Jordan & Daddy at ELF

Today Mommy had a big meeting to go to at Regional Office that she could not get out of, so Daddy took the day off work and took Jordan to ELF. Check out their website to see some photos of our two favourite fellas!

www.deafchildren.bc.ca/programs/early-literacy-foundations

Deaf Children's Society of BC

Check out this video for DCS, Jordan makes appearances around :25 and 1:06

Jordan shows love & his first sign!

This is what we put on Jordan as we were heading out the door this morning, it would prove quite apropos!

Interpreter, Heather, tries to figure out how this thing works

Facilitator, Alaina, talks to the kids about sharing

Jordy wasn't really listening!

We went to ELF today, and learned a whole lot! It was quite a busy morning and worthy of a nap very soon, I think. We were given a new book to take home and learned some new signs that go along with it: drum, bee, mountain, and lots of others! Alaina also taught us a new song "If you should meet a crocodile," that we will need to practice signing as well! After we went through the book and song, the kids had a snack, and played a bit with a very elaborate toy that is new to the play area, and Jordan seemed to fall for Megan,one of the regulars to ELF whose sister has a cochlear implant. Jordan was trying to give her kisses! Eventually, the novelty wore off for Megan and she turned away, which caused some indignant screaming followed by tears. It was all very cute! Better get used to the heartbreak, kiddo!

Darn, I only just missed it! But you can hear the tail end of Megan's smackeroo!

And below, you can see affectionate interaction, including Jordy's affectionate head-tap, something frequently used on Uncle Mark, which we call "noggin."

rebuffed!

Something else very exciting to report is that Ingrid and Heather also feel pretty strongly that Jordan has made his first sign: MORE. Yep, he's our kid! Jordy has been doing this for weeks, but I wasn't sure if it was just an arbitrary movement he liked to make or if it was communication. He started doing it after I gave him some water out of my bottle, then he would come back after a couple minutes and make this hand movement, and that seemed to clinch it. I've got a couple of pictures to try to show it to you, but it is hard to capture it on film without help; I have to do something that elicits the sign, then quickly bring the camera up and shoot. The way Jordan makes the sign kind of looks like the sign for Mommy against the palm of one hand. Sydelle once told me that this is very common, it will start out on a different part of the body or in a slightly different hand shape and will evolve into the correct shape / location over time. For example, many tots sign Mom or Dad with their index finger alone, rather than with thumb and splayed fingers. Makes sense too, when babies learn to speak they don't start out with, "Good morning, Mother, may I please have some cereal?"

2010 Olympic Fun

I have started to get word from a few of our readers that we have gone entirely too long without a post on Little Dumer News! I apologize! We've had a few hiccups in the last couple of weeks, our hard-drive crashed and our camera went kaput. Two large, unplanned expenses! First of all, I will take the time now to share one of Chris' laws of computers with you: Hard-drives will eventually fail, no ifs, ands, or buts, so back them up regularly! Thankfully, he had just done a back-up in December, so we didn't lose much! Can you imagine if I had lost all our Baby Jordy pictures? It just doesn't bear thinking about. That leads me to the camera of course, we considered waiting to get a new camera, but are you kidding me? We have the Olympics on our doorstep and we have a baby - a camera is not an option, it's a necessity. So here we are, in the poor house and with a couple excuses for a belated blog.

Besides all that, we have been basking in an Olympic glow and are only just starting to get back to real life again. Jordan is now 9 months old and on the 24th we discovered that he can now clap his hands rather than his fists - and makes a very gratifying clapping sound! We think Jordan will be pulling himself to stand soon. He grabs the crib rail and often gives it a try, though he usually winds up with his legs stuck in between the slats, but it won't be long til he figures out he needs to get those feet under his bum before he pushes off. He's still scooting around on his posterior and refuses to be put on his tummy to crawl, so I have resigned myself to this being his mode of transport until he starts cruising; I think it's his way of telling me he wants his hands free to get into trouble. I will try to get him to the public health unit soon for an official weigh-in, but we were at the Old Spaghetti Factory a few days ago and they have a scale in the waiting area (weight-ing area?) that said he was about 21 lbs. Why they have a scale there I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you!

