FM and Numbers

James now has an FM system for his hearing aids. No, this isn't his own personal radio station! It's an attachment that's wirelessly linked to a remote microphone, so that he can clearly hear whoever is speaking. It should be particularly useful in noisy environments or when he starts school.

If you look at the big version of the photo (click on it), the FM is just the part after the little line on the hearing aid behind his ear -- so, it adds a little bit of length to it, but not much (maybe the width of my pinky).

The microphone part looks just like other wireless mikes, small with a clip to attach to clothing. It has a controller a little bigger than a cell phone that goes in your pocket. I anticipate that keeping that away from curious toddlers (who love phones and remotes) will be the most difficult part of the system. We haven't actually used it yet at home.

We had to go back twice to get it, because the first time they had one that didn't have a tamper-proof battery compartment. (That's a fairly important feature with kids, because the batteries are a size that would be easy to swallow, and if swallowed, they cause severe and possibly fatal internal damage.) I shouldn't complain, because a lot of people travel a lot further to come to UNC than we do, but it was annoying to have another hour or so sucked up with parking in the garage, sitting in the waiting room, etc. But, it's done now, so that's good.

James's new recent words are mouth, roar (for lion), and night-night. (He repeated "hammer" after me the other day, but I haven't heard it since then.)

Mattie said a couple of sentences this morning: "dada night-night" and "bird outside." Yay, Mattie! He's also sort of learning some numbers, or at least their names. He started with eight and then nine, and now he's on to six. I think I heard some fives tonight as well. (His main number enthusiasm happens with his foam numbers in the tub.) It's pretty funny because he loves E and so whenever he sees something with capital letters he wants to find the E. So he got to find the E on the cover of his bath book yesterday, but then he also wanted to find 8 and 9. No such luck! By the time we found a number book, he wasn't so interested any more.

James is pretty good at finding "O" but occasionally he'll point out a Q or an 8.