Consonants

Mattie's babbling now includes lots of consonants. It's a little freaky, because he comes out with things that sound like actual words. This evening, he was looking at Stanley and said something that sounded just like "dog", and when Mike was playing with him later he said something that sounded just like "daddy." Of course, these were both mixed in with a whole lot of nonsense, so it's definitely coincidence rather than genius. Nonetheless, both of those made us do a double-take!

As we've mentioned before, James seems to be tracking a couple of weeks behind Mattie with the developmental milestones. It will be interesting to see whether James also starts with consonants soon; if so, that would definitely be a good sign for his hearing. (James vocalizes a lot now, but it's virtually all vowel-type sounds.) The audiologist was supposed to follow up with us after the MRI last week to try to schedule the behavioral hearing test, but we never heard from her. I called today and her voicemail says she's out for the next two weeks, which is a bit frustrating. We had to wait this long for the testing because babies have to be 6 or 7 months adjusted age for the audiologists to train or condition them to turn in response to sound, but we have also been told that the sooner children who need hearing aids get them, the better for language development. So, I'm a bit impatient with the delay. If we're right that he's responding to voices and hearing a variety of sounds, he might be getting enough input to start his language development, but even if that's true, I don't want to put off getting him whatever other help he needs -- especially because with auditory neuropathy, it seems like the treatment path can be unpredictable.