Part of our Olympic experience included going to see a couple of events. We decided we would not attempt to bring Jordy but would have a sitter look after him. Well, after our last experience, when he cried the entire time, we thought it may be best to leave him with someone he knows really well, so Nanny Mary answered the call. We left the two together and went in all our Canada Gear to see Women's Hockey, Canada v. Slovakia, on the 13th. Just before heading to the venue, Chris and I decided to grab a bite to eat at the Waterfront Centre food court, and as I was coming back to our table someone approached me and complimented my hat, and said they would give me $10 if I would sing "O Canada" to the entire food court! Well, they got me on a good day, I would normally not have the guts for such a performance, but I was caught up in the patriotic spirit and I did it! It was not too hard, but I was a little shaky afterwards! We then met up with our friends the Drivers and went through security together, excited for the game. Admittedly, it was not the most fun game ever, as it was a 18-0 blowout win for Canada, but it was a cool experience. We hurried home, worried that Jordan and Nanny would both be at their wits' ends, but we came home to a sleeping baby and Nanny reported that he was "perfect." We had been gone for about 8 hours: the longest Jordan has ever been separated from his Mommy. Well, this erased all concerns when we left the two together for our next event on the 18th, Men's Hockey, Canada v. Switzerland. It was a nail-biter that we won in a shoot-out, and afterwards we took a little extra time to go see the Olympic Cauldron. We got home and though the grandmother and baby were both still awake, they had enjoyed their time together. Wow, two baby-sittings for Jordy that were no problem! Hooray!

The 2010 Winter Olympics Cauldron

Olympic Rings lit up in silver because we had won a silver medal that day!

Mark & Aida Driver, Deb & Chris

The following weekend, Gramma and Grampa Young came up for a visit. Chris treated them to tickets to see the Women's Freestyle Aerials qualifier and they also had tickets to see Ice Dance. After their Saturday event, the whole family loaded into a West Coast Express train and went downtown to be a part of the sea of humanity and view the cauldron again. There were more people milling around downtown than any of us had ever experienced, but it wasn't too bad to navigate through; I do admit though that I thought it would be convenient to have a bumper on the front of the stroller and a horn. It was nice to have the folks up for a visit and to see Gramma getting to play with Jordy, even if it was only for a short while. I know Gramma Nitzie is already thinking about the possibility of coming up for Jordy's first birthday. Can you believe it will be here in less than three months? I know I have said it so many times, but really, where does the time go?

Gramma Nitzie playing with Jordan

Mommy, The Little Dumer, G-ma & G-pa

Daddy & Babe queuing up

Last Thursday we had tickets to the Victory Celebration at BC Place and decided to bring Jordy along. We got to see the Women's Short track speed skating team get their Silver Medals and Sang "O Canada" as the Women's Bobsleigh team were presented their Gold Medals. Then Jordan got the opportunity to experience his first ever concert (don't worry, Daddy stuffed some cotton in his ears and we slapped a hat with ear flaps on him to protect what hearing he does have!) Burton Cummings rocked out some of the old Guess Who hits, and Jordy slept through it all! We would have liked to stay right to the end, but it was getting a bit late and the boy was asleep, so we did the responsible thing and packed him up and took him home. It was a fun night anyway. And finally, On Sunday he donned his Team Canada jersey and sat on the floor with us as we watched the heart-stopping Canada v. USA Men's Hockey Gold Medal Game. The last few games we viewed on the TV with him had him bursting into tears everytime Daddy would whoop over a goal; but I suppose he got used to it eventually, because he seemed to take every holler in stride this time around! Thankfully, it ended happily with Canada winning Gold and we were able to enjoy the Closing Ceremonies with the Drivers, satisfied with our Olympic Experience instead of a in a pall of depression over losing The Big Game to the USA - a fate worse than death.

Mommy tides the little man over with a cracker until the concert starts...

...at which time he decides to sleep!

