Part of having a child with a disability involves educating others on that disability. When you have a child that has blinking devices on their head for everyone to see, people stare. If I didn't know what it was, not going to lie, I would probably be staring too. I take every opportunity to educate people. Sorry if you didn't really want to know, but I caught you staring and now you will learn! Kids are the easiest to talk to. They usually ask, "why's he wearing those?" We simply reply, "They help him hear. Without them, Brody is deaf and can't hear anything." Short, sweet, and to the point. Kids don't need a lot more than that. Sometimes they will respond back about someone they know who wears glasses to help them see. :) Adults usually get more information. Actually, adults are the ones that stare the most. Once I explain that Brody was born deaf and had cochlear implant surgery, a lot of people will respond with someone they know or have heard of that is deaf too. Some want to know if they hurt (not at all...even surgery seemed to be a breeze for Brody) or if he can hear without them on (no that is the point of the processor...they then sometimes get an earful about that). I don't do it to be mean or rude, but while I let things bounce off me when people make rude comments, they might come across the next family who isn't through the gre icing process and can't handle the comments as well. We also have the other side of the line with people that do know about cochlear implants. We have had people come up to is on more than one occasion to tell us that they know so and so who has cochlear implants and they are graduating high school, going to college, getting married, having a baby, etc. They usually reassure us over and over that we have nothing to worry about and our handsome boy will be just fine. (I know that, but it's good to hear it from others!)
I was super excited when we went to Young's Dairy Farm outside of Dayton. We were eating some ice cream (It was super yummy!) sitting on the picnic tables. A little boy about 8 and his mom sat down behind us. I could tell the boy was staring Brody down. I heard him ask his mom what "those things" were. To my surprise, she told them they were cochlear implants! She then went into great detail with him about why Brody needed them and how they helped him. I couldn't resist and had to tell her thank you when I saw them later on.
While we were at the Walk4Hearing, we had a family come up and ask us about the Cochlear Implants. Because my classroom is a constant mixture of hearing aids, cochlear implants, and BAHAs, I don't usually think about kids out in the school districts not coming in contact with other kids using different devices than theirs. The family had a set of twins that wore hearing aids. From what I gathered, the mom was explaining the cochlear implant to the boys. They were really concerned that it hurt Brody and he couldn't take it off. I took it off Brody's head for them to look at, then Brody put it back on and continued chowing down on his ice cream. They seemed relieved that he wasn't screaming in pain when we touched it!
Speaking of the Walk4Hearing...we surpassed our goal! Thank you for everyone that participated in walking with Brody and for giving your generous donations! Our goal was $1500 and we raised $2155! The walk itself was pretty miserable. It rained pretty much the entire time and was pretty cold. Hopefully next year is better! Our shirts won 3rd place in the t-shirt design! I'm sure the cute little monster among all the adults didn't hurt our chances! We were also 3rd place for overall fundraising. We had a huge group walk with us. A lot of Jordan's high school friends and his Ohio family were able to join us.
Brody is continuing to improve through all of his therapies. He is finally comfortable enough in the swimming pool to go underwater and to follow Ms. Melody's directions. He will kick, paddle, and jump/walk on the stairs. He is talking more and more thanks to Ms. Shelby and Ms. Christy. He loves Ms. Debbie (his OT) very much and thinks of all of his "work" as play. He also "plays" with grandma all day. He is starting to put two words/signs together. He is super interested in finger spelling. He has been trying to sign his alphabet. Brody is imitating a lot of words through speech and less with sign!
He still won't say dada, but we are getting a da or da-e every once in awhile. He is signing "I love you" now and will say, "I o" meaning I love you.
Brody, Jordan, and I stopped by Gallerine farms this weekend to get some flowers. My mom and Brody used to go a lot to see the petting zoo, but they have closed it for renovations. The lady working said it should be open in July. They are redoing it to make it more educational. Can't wait! We did get to see 3 horses. Brody loves horses. I guess he is a Kentucky kid. It's in his blood.
Brody had gotten super into animal videos on Vine. He can open the app himself and find the animal tab. He'll watch them over and over for ever!
And for those of you who I'm not friends on Facebook with, here is a throwback Thursday of the Massey family. 3 Dalmatians and a princess :)
Brody has been making dramatic changes in the past few weeks. He is becoming more of a "terrible twos" child, but he is also making big changes developmentally.
