Opa!

We took the boys to the Greek Festival, but they couldn't enjoy the best part -- the food. :) Fortunately it was indoors (in the cafeteria/common area of the local high school), since the temperatures were in the 90s.

Look, Ma, No Pump

Jamesie exceeded his 900 ml milk goal today, so he's not getting any overnight feeds through his pump -- hooray! (It feels a little strange to be leaving out that part of the nightly routine, but we're not complaining!) Who knows what he'll do tomorrow (or whether he'll wake up at 3 AM hungry), but today was a good day.

(Bottom picture is Matthew.)

Farmer's Market

We took the boys to the Farmer's Market on Saturday. (And we got the best parking spot in the place!)

Even though we hadn't been there in a year or so, Mike knew just where to find his favorite cake-baker. :) We also picked up some strawberries and some basil plants, which fit perfectly in the stroller cup holders.

Afterwards the boys got to meet their first robot (well, James had fallen asleep by that point), and Mattie got his own private bluegrass concert on the lawn of Weaver Street Market.

Letter Improv

They only give you one of each letter in the Alphabet play mat set, so we had to improvise to get both boys' names -- if Matthew can't spell his name correctly when he's older, he can blame Mommy. :)

(The second M is, of course, a repurposed W.)

Constant Progress

Matthew pulled himself up to a standing position this morning (grabbing on to Mike's shirt). I'm not sure that I'm too happy about this new development -- standing up is something that big kids do, and he's still supposed to be my little baby!

Though I must admit that the crawling over to us and climbing up on our laps is quite endearing. :) Mattie sometimes wants us to lift him up and down so he can bounce (he loves to bounce!), but since he's 19 and a half pounds now, our arms get tired a lot faster than he does! (Good thing he still fits in the Jumperoo!)

Mattie is also saying a lot of "dada" and "mama", but he hasn't connected those words with us yet.

Jamesie's developmental therapist was pleased and impressed with his progress. Besides the crawling, she had also been working with him last week on taking objects out of containers, and now he's doing that like a pro. He catches on to things quickly!

James also has been doing very well with his milk; yesterday he set a new record at 870 mls (out of a goal of 900 ml, which is 30 oz), and probably wouldn't have needed to have any overnight feeding through the pump if his daddy had just given him a bigger bedtime bottle! (Today he was over 800 ml, too. We're very pleased! If he weren't going in for surgery next week, we could probably start trying to go without the pump, but at this point we want him to have all the calories he can, since he won't be able to eat regular food right before and right after the surgery. Presumably they'll have him on IV nutrition, but still. He's getting some baby food and rice cereal most days, too, but it's still more for practice than counting toward his nutrition.)

James is Crawling

At least for a few steps! He's still doing a lot of rolling, but I saw some actual all-fours crawling this morning!

Rescheduled

James was supposed to get his hearing aids fitted today, but they didn't arrive in time, so the appointment has been rescheduled for Monday.

The boys are more and more mobile every day. James is getting up on all fours a lot more, and even made a little forward progress that way yesterday morning (his hands were on the rug, but his legs were on the wood, so he couldn't get much traction!) Matthew can pull himself up to stand on his knees on his toy or on our legs when we're sitting down with him, and is lifting his bottom in the air with his feet and hands on the ground (downward dog, for you yoga fans). They are both very fast and apparently have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, so we can't leave them unattended for more than a moment or two at a time.

Matthew has been sleeping in the cosleeper (set up bassinet-style) recently, and the edges are about 18 inches above the mattress. Clearly it was time to lower the mattress before he flipped himself out of it, so we put the mattress on the bottom (making it into basically a pack and play). That was completely miserable! It was murder on my back to put him down and pick him up, and it felt like we were putting him in a pit (the kind where you dig a big hole to catch some wild animal). So, we finally gave in and bought a second crib. I think they're just too big and active (and Matthew is too much of a light sleeper) to go back to sharing one.

We are quite enjoying James's clapping skills. Every so often he just pauses and claps a little bit, and it's very nice to have some random applause throughout the day.

We put on the Signing Time baby sign language video this evening. The babies don't really watch any TV yet; we don't have it on all that often when they're awake, and when we do, they glance at it every now and then but don't usually seem too interested in it (except for football). But they were mesmerized by this video! I don't know if it was the singing and music, or the fact that there were a lot of babies in it, or what, but Matthew especially was glued to the screen. (It was a bit disconcerting, actually.) It'll be interesting to see if it actually helps them pick up any sign language. (It'll help me, anyhow!) When they were doing the sign for "dog" (patting your leg like you're calling a dog), I did the sign and said to Matthew, "That means dog." He looked at my gesture and then looked right at Stanley.

