More updates

Back to my updates, let's see. We covered the gait lab and NV alumni day. I guess the next appointment was her bi-annual mapping session at the U of MN for her implants. First of all, I want to say that I get amazed almost daily on how she is picking up the incidental language and using it in her conversations. We walked into the audiology/ENT area and Annika looked at me and said, "let's go punch in". I looked at her and asked, "don't you mean check in?" "No, I said punch in". Well, I guess she has been listening to me when I leave in the morning because on the hectic mornings I am running out the door saying, "I have to hurry or I will be late punching in". She gets what I meant and now think she should "punch in" for her appointments instead of "check in". A little work there but it is so cute that I will leave it alone for now.

Her mapping session went great. I think what hits me is how much she is really becoming such a "girl" now not a little kid. She is silly and loves to laugh. We keep her entertained during the boring parts by just being silly. Though really I remember struggling to do some of the boring parts with her just a year ago and she really did well.

She thought the "sentence" test was very silly so there were times when we would lose her in the testing because she would just have to laugh at the sentences instead of repeating them. She also showed us that she would rather have both of her implants versus the two. We were testing the last side with the words and somewhere along the way she put the second implant back on. We didn't see her do it but realized it when it was all done and we went to have her put both implants on. She just would smile and laugh when she got caught!! Watch out for her in school, she is going to have fun playing with her teachers. I can just see it now. It is so fun to see that she is just being a "typical" 6 year old. So many days I just shake my head and say if I had only known that we would be this far 4 years ago I would have relaxed so much more. But hindsight is 20/20 every time.

All in all she is doing just great with her implants. We did some testing with what she can her in noise and really when she was not being silly she did just great. There may be a day in the future when she won't need to use the FM system at school and that to me is just unbelievable. For now, she likes the FM system and we want to make sure she doesn't miss anything at this point. That also means that really we don't need to look into getting one for home. We have talked about it and really thought we would get one some day but now I am thinking more down the line of just getting her a t-mic for her implants and see how that goes and just leave it at that.

Well gotta run. It is time to get everyone moving around this house. My next update will cover the Cokato Corn Carnival which was last week.