We are still seeing the Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapist,
Teacher of the Deaf, Teacher of the Vision Impaired, Aqua Therapist,
Speech Therapist, Listening and Spoken Language Specialist, as well as
the audiologist who we haven't seen since I last posted.
Listening with Grandma
In
Physical Therapy, Ms. Pat has been backing off her therapy sessions some
because Brody is doing what she wants him to do as well as progressing
appropriately. He is walking around the house completely independently.
He would probably be more independent when we are out and about too, but
I am too afraid to let him go. He still falls a lot because of his
balance issues and often face-plants. I know that kids fall a lot when
learning to walk, but he has two major components for hearing in his
head (the Cochlear Implants) and I don't want him to knock them out of place. Our
surgeon did put tether lines to hold the magnet in place which a lot of
surgeons don't do, but I can be a little over protective! Brody is also still
wearing the braces that are like inserts for his shoes. They cover up
right past his ankle. I think he is starting to walk better without them
on, but we are going to keep wearing them until Ms. Pat says he can
stop. Hopefully that is before the end of summer. He only has two pairs of shoes
he can wear with the braces and those don't include cute summer ones!
In
Occupational Therapy, we have a new OT (not sure if I had mentioned
that before). Brody loves Ms. Debbie! She is awesome too! Brody has
really good fine motor skills; we are more worried with his vestibular
system and balance issues. She didn't think that we needed to go back to
Cincinnati Children's for the vestibular evaluation we had talked about
doing. She said she has seen a big change in his balance. He is
starting to catch himself when he is falling. He is also correcting a
lot of his core muscle issues!
Ms. Paula is still
Brody's Teacher of the Deaf. She is only seeing him a few times this
plan. Ironically, his hearing isn't the biggest "problem" anymore. He is
listening and starting to follow directions. A big part of Ms. Paula's
job is educating the parents (we got that part down) and staying on the
parents about wearing the devices (Brody doesn't have a choice in the
matter. They are on all waking hours!). He loves when she comes to play
though. It is good to have her working with him to tell us what
developmental step comes next. Brody will start going to the play group
at Heuser Hearing & Language Academy (my school) in June. They start
playgroup when they turn 2. Can y'all believe he's almost two?! Where
has the time gone?! Ms. Paula brought over an Easter Egg that talks. There is a little bunny inside. You hide the egg and it calls out until you find it and open it. Brody loved it!
Ms. Mary is still on the plan as
consult. Since Brody doesn't have any vision issues at this moment,
there is nothing for her to really work on with him. She does however
provide us with resources and opportunities to be involved with other
families who have children with vision loss. We met with two women from
the Kentucky Deaf Blind Project. They gave us information about the
organization. I feel bad taking resources from other kids that need it
since Brody doesn't anything right now. They cover kids until they turn 21. I
know that we will need their services and grants in the future, but we
aren't going to take money away from families that need it more than us.
They offer a lot of technology grants and community involvement grants.
Brody
has a standing appointment with Ms. Melody each week for Aqua Therapy.
For as much as he hated it at first, he absolutely loves it now! The
only thing that changed was getting the aqua bags to put his processors
in so he can wear them while he is swimming. He can follow directions
and interact with Ms. Melody now. He actually got excited yesterday when
turning into the parking lot! Ms. Melody said yesterday that she thinks
she is going to discharge Brody at the end of the summer if not before.
Maybe I can talk her into letting him stay a little longer!
We
do speech therapy with Ms. Kristie. We are working a lot on repetitive
sound words (dada, mama, papa, baba). Brody said his first true
word...MAMA! Sorry Jordan :) He is also saying Bye-Bye, go, a-a (Papa),
Gr-mama (grandma), o-o (JoJo), Mmmm-r (more), Me (mickey), and all
(ball). Sorry again Jordan...no Dada. We are working on it though!
We
see Ms. Shelby, the LSLS, every week as well. Jordan meets my mom and
Brody in Lexington for these appointments. Brody likes to perform for
Ms. Shelby. He usually does more talking for her than anyone! Today he imitated ell-o (yellow) and a few more words that we had not heard before.
Brody also learned to put the magnet of his processors back on by himself! It turned into a game for a few days. Now we can tell him put it back on and point to our heads and he will do it. We are working on the ear hook next, but it is a lot harder!