Friends

We enjoyed a wonderful visit with Feesh and Bonnie this weekend. (The babies, in fact, were so excited by the company that they decided they didn't need their naps!)

The boys were very well-behaved for a trip to Carrboro for lunch and ice cream, and then went to bed in time for the adults to indulge in crawfish pie and Avatar.

Proper Motivation

Matthew is doing a few steps at a time of regular crawling (hands and knees) and James is getting himself forward by army crawling (especially on the hardwood floors). It turns out they just needed the proper motivation: Stanley's ball!

Duck

Mattie was playing with Rubber Ducky today, and saying something that sounded a lot like "duck." :) We're not quite willing to count it as a word yet, but I think he's on the way!

On Monday, James also had a blood pressure check, and because everything looked good, his nephrologist said we could discontinue one of his medicines (Enalapril). Hooray!!

Happy Birthday to Uncle Jim and Charlotte (and Blizzy!)

Behavioral Testing

As I've already mentioned, we went in for James's behavioral hearing test today. They do the test in a sound booth, a small soundproof room (pictured here).

The first thing they did was a quick test that puffed some air into his ears to test his eardrum responsiveness. The results showed a bit less than normal flexibility, which could mean that he has a little fluid behind his ears, or it could just be an individual difference. Either way, they didn't seem particularly concerned about it.

Then, they had Mike sit with James on his lap. The assistant (a graduate student) was in the room with us, and the audiologist was in the control room. (In the photo, the control room is behind the slightly shaded glass behind the table.)

The idea behind the test is to get the baby to turn and look at some boxes with dancing puppets when they hear a noise, and so you can use the response or lack of response to indicate what they're hearing. The boxes are the black things at the edge of the photo. They're dark glass, but when the baby turns to a noise, they light up and a stuffed animal inside moves around -- they have a lion who roars and shakes his head, an elephant that raises his trunk, and so on. The first part of the test is training to get the baby to realize that when they hear a sound and turn that direction, they'll be rewarded by dancing puppets. The assistant's job at first is to direct the baby's attention to the boxes, and then for the rest of the test, her job was to be "interesting but not too interesting" -- that is, keep James's attention focused elsewhere so that they could make the sounds when he wasn't already looking at the boxes.

The training part went very quickly for James; he got the idea in just a couple of tries. And he loved the puppets! Every time they appeared he would get a big smile and talk to them. It was so cute!

The assistant had a whole range of toys, from a ball with glitter water inside to trucks and small animals. (Her task was more difficult because we all had to remain silent, so she couldn't distract him with talking!) Every time James started to lose interest in one toy she'd pull out the next one. The sounds came from speakers that are in the corner behind where I'm standing in the picture. They ranged from static-like noises to Star Trek/space age type noises. When he heard them he would perk up and turn to the boxes. The tricky part was that he sometimes turned around to check out the boxes just to see if anything was happening there, so occasionally it was hard to determine if he actually heard a particular sound -- when that happened, they just tried it again later.

After the first round of testing, they put James in a high chair for the second round, and I got to go into the control booth and see it from the other side. For the second round the audiologist started at 10 decibels lower than where he'd responded the previous time at each pitch, to see if he could hear quieter sounds. It seemed like he was fairly consistent, though, which was nice because it gave us reasonable confidence in the results. For part of the session, they also put a device that looked like a headband on his head to do a bone conduction test, which sends sounds directly to the inner ear.

James really did a wonderful job; he was so happy and attentive. Sometimes they have to try multiple sessions to get a good test, so it was great that he managed it the first time around. In fact, the testers complimented him on his cuteness and his developmental skills. :)

The results indicated that he had reasonably good (although not completely normal) hearing at lower pitches, and it got progressively worse as they moved toward the higher pitches (so, it took a sound of about 70 decibels for him to react at the highest pitch). They chart the results on a grid called an audiogram with decibel level (loudness) on one axis and pitch on the other, and so his line looked like a diagonal. Apparently this is a fairly typical pattern for kids with sensorineural hearing loss.

