Natalie's new school

(Back to blogging...)

Natalie started school at Ohio Valley Voices, August 21st. They are a moog centered program and children with hearing aids and cochlear implants learn spoken language here. The serve kids from birth through 2nd grade.

I can't believe she has been in 2 months already! We love it so far and so does she. She attends M-F 8:30-12:00. She is in the "Family Center" program which is ages 18 months - 3 years old. They divide the 11 kids in that class in half, so the older 6 kids are the ones Natalie mainly is around each day, besides the morning and goodbye circle time. In her classroom, they have 2 teachers, 2 teacher aides, 2 speech therapists and the family center coordinator. Everyones jobs are very specific and the day flows very well. She is assigned 1 of the speech therapists (Megan) throughout the year.

In addition to her daily school schedule, I meet with her Speech therapist Megan weekly for parent ed sessions. These last about 30-45 minutes and we meet every monday. We talk about what they work on in therapy throughout the week. We also have monthly parent group meetings with the parents and once a month we go into the classroom for an hour to observe and see what they went over for the theme that month. It is very involved but we like it that way.

The day flows very well. With all the teachers and therapists, it is generally a 2:1 or 3:1 student:teacher ratio. We love the direct learning she is receiving because of this. Every day, each child is pulled out by their speech therapist from anywhere between 25-50 minutes (depending on the child) for one-on-one therapy. This is equivalent to what Natalie received in NC at our home, but it was just 1 hour weekly sessions then.

Each morning when the kids are dropped off, the staff is trained to check the each kids equipment (hearing aids or cochlear implants.) We have Natalie's backup processors in her backpack every day. They take off each processor in the morning one she arrives and checks them to make sure they are sounding ok. They also have an on staff audiologist there full time; Stephanie. We are using her more for the maintenance stuff, if things come up. (one day, Natalie's remote control for her CI's froze up, so Stephanie was able to get a new one replaced through our manufacturer.) It is nice to not have to worry about doing any of that on my own. She also pulls Natalie in the sounds booth every so often to do an audiogram. We are seeing an audiologist for Natalie's mappings (6 month checkups on her hearing and changing the programs on her processors) at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital. I just felt more comfortable doing the mappings with an audiologist that sees a larger volume of children. OVV only has 30+ kids attending right now.

The first day I got to come with her and we only came for 90 minutes. This was more getting acquainted with the classroom and her teachers. The next day she was off, the next day she went by herself (and did great!) and then was off again. The following week she was on a regular schedule.

There are 2 areas of her classroom. They have a main area that is set up like a pretend house and then the other room is a theme room that changes monthly. A lot of their vocabulary is based around this theme and all of their projects they do incorporate this as well.

Here is a picture of the main area: They have a separate space for the living room, kitchen, laundry bedroom, bathroom and outdoors.

this picture was taken prior to school starting, so all of their props weren't quite up yet.
Note: See the real goldfish in the fishbowl?

 They staggered us on the first day, so only 6 kids came out of the 11 in her age group. We just played and got to know everyone a bit better. And they loved snack time.

friends of Natalie: Mac, Asees, Filip and Alexander (Juliana not pictured)

When we first got there, after about 10 minutes I think Natalie thought I was going to leave her. So she ran over to Jessica (teacher aide) and ran right up into her arms and wanted her to hold her. It was so cute. (Natalie tends to find one person she always does this with, whether it was at church or child watch at the YMCA, she always made sure she had 1 person that she would feel safe with.)

Jessica and Natalie

Megan (speech therapist, Asees and Jessica)

This is the sensory table and it changes up with the theme in this room about monthly. Always a favorite for the kids!

They have this large tree house tent in the corner of the theme room. It is darling and all the kids love it. Natalie decided she would bring all her toys and projects into it the first day since it was that cool.

Official 1st day of school pictures for her.. (hasn't she changed a ton Jenni?)

Every day, we get a daily report in her backpack of how she was (cheerful, happy, tired) what they had for snack time (the school provides) and what activities they worked on and her favorite thing that day. It is nice to get a daily report. Also twice a month, our regional infant hearing loss teacher (provided by the state birth - 3 years) goes to Natalie's school and plays and interacts with her for 1 hour. I get a detailed report of that too.

More blogging to come... on her monthly themes!

