Getting the Ball Rolling

The meeting with the Early Intervention hearing program person today was mostly just to fill out the paperwork to get things started, and for her to let us know more about the program. They have teachers who come to the house and give us exercises to do with James, with a focus on helping him develop speech and language. (It sounds like they don't really focus on sign language; the idea is that he can pick that up later if he needs it.) She said, "It's hard and it takes a lot of time." On the bright side, though, at this age they do a lot through play, so hopefully some of the exercises will be just using time that we would have spent playing with the babies anyhow, but doing it in a more structured way. And while it still really sucks (really REALLY sucks) that James has this auditory condition in the first place, at least there's something constructive we can do to help, and we have support available. (The EI person also had great things to say about UNC audiology; just like the NICU, they're the best around, and have people coming from all over the state.)

Other things:

We had the boys next to each other in the crib this morning, and James waved his arm near Matthew. Matthew grabbed James's sleeve, put it in his mouth, and started gnawing on it. (How sweet -- our own little Donner Party!)

Matthew should get the Most Improved Burper award. It used to take ten, fifteen, twenty minutes to get a burp out of him. Now he's much faster! And this makes our lives much better, especially in the middle of the night. (James has always been a good burper.)

We had a nice dinner with our neighbors tonight -- they had take-out delivered to our house, and then joined us to eat it. It's a bit risky to plan something like that since the babies are sometimes fussy in the evenings, but we got lucky and they were pretty good (though James did demand his paci and then drop it several times, as is his habit).