Hi everyone, hope you all are doing well and that spring is beginning to take hold - it was for us and then we had a big snow storm yesterday, but it's supposed to be in the 60s this weekend and 70s next week! Things are just chugging along for us; we had a busy week including having our signing class video taped to be put into a video for new families!
We got a new sign language instructor about a month ago (our previous teacher, Teresa, moved out of the area in November and we didn't have a new instructor till March). Our new instructor is Janice and she is deaf, which is nice for us in two ways - one, it exposes us to the deaf world more because we really notice how not being able to hear anything affects our communication with her and how much sound we don't even realize we pay attention to all the time that she can't hear. The other more obvious reason is that it forces us to sign if we want to communicate with her, and motivates me at least to try to sign more instead of always falling back on speaking. We were nervous about having a deaf instructor at first, but Janice is very good and it is going well. So the program that provides this early intervention for us wanted to video tape our class, and 10 other families' classes too, to make a short video to give to new families who would benefit from the service. Two women brought the camera and light and set up and video taped the whole class; they said they would send us the raw video before they edit it down to about a minute. Anthony of course was more interested in the camera than the class and one of the ladies kept him entertained while we went ahead with our class. Anthony ended up inviting her up to his room and "entertained" her with his toys and videos. At one point we heard him blasting one of his Little People videos and felt so bad for her! It took me a minute to realize Janice had no idea why we all started laughing and were distracted from class, which is exactly what I mean about taking for granted all the noise we hear all the time.
We always talk about how fast Faith is learning so many new things, but I wanted to share how much the rest of us are learning too. Fred told me just the other day that he now knows over 100 signs (off a list one of the nurses compiled of all the words Faith's speech pathologist, Kim, has been working with her on) and he is able to finger spell words during our sign language class. This is so hard for Fred and something he has had to push way beyond his comfort zone to do. I am so impressed with him. Then there is Dana, she is really amazing at this! For her, finger spelling is a breeze! She finger spells as fast as young kids today text message on their cell phones (yeah, she's a whiz at that too!!). The thing that is so impressive about Dana doing this is that she only makes it to our signing class once a month (we meet twice a month usually) if that, and she never misses a beat!
On another note, Kim sent me a flyer for a toddler group for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children organized by the Denver Children's Hospital. I've been wanting for Faith to have some playmates who also sign so this is perfect. The groups meets near our house once a week and I'm planning to take Faith next Wednesday and observe how the group works and how she likes it. If it goes well we will enroll her in the group. Fred will probably just drop Faith and Lindsey (her nurse) off each week and then either Fred or I will pick them up so we can get a progress update. I'm really excited to check it out.
Have a great weekend!
Robin
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