And now the Olympics are all over, and we are quite sad to see it go! Still, reality intrudes and we are pretty much back to our old routines, and adapting to new changes within those. Our Audiologist, Selma is now off on Maternity leave so we will only be going to the New Westminster clinic for the fitting of new ear molds, any testing in the next year will be conducted through the Burnaby clinic, and of course, we will also miss Selma! She promises she will be returning next year though. And, we will be welcoming our new S-LP next Monday. Yes, Sydelle has had to leave DCS too, a tough bit of news to hear as there was an even greater connection for me and Jordy with her than there was with Ayasha. We are still in touch though, and she is able to continue working in this specific field she loves, just out of a different outreach centre, BC Family Hearing Resource Society in Surrey. Our new S-LP will be Ingrid, who we first met at one of our earliest ELF sessions and is returning to work from her own maternity leave. We're pretty confident that this time, Ingrid will be a stable S-LP for us, most especially because DCS is just fresh out of other S-LPs! I've heard nothing but the highest praise for Ingrid and I look forward to working with her. In addition, our ASL instructor, Ritva is now back from her snowbirding trip to Arizona and we will resume lessons this Thursday. Though we had an interim instructor, we took a break through the Olympics and hope we won't be in too rough of shape for Ritva! We're also looking forward to this weekend when we start Swim Babies! Hooray! I got Jordan a couple of pairs of super-cute swim diapers, one with a blowfish on the bum and another with clown fish all over for when he outgrows the other one. I am determined that Jordy not grow up afraid of the water and unable to swim until the age of twelve like his Mommy! I am thinking it will be a lot of fun for us as a family. We'll tell you all about it soon!

16 Pounder!

Today we took our little guy to the Public Health Unit for his FOUR MONTH (really!?!?) Immunizations and he was pretty good, only cried for about a minute.  Whew!  We also weighed him and he is 16 lbs and is 25.5 inches long.

Here he is a couple of weeks ago showing off his brand new cloth diapers

(he outgrew the first set, which only went up to 15 lbs.)

For those of you who wonder how the technicians at the audiologist's office create the

"cast" for the ear molds, they squirt some goop in his ears. 

It looks like this  - kinda like someone stuck some old chewing gum to his little ears! 

He looks super chubb-o in these pics, I don't know why,

but he doesn't look like that all the time!

At our second ELF visit, Jordy, here with Alaina, meets Kayla and her mother Ingrid who is an SLP

with DCS.  Kayla is hearing.  We learned a lot of new signs at this visit,

including "penguin," "gorilla," and "donkey."

Last Saturday we celebrated Uncle Mark's birthday with a picnic on Burnaby Mountain. 

It was a beautiful sunny day, but a little windy.

Nice one, Uncle Mark!

Mas Tequila!

And Nanny came over on Sunday for a visit with her grandson, and helped give him a bath.

Crazy week

Gentle Reader, you are fortunate my seasonal allergies are bugging me at 3 am or you may not have gotten any kind of post this week! It's shaping up to be a gnarly one, between getting the house painted and dentist and audiology appointments and next week isn't looking much better I may as well tell you now!

Our favourite little guy is officially Three months old! Wow, really?

Last Tuesday we met with Janice Springford, the director of DCS. We'll be attending a drop-in early language foundations (ELF) program starting in September and will meet with speech language pathologist (SLP,) Ayasha, regularly starting next Wednesday. I have to say, I am looking forward to both! I do feel like I have accomplished a lot in the last month (it's only been about a month since we found out, can you believe it!?) and have really done all that I can to ensure Jordan is getting all the support he needs, but once his sessions with Ayasha start, I think I will really feel like we're doing something to make sure his speech will develop as it should. I learned something important from Janice last week though, as she put it, speech problems can be fixed, that is what the SLP is for, what he can gain from us is an understanding of the world of sounds around him. What family and friends can easily do every day is take the opportunities to point out sounds to him, "Jordan, the cat is meowing, do you hear the cat meow?"

As to the drama of keeping the hearing aids on our boy, I have to apologise. I think I made it sound much worse an ordeal than it actually is, based on some of the concern I have raised in a few of our readers. Yes, it is tricky at times. But I honestly think the difficulty comes down, for the most part, to two things: Mom and Dad are rookies at the H.A. installation gig and Jordan can't completely support his head yet. Once Jordy's able to manage the head-bobbing there will be less rubbing against his bouncer, or car-seat, or Dad's shoulder, etc. and thus less pulling on the ear molds. We do the best we can. In fact, we have a new record: 5 hours of H.A. usage one day last week!

Anyhow, I suppose I ought to take a crack at sleeping again, I can use as much shut-eye as I can get! Tomorrow (today, technically) I have an evening dental appointment to get fitted for a crown that I should have gotten a year ago, so Chris will be on his own for bath and bedtime --you may want to wish him luck!