math facts...876x427 is harder to do on the spot than it looks...but I worry as a sub I'll damage these kids (not being an actual teacher) trying to work through these things...but I did it!

Right in the middle of math, there was a knock at the door...it was Brook's kindergarten teacher. My eyes roll back instinctively, I take a deep breath as I quickly think, can I turn off the light and pretend I'm not here? Instead I make my way to the door desperately hoping my child hasn't done anything too terribly bad that would warrant a classroom interruption. Sweat beads on my forehead as I drag my feet to the door...
Braced for the worse, I open it and was relieved to discover her whole class out there! They were visiting around reading to different classes and Brook read a few pages to my class! So cute (since she wasn't in trouble).  At the end of the day, both of my children came into my class as I had instructed so they can remain w/me during bus loading, and car loading. As we awaited the final bell, several kids in the fifth grade gathered around, "Uh, what's that on his head?" they asked. I answered, "Cochlear Implants, both of them wear them in order to hear, otherwise they hear nothing." And quickly they moved on to, "Uh, how much do they cost?" and I answered back, "Seven thousand dollars each and that doesn't include the surgeries they had to make those work!" And one kid piped in, "Well, does Medicaid not paid for that?" I assured them we had insurance to help cover the expenses. Love these kids, they are so interested...
Gage's x-ray on his right ear came back as normal placement of electrodes...still unsure of a reason for having to turn off seven electrodes...more to come after our visit on April 26 w/Cochlear. Now off to enjoy my weekend playing Frisbee and riding four wheelers!

Aunt Christie, Southern Living

If you follow me on Facebook (see badge on sidebar if you don't) then you know how interesting my car line is at school as I await for the demons my precious babies to be released...
Well today, I'm admiring the hydrangeas on the cover of Southern Living magazine (I want some soooo bad!!) and texting my sis in law (who is all knowing of flower information) and she advises me where to go and when to plant...
I open the magazine finally and as I flip thru pages, I see HER IN THE MAGAZINE!! No kidding! They came last year to take photos making no promises she would ever even be in the book so she was surprised when I texted her back and told her!!

She happens to be the photographer of my book cover and has her own blog also (Click Here). You can see the excitement on the kids faces (lol)! Actually they were tickled to see their Aunt Christie in a magazine, so was I! Talk about a language opportunity! And, Gage read the whole article to his Daddy (Christie's brother)...so awesome.

In other news, we have our IEPs scheduled now for April 29, all I can think of for 4th grade right now is no tests on uncaptioned films, or audio.....but will be thinking on this some more!

She had a speaking part

So my pretty tattooed little girl, had her PTO program at school last night and she had a speaking part! Yes, in case you haven't heard, deaf children can speak, and this one does it loud and often! Her line was, "How do you say the ABC's backwards?" and her friend A next to her answers, "CBA"...some had silly little jokes and they all sang songs together. She is now getting prepared for summer break coming up in a few short weeks then first grade in her rural public school.

Speaking of rural, I was cutting grass today and found this...

Mapping and More

First, I want to say, Brook and her dad refurbished a couple of benches given to us by a friend whose Dad was going to toss them! And look, good as new!

Nice work B (and Daddy too!)

Although I'm about to leave for the day's final event (PTO meeting), I wanted to give some good news to those keeping up w/my little Goldenhar child. NO ORAL SURGERY until he's like 18 !!! The specialist said no way would he want to do dental implants, jaw distraction or likewise at this age if not completely necessary. He said, Gage does need all that but needs to wait til late teens or it will all have to be re-done later!

He was an angel today, and got the good child prize of a well sought after milkshake....

She however, did not get a milkshake...

She did however fall asleep after numerous outburst and undesirable behavior, one of which included accidentally knocking over a small table at Children's while we were waiting on Gage to get his Xray (to check electrode placement on his right ear)...more on that later!

She did complete her mapping and goes back in July for speech perception tests and mapping again in Oct. !

And tomorrow, I have to go pick up more I'm All Ears books and get my driver's license renewed (it has already expired, oops) so looks like another packed day of travel.

