Update via Videos

I haven't been posting a lot lately due to our trip to Wisconsin, plus with summertime here, my kids hog any computer time possible. I have caught some moments of Aiden on video though that make me smile and show a little bit of where he's at in his hearing journey.

I've mentioned before that Aiden was vocalizing what sounds like "Mmmmmaaa" for "more". I finally got it caught on video. On this day, I was feeding Aiden his first cold bowl of cereal ... and he LOVED it.



We try to focus on a select few key phrases each few weeks. The ones we're working on now are,

• "Knock-knock-knock .... hello (or open)", before we open a door or really, with anything that opens.


• "SOOOO BIG!" (then throwing hands in the air).


• "Let's go bye-bye." (then talk about putting on our shoes and shake the car keys, etc, or say "bye-bye" to whoever is leaving and watch them leave.)


• "Get down please." Because he climbs onto everything ... and for him to vocalize when he wants down from his highchair.

In this video, Aiden had just started throwing his arms up when I'd say, "So big!", but what's even better is the Harley Davidson motorcycle that takes off outside and scares Aiden! You'll see too that he only has on one CI (since I was on vacation and it's inevitable that something WILL break anytime you're on vacation ... and this time it was one of his CIs). Anyway ... here's the video.



We're trying very hard to get Aiden walking. His sister didn't walk until she was 20 months, but we also know that with his hearing loss, he's more focused on learning to hear than learning to walk. PLUS, he does have EVAS, which can cause balance issues. In this video Aiden has learned to walk using his walking toy ... and then in the end gives a show of his silliness and "So Big!".

and last but not least ... Aiden dancing! It's not the best video, but Aiden has started bopping along to music lately and it just melts my heart! We are a HUGE music family ... we all absolutely love belting out some good tunes! One of the things we looked at when picking our CI brand was quality of music. In fact, we even debated going bimodal (one CI and one hearing aid) so Aiden could enjoy the acoustic sounds of music (vs. the digital sound that a CI provides). I've seen many, many videos of CI kids though dancing away, such as our blog friends Thomas, and Lucas or maybe one day he'll create his own songs like our friend Gage does.... and here are Aiden's first dance moves .. to Aretha Franklin's "Respect" ... captured on video.



Aiden has really taken off with his vocalizations this past month. Not much at all we understand, but he's making noise and any noise from him is music to our ears. He screams with laughter as he plays with his brother and sister, fluctuates his vocals, mimics short and long durations, and all in all, is just a completely silly, VERY ACTIVE one year old boy. He makes us smile ALL of the time and we can't be any prouder of our little man.