Moving right along...

So much has been happening here in the Grubb house! Evy is learning many new sounds and words. Every week when her teacher leaves after therapy she says "I think today was the best session yet!" She keeps moving right along with her listening and speaking. Right now she is attempting to say about 1-2 new words a week. Her vocabulary now includes Mama, More, Dada, Bye Bye, Eat, Cheese, Yeah, Wee and Up. She even tried putting two words together for the very first time! She took Mama (which she has been saying for months) and put it with Bye Bye. Obviously  her "Bye Bye Mama" was not completely clear, but her attempting to put them together was a big step! Right now she mostly just focuses on the vowels in the words, for example Eat is mostly just Eeee and Up sounds like Uhhh, but she is making some serious progress and everyday she surprises us with a new attempt at a word. She is also doing surprisingly well wearing her implants without her headband!

There is nothing more precious than working with her and seeing her eyes completely focused on me, just soaking everything in like a sponge. I just love watching her, knowing that the little wheels in her head are turning and she is truly learning something new.

Evy has had a few "firsts" in the last month. She had her first trip to Chuck E. Cheese, which I was nervous about. I was afraid that she would take off and want to run all over the place, which would make me nervous about her implants falling off, but she was surprisingly good and wanted to people watch more than anything else. She had a great time going on the rides, playing games and watching all the kids around her.

 Evy also went to her very first Cardinals game on 5/2/12. We knew to expect the normal 18 month old behavior, such as not wanting to sit in her seat, which inevitably happened, but I was most worried about the noise. Our seats were very close to where they shoot the fireworks off after a home run. I thought that the firework noise combined with the cheering would frighten her, but it was quite the opposite! She was laughing, clapping and really enjoying it all. It was adorable! The game was a 7:30 pm game, so I thought she would eventually get tired and fall asleep in our arms, but nope! She stayed up until we got into the truck to go home, just watching everyone and enjoying the chaos. Although stressful at times, we made family memories and had a great time!

On 4/28/12 we had our first play date with a fellow CI family! Evy, Paityn and Sophie had fun playing at Brendan's Playground together, and I had a nice time talking with Sophie's parents about school and other things that we will be approaching in the near future. I look forward to more of these play dates and watching Evy and Sophie go through their exciting journey together!

Last weekend we had our first swim of 2012! Of course the biggest debate was whether or not to let her keep her implants on as she played in the kiddie pool. I decided to let her keep one implant on. I was pretty tense the whole time, but I watched her closely and she did very well. I actually think she enjoyed swimming more since she could hear us!

We are all signed up and very excited for a convention at Evy's school that will take place from June 12th - June 16th. The children will attend workshops and do lots of fun activities together, while the parents attend seminars on how to help our hearing impaired children. I'm sure it will be very informative for me and great for Evy since the following week she will start attending school at The Moog Center!

So much to look forward to over the next few months :)