They told us that the loss was in the mild to moderate range, which actually seemed pretty encouraging to us. And this is a range that is generally very correctable with hearing aids. And because James did so well with the testing, they felt comfortable recommending that we go ahead and start the process of getting his hearing aids. (Their perspective is that the sooner kids get the amplification they need, the better -- which makes sense because once they can hear at normal levels, they'll pick up a lot more language.) They'll do a couple more tests to get a more fine-tuned measure of his hearing (for example, testing each ear separately), but they were confident enough in the information that they had from today's test that they should be able to get the settings fairly close to what he needs. (If he does have some fluid in his ears, that might affect the results a tiny bit, but probably not much.) The audiologist also said that if she had a six year-old, for example, with the same pattern of hearing loss, she'd be able to carry on a conversation with him even if he didn't have his hearing aids, but she might have to raise her voice a little and wouldn't lower her voice. So that's also kind of nice that he wouldn't completely miss out on things if for some reason he didn't have his hearing aids in.

The first step (besides knowing the hearing levels) to get hearing aids is to make an ear mold, so they did that today as well. They put a little cotton with a string on it in the ear first, and then they squeeze this pink stuff that looks like Silly Putty into the outside of the ear. It dries in a few minutes, and they use the string to pull it out, so they have a model of the ear shape. The hearing aids for babies have one part that goes inside their ear, and then another part that fits around the back of the ear. They have a bunch of different colors and a few patterns you can choose from, and apparently older kids enjoy picking out fun patterns.

The next step is an appointment to do the fitting, and they're going to try to do that before his surgery; we'll see if the scheduling works out.

Apparently the big challenge at his age is that the kids grab them and take them out of the ears and try to put them in their mouth. :) (Surprise!) They have little hats they can wear for a while until they get used to having the aids on or until they grow out of that particular phase.

Short Version

James did a great job with the behavioral hearing test today. They were able to get a lot of good information, and it looks like he has what they would classify as a mild to moderate hearing loss. He hears reasonably well (although not perfectly) at lower pitches and his hearing gets progressively worse at higher pitches (so, at the highest level they tested he's hearing at around the 70 db level). So, he'll be getting hearing aids to help bring his hearing up to normal levels.

This is about what we expected or maybe even a bit better than we expected -- we were confident that he was hearing some things, but we also knew that he wasn't always hearing softer sounds, and didn't react to sound as much as Matthew does.

More details later.

Brilliant

Matthew demonstrated his genius the other day when we were holding him by the refrigerator. We have a lot of pictures up, and we asked him, "Where's Stanley?" and he pointed to a picture of Stanley! (We then asked him, "Where's Matthew?" but he didn't point to anything for that one -- I suppose it's too much to ask for him to recognize a picture of himself as a younger baby! He was probably thinking to himself, "I'm right here. Adults are so silly sometimes.")

And Jamesie did indeed demonstrate his clapping when his therapist was here. When we all cheered for him in response, he looked surprised but pleased. :)

We had beautiful weather this weekend. The local Garden Show was in our neighborhood this year, so we enjoyed the specatacle of crowds of people coming to look at the yards we walk by every day (although the gardens on display were mostly in the backyards, which we don't get to see). We strolled around with our friends, but didn't actually go see the displays, since you needed a ticket for that (and I'm guessing the garden owners wouldn't be especially thrilled with us dragging our stroller and dog through their prize plants.)

Today we did our part to encourage childhood obesity by taking the boys on an outing to Sugarland, a local bakery and gelato shop. But since they aren't big enough for cupcakes yet, we had to eat ones for them. Ah, the sacrifices we make for our children.

And speaking of eating, James had what I think was another record day with 805 ml, out of his intended total of 900 ml, so we're very pleased! Of course, we would have been more pleased if one of his meals hadn't been at 6 AM, but we'll take what we can get. I don't expect a repeat record-breaker performance tomorrow, because we have a long day at the hospital (the behavioral hearing test and a checkup), and that always messes up the eating and napping schedule.

Round of Applause

Guess who was clapping today? That's right -- James! (It's kind of in slow motion, but that's okay!) He clapped for me this morning when I was doing Patty Cake for him, which was cool because he hasn't done much if any imitation of gestures before this. But even better was after his bath this evening, when Mike said "patty cake, patty cake" without doing the gestures and James clapped! We'll have to see if he does it again, but if he was actually hearing and understanding the words (instead of it just being a coincidence), that would be really exciting. Hooray for James!

We're hoping he decides to show off his new skills for his developmental therapist tomorrow morning. :)

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

James and Matthew say Happy Birthday, Grandpa B!