vlogging

I've gotten some fun movies of Ellis recently. These are taken roughly around eighteen moths post CI activation.

Marlowe has always made great noises, but this morning he woke up with this growl that is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard.

Ellis's CI was activated on July 24. It is now August 25. So, how is E doing?
Well, not bad!

Sound awareness is the first step in the CI training process. Learning how to use the CI is often called "rehabilitation", but I find that term kind of yuck. I want to ask, Rehabilitation from what? So on this blog, I will call it CI Training, since it is a tool that needs to be learned how to use.

My friend's crazy, smart 4 year old Gid sent Ellis some vmail. Gid is 4yo, is hearing, and loves ASL (he learned it from his smart mama who took it in college). Ellis is, of course, deaf. Couldn't resist posting Gid's mad signing skillz, esp the fingerspelling!

Ellis's new cochlear implant was activated on Tuesday. Overall he did really well. He looked around, and for the most part, seemed interested. At one point during a break, I signed to him, "Do you want to hear more?" and he looked back and then nodded. But then he also nodded for a cracker. I'm not entirely sure if he understands "hear" yet. The cool thing, though, is that we have sign, so we can talk about what's happening.

Ellis loves his popsicles. Those of you who know ASL will enjoy his little kid signing (I gave a few clues here and there for those who don't--hope you can read it now that it's all low resolution.)

The day after Thanksgiving, my mom, sister, and I went to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Aside from a brief trip to the Rodin Museum when he was but a tender one month old, this was Ellis's first real museum experience. Since when we left the house, we were planning on going to the much smaller, cheaper Rodin Museum, I didn't bring the stroller. We decided en route, as we passed its classical perch on the bluff, to hit up the Big Art Museum. In the end, I'm glad all I had was the leash, because Ellis wandered, freely taking it all in. He loved it.