Captioning Videos

Hi guys, I've been trying to upload and caption some videos and haven't had any luck, I use Overstream ordinarily...here is what I found if you too use Overstream...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apparently, Youtube has finally gone and closed off the video access to third parties like overstream.net. (We are not the only ones affected - e.g., youtube video downloading sites like http://clipnabber.com and http://keepvid.com also either don't work or don't work the same way as before.)



It seems like there is nothing that can be done on our end to fix this right now. Feel free to write to youtube/google asking to make an exception for overstream to work somehow within this new restricted framework. Unless either this new restriction is lifted, or an exception is made for overstream, overstream won't work with youtube in the foreseeable future. There is possibly another option of implementing the system that would make it work, but this would require some development.



It's possible that youtube feels that due to their recent improvements to accessibility (which are indeed pretty impressive!), there is no real need for overstream any longer. It's possible that they have a point...


I found this on the Overstream forum from the Overstream administrator.
So for now, if you go to my video page, you'll have to click on the youtube channel to see my uncaptioned videos...and here's our latest w/a transcript.

transcript:
Brook "I Spy"
Mom "Oooh I know, let's play I spy..."
Brook "No, no, you do that thing, I spy something blue
or something like that..."
Mom " A color? Okay, I spy something....that's the color
you get when you mix blue and yellow. So what color
would that be?"
Brook "Walls, green!"
Mom "Very good, okay I spy something that is the color..."
Brook "Don't tell me color just say I spy something green
or red.."
Mom "You want it simple? I was gonna make it harder for you"
Brook "yea"
Mom " umm, what if we play I spy something with a /p/ sound
at the end of the word"
Brook "yea, yea, yea"
Mom "okay, alright I spy something with a /p/ at the end of it"
Brook "Lamp"
Mom "Very good, alright I spy something that's got a /d/ sound
in the middle of the word."
Brook, "Um, which area?"
Mom "There's 3 of them in here, it's got a D in the middle of
the word"
Brook "Chair?"
Mom "Sound it out, does it have a D in the middle?"
Brook "No, um DVD"
Mom "Hmm, no it has it at the beginning and the end"
Brook "ok, ok,
Mom "You're looking in the right direction"
Brook "magazine?"
mom "Does it have a /d/ sound?"
Brook shakes her head no and yes, "uh huh, oh wait let me try again."

sorry I had four kids here while I quickly typed it out, pardon any errors!!!
she eventually gets WINDOWS correct!...because we play hard, we don't like easy! Just a little AVT for ya, I was about 7 feet from her w/camera in front of my mouth....
love her tattoos and outfit? lol, and she is wearing shorts under her skirt!

Just a little update...

I guess blue goes w/everything (she loves that hair bow, lol)

I've been really busy lately, this is the first moment I've had a chance to blog, I have several things waiting to blog, like videos that need captioning, etc. but for now, this will have to do...

Brook surprised me this week when she managed to hook her ci's up to the computer (without me!) I had to sub for a class last minute and couldn't go w/her, I went last week to school for their first computer lab visit to show her and her teacher how, and they did it all by themselves this week!!! It's really not that difficult should you ci moms want to try it at home!

And who doesn't look good in short and cowboy boots? He's rockin' these boots daily, I assure you, and now that it's hot and snakes are crawling, I'm glad! We were informed that Cochlear wants to see us regarding his seven electrodes that have been shut off of his right ear, I'm guessing integrity testing....? We need to also go in for an Xray as well to see what those electrodes and array looks like now. More on that later!

If want to read a touching story go to Bama Ears now!

'New Resource for Families'

'New Resource for Families' (click link to view)


And for my birthday, mom found me a t-shirt at Wal Mart that says, "Chillin' with my Peeps"
So perrrrrrrrfect!

Her batteries ran down.......

...and this little girl changed them!

HaHa, it was the cutest thing ever. I always play dumb when my kids run up to me saying things like, "My battery ran down, my battery ran down!" so I fumble, perplexed I say, "okay so where are your batteries?" (Independence is what I'm seeking here) Brook's friends says, "they're in here!" She takes the reigns (and B lets her-lazy kid-lol) and she changes them for her, cutest thing I've ever seen. There's a true friend! And yes Brook can and has changed them herself for about a year now but I guess all this egg hunting wore her out!!