Hearing is believing

Small steps: You can SEE when Corrina is HEARING (or better said listening intently)!

This post is going to be detailed 1. So i remember the things we did 2. as a resource 3. just to bring you along on the journey
Today in AV therapy we started with a game to help Corrina concentrate and listen. Our AV therapist (I'll call her D) had a container of water, a tall narrow container, on the middle of the table. She has two colors of food dye for Corrina to choose from (we all love choices!). Corrina wanted to add yellow. We talked about yellow for a bit! Next Corrina got to choose between a choo choo or a roar roar. Once item was chosen Daddy had a turn putting item to his ear, and listening for a noise (ahhhh, shhhhhh, mmmmm, etc...) and when he heard the sound he dropped it in the jug of water. Corrina had so much fun listening, waiting and watching the toy plunk down in the water. I had fun making little comments like when the dinosaur went in the water "oh, not, don't drown me, i'm already extinct!" The short of the long, Corrina worked very hard to wait and listen. It is wonderful to See her hearing!
The next game we played was with a baby doll to teach Corrina about sleepy time words. We would all pass baby around the circle-- while Corrina watched wondering why the heck we took the baby from her-- and tell it "shhhhhh (finger at lip), time to go to sleep". When Corrina's turn came up she lay the baby down, put her finger to her lip and stared intently into the baby's eyes. It was sooooo cute and funny. Then we all took turns going to sleep, and when D would say "Wake Up" we would quickly lift our heads up from the table! IT was a hoot.
Next we worked through the parts of our faces with Potatoes heads. Corrina and Dave had a nice bonding moment because we all know that Dave LOOOVVVEES potatoes heads! We sang head and shoulders knees and toes....

Each session is packed full of activities and songs, play and talking! We also do an audiology session each week and Corrina responded very well to the noises presented. When she heard the noise we showed her to put a toy into a bucket. She responded about 6 times before she got bored. The audiologist is trying to work down to the lower decibels of sound just to make sure that Corrina is hearing them. I think they made it down to 40 decibels this week, which is great keeping in mind that Corrina heard nothing at 90 dec before her implant.

I told dave to start little posts if something happens that he wants to record. I found this in the list:
Today June 11?
Corrina heard herself burp, and laughed a lot

Very nice!

Actually Corrina has been making a number of different noises. She has always made an 'aaaaa' noise, but now it has some 'oooooo's' and g's sorta... very interesting. She is alot more vocal as well, often making lots of sounds when she is excited! Dave has the camera at work right now, but i will do my best to catch some of the sounds on video soon because they are better heard than written!