Brody has also had some fun thrown into his life.
He's taken up reading the newspaper.
We watch Cardinal games in our wagon with Mickey Mouse.
We took Brody to his first Louisville Bats game. We had awesome seats (2nd row). Brody did great until people sat down in the 1st row and he wasn't able to see the game anymore. He then proceeded to eat two hot dogs, nachos, animal crackers, pretzels, and peanut butter crackers.
He entertained himself for a long time talking about the tree and the horse in this picture...
He also created some of his own entertainment!
I think he's going to be a baseball fan though. He loved the game!
The Fromholts' have a yearly tradition of going to the Notre Dame Blue
Gold Game (their spring football game). Brody went last year but slept
through the majority of it. He stayed awake and active through most of
the day, but finally crashed when we went to the bookstore to go
shopping.
He stayed awake for the entire trip up to ND. He loves him some Otis!
Jordan took a break from driving and let Brody take over.
How else would you tailgate? Chips out of the grass. This kid has an awesome immune system.
Every year, the Fromholts' also take a boys picture at the game. We had about 20 candid pictures.
Uncle Josh, Jordan, and Brody
Someone was big stuff walking in the stadium with Daddy and Uncle Josh.
We headed to Alabama's A-day game (their spring football game). Grandma and Papa Brown tagged along too. We had never been before and Jordan found a lot of "upgrades" to add on to our free tickets. We toured the game day locker room (not the cool practice one with the waterfall jacuzzi...way to let me down, Jordan), walked on the field, and had passes to the all you can eat (and Air Conditioned) buffet and seats with backs. It was a fun birthday weekend!
He was too cool for his own books and had to read mine on the way down.
The Easter Bunny found the Ninja Turtle Brody in Alabama! He wasn't that trilled with his basket from our Easter Bunny, but loved the basket Grandma's Easter Bunny brought. Guess I'll let the bunny know he needs to step it up next year!
We dyed Easter eggs once we got back home. Brody loved it! He was so amazed that the egg went in white and came out a different color. The little things in life!
Brody's new found love...watching the food in the oven!
Well our spring break was spent like many others from what I have seen on Facebook. We got the stomach virus going around. :( Monday, Brody and I did some gardening. Our poor neighbors haven't reported us to the HOA yet, but I'm sure it's coming. He wasn't a fan of getting dirty and the grass is uneven which isn't fun for a new walker. Tuesday, Brody and I went to Lexington to meet Jordan on his lunch break. We came home and played outside awhile. Brody loves his basketball goal that Grammy and Papa Tom gave him for Christmas. He is now tall enough to dunk on it, which makes him feel like a big boy!
We have been working on "Roll Tide" for the A-day game (spring football game) in a few weeks. I got something close at the end of the video.
Tuesday night we cooked out before the rain came in. Brody ate corn on huge cob for the first time. Last summer we cut the corn off the cob. He thought it was so cool!
Then Tuesday night, the stomach virus hit Brody and Jordan. I felt a little qeezy, but not too bad. I just thought it was food poisoning from the burgers we grilled out. Brody seemed fine the next day, so the mean wife that I am, I told Jordan to suck it up. Oops! Brody hung out with JoJo and Grandma, and got them sick. Guess it wasn't food poisoning. He woke up Friday morning sick again, so I took him to see Dr. Sammons (his awesome pediatrician at East Louisville Pediatrics-highly recommend her). He was pretty pitiful all day yesterday.
He took a four hour afternoon nap and woke up feeling much better! We went to the Shelbyville Easter Egg Hunt at the Red Orchard Park. They had 4000 eggs hid in a field with about 100 kids searching. We had never been over there before, but is think we will be going back a lot this summer. They have a nice playground with othe playground stations around the park. There is also a dog park and a horse park. Brody would love to watch the horses exercise!
Grandma has been hiding eggs around her house and having Brody find them. He gets the principle of the hunt, but would rather see what's in the eggs. He found about 12 eggs while the greedy kids with parents not paying attention to the rules had about 80 each. :) Sometimes it's really hard for me to control my "teacherness!" After about 5 eggs in, he realized they had Candy in them and really wasn't that interested in finding more.
He loved the cookie break, but was too afraid someone was going to take his cookie. He shoved it in his mouth as fast as he could!
We saw the Easter bunny. It went much like Santa, but he wouldn't even sit on his lap!
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