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

So, we are officially moved to Ohio. I have so much to catch up on with this little one. I feel like her vocabulary has just exploded this summer. (note.. I haven't even kept up on tabs of words she knows on the side.. she knows way too many to keep track of now which is amazing!) I think a good part of that influence was having Dylan home from school, because I really noticed her talking a lot more about 2 weeks after he was out of school.

Now I can't get her to be quiet! Seriously, in church today, I was constantly whispering to her to be quiet. Part of me feels like I shouldn't do that, because how awesome is it that she is speaking so much and so well and I don't want to discourage that, but on the other hand, there is times and places for us to be quiet and I can't quite figure out how to get her to "get it".

So a little story about spiders. Our new house has a big basement and all the toys are downstairs. One day Natalie was downstairs playing and I heard her kind of whispering/crying. I went downstairs to see what was the matter, and by that time she met me by the stairs. She was saying "spider on my arm", "spider on arm" "spider bite arm", "spider bite hand".

I saw a a little red spot on her hand, and it honestly just looked like a mosquito bite. I asked her if the spider was black. She replied "brown". And she went on and on about spiders the whole day. I went down in the basement playroom and looked around for any spiders and couldn't find any. I just figured it was a mosquito bite and she thought that was what it was.

Well, the next day, all the kids were down there and Dylan ran upstairs telling me he found a huge spider. So, I run down there and lo and behold.. A big, BROWN, spider downstairs. I killed it. So, Natalie was communicating to me about it the whole time and was right.

And today, she saw a big daddy long leg in the kitchen and told us, "spider on chair".. it was crawling on the floor by her chair and we killed it too. Spiders have been a huge part of her vocabulary lately. Lets hope this trend does not continue...

Goodbye Miss Jenni

We had to say one of our hardest goodbyes a few weeks ago. Jenni has been Natalie's early intervention and parent educator since Natalie was about 2 months old. She has been through everything with us. She came out to our house right after Natalie was diagnosed and has helped us tremendously. We will surely miss her. Tuesdays have been our day for therapy and it has reminded me of the book, Tuesdays with Morrie... so we are giving a farewell to our "Tuesdays with Jenni."


Our baby appointments - pre cochlear implants

And with CI's:

Our last Tuesday:

hearing the airplane outside

finding her nose

goodbye Jenni!

 Hopefully Natalie can look back at this time someday and realize how important these last 2 years were.

Just for Fun

Natalie's vocabulary is expanding every day. Here is a short video clip of a new word she learned.

Farewell to Doctors

A few weeks ago I took Natalie up to Chapel Hill for one last time, since we are moving. It was really bittersweet. I am so glad we won't have a long commute for appointments this next year but will really really miss these incredible doctors. We are forever grateful for these special people who have made some an impact on us. We are so glad that we decided to follow through with going up there since we are about 2 1/ 2 hours away.

We started off this journey of going up there when Nat was 2 1/2 months old... crazy!

this was her getting fitted for hearing aids

Dr. Buchman has been such an amazing doctor. I know we are just one of many patients, but we just think so highly of him.

Here is a picture of Nat and Dr. B the day before her CI surgery and then our last goodbye.

And dear Holly, our wonderful audiologist. She has made this whole process easy and each appointment was so thorough with so many things to check, double check, etc. We have been so blessed by her experience and the other wonderful audiologists there that have worked with Natalie too.

Jan 2012

June 2012

What an amazing 2 + years we have had there! I posted this months ago, but if you want to check out Natalie's 1 year hearing video I made, you can watch it here.

Ordering Cochlear Implant Headbands

I have had a lot of comments about the cochlear headbands we order for Natalie. I put my email address on the side of the blog. Please email me and I can let you know how to go about ordering them. We have loved them and honestly I can't imagine not using them.

I also love these cute flower clips we have gotten from some kid hair salons but you can also order here. They are from Katelyn and Co.

Feedback

Natalie recently figured out how to use a whistle. She loves it. She loves the feedback she gets from blowing into it and making a sound. It was interesting to watch how when her "ears" were on how much she was enjoying playing with it. At one point in the afternoon I found her headband off and she must have accidentally taken them off and she had the whistle, but it wasn't that much fun anymore.

The joy of sound! You can see her whistling below: