Cars!

Isaac has a new obsession...the DVD of the movie "Cars". We must have watched this movie at least 8 times in the past few days (well at least the beginning part of the movie). Every time he walks by the TV in the living room, he says, "Baaaah E E E" He says, "Baaah for the word "crash" and E E E is his pronounciation of DVD. He loves the beginning where all the cars are racing for the Piston Cup. There is a huge crash at the beginning where the main character, Lightning McQueen bounces off another car and flies through the air with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Isaac loves that part! He will sit there on his little blue chair with his hands folded in his lap sticking his tongue out. It is so cute. In this picture, he is mesmorized by the movie while holding on tightly to the DVD case.

Snow!

We took Isaac out in the snow today. He did not want to come in.




Hey everybody! Why won't my bike move?

Cars and Words

Isaac is very particular with how he plays with and puts away his toys. I was trying to play with his little cars with him and he got so mad at me for moving them out of the line! He keept picking up my hand and pushing it away from his cars. He then proceeded to line them up. Here is his smile of satisfaction. I am very happy that Isaac is doing this however because he puts things back where they belong.

Last week I spilled some water on the floor in the kitchen and I pulled a dish towel out of the drawer and started to mop it up. Isaac screamed until I let him mop it up and then he tried to put the towel back in the drawer that it came from! I told him, "no" that it was dirty and he became angry. He would not let me hang it up to dry. He yanked it from me and put it in the drawer, closed it and signed, "thank you".

Isaac's language or attempts at language are really blossoming. There are too many words to list that he tries to say. He tries to imitate what we say a lot of the time, especially if we are doing something fun or interesting to him. One of the cutest things he says is an attempt at the word, "water". He says, "Bah bah" as he makes the sign for water. He also has a vocalization for dad now. He makes kind of a growling sound, makes the sign for dad and says, "ra ra ra ra". I think one of his favorite sounds to make is "eeeeeeese". He uses that vocalization for the word, "please" and more recently, "cheese". It is so hard to deny him anything when he looks up at me with his big blue eyes, sticks out his chin and says, "eeeese!" while making the sign for please. We are just amazed at how fast he is progressing. We know he is a bright little boy but we have no idea exactly what he hears. His vocalizations are proof positive that the implant is working and he is "gettting" the fact that he can use his voice in different ways to get what he wants.

Bubbles and a Haircut

We have a new word....bubbles. Isaac loves playing with bubbles. I let him blow bubbles inside and the dogs go crazy. They jump in the air and try to eat them. Isaac laughs hysterically when they do this. Isaac knows the sign for bubbles, but I was trying to get him to say it. He just recently started making the "b" sound. I kept repeating the word "bubbles" right before I would blow bubbles. Then I let him blow some bubbles and he said "bubu" right before he blew the bubbles! Amazing!

The haircut was actually a few days ago. But this is the first picture I have of him since the ordeal. I say "ordeal" because it was not a fun experience, for Isaac or me. I told the hair dresser to just give him a trim. I thought nothing of it when she got the clippers out first. Until now, they have just trimmed his hair with scissors. I thought maybe she was just going to trim around his ears first. Well...she went straight up the back of his head with the clippers! I gasped very loudly! She asked if it was too short. What was I supposed to say...yes? I mean she couldn't glue his hair back on. I told her it was a little shorter than I wanted, but that his hair would grow back. Another challenge we have when cutting his hair is that I have to take the implant off. It is really hard to comfort Isaac in these situations because I have to hold his head still so he doesn't get hurt and it is really hard to sign when I am doing this. I am hoping this gets easier as time goes on because Isaac got a mouthful of hair and started screaming. At the end, he got a lollipop so life was perfect afterwards. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know! He is a cutie pie no matter how short his hair.

Other news on the CI front: cell phone success! When Ian calls from work I usually put the cell phone up to Isaac's speech processor and let Ian talk to Isaac. Usually, Isaac will just make the sign for phone and hand it back to me. But yesterday, Isaac made the sign for "dad" when Ian was talking to him. I didn't tell him dad was on the phone! It brought tears to my eyes. Without the implant, this never would have been possible. Parents talk to their kids on the phone all the time and knowing that Isaac doesn't have to miss out on this is just incredible.