3 Months Post Activation

Hunter made 3 months since his hearing birthday the Friday that we left for the beach, July 27th. What an exciting milestone for him and he is doing so well already! On our way back from the beach, we timed it right for AV Therapy in Baton Rouge and Hunter napped right before so it worked out well. He was babbling up a storm and being so silly the whole time we were there. It was a great session. I asked Shelley how she thought he was doing, on an overall level. She said his speech development is doing quite well. He has met almost all of his 0-6 month goals for listening/speech. And he's only got 3 months under his belt. I feel like she pushes him, a lot. Which isn't a bad thing, but she always makes me think she is expecting so much more from him. She said at this point she is ecstatic about the babbling that he has been doing the past 3 weeks. She said it starts with noises, turns into babbling, they try to start singing, and then comes words. I guess I was under the impression that he was already supposed to be saying a handful of words by now. (don't ask me why) I guess maybe because some kids are. Granted, Hunter says Mama, he attempts Dada, although most of the time it's Dede. On the trip he was saying LiLi, which we kept trying to turn into Eli :) And he says "all" for ball. But makes the B sound quite often. So we are working on putting it all together! Just yesterday we had an Early Steps meeting at our house, and when they were all leaving he was saying Bye Bye! Whoa, such a new word for him, and Shelley said words don't normally come until 12 months. (in hearing children) Now our goal is to make more than 12 months progress in his first year of hearing, so I heart warmingly believe we are on a roll right now. In the session on Wednesday we would ask Hunter... where's your head? And he would point to his head. Same with ears, eyes, mouth and nose. And Shelley said that he's ahead of the curve on that as well. Nothing like music to my ears!

Here is a video of Hunter being silly with Shelley on Wednesday:

That's it for now. The only other thing I can think of is that we are still working on walking.... OT thinks he will hopefully get it by 19 months. The average is 21 months for Usher babies. Fingers crossed, but we know that once he does he is going to start out running and I don't think he will stop for anything!