The forgotten birthday

It's been three years since activation day. We had our ups and downs in this hearing journey. But it's been very interesting. Rhianna never fails to amaze me with her verbal abilities and her never ending chatter.Her listening skills are pretty awesome too.

We actually forgot her hearing birthday until the day arrived. Luckily, we had planned to take her to watch the Hi5 show the next day.Yes, the Hi5 people were here for three days live show. Rhianna saw the advertisements and went crazy.She loooves Hi5 and she'd spend hours watching their dvd if I'd let her. So we thought why not...let's get those tickets and dance with Hi5.

So she was on her best behaviour the whole week,doing her homework , reading her books and ticking off the calender in anticipation of the big day. It was very funny.

The show was fun and interactive and the children loved it. Rhianna enjoyed the dance and the songs immensely and didn't have any problem with the sound system whatsoever which amazed me. I guess in the end, watching the show was a pretty good way of celebrating her hearing birthday.
The avid fan got to watch her favourite group performing on stage. Mom and dad got to giggle at the amazed look on her face and got to marvel over and over again at the life changing technology called cochlear implant.

Five in the air..let's do it together 

Before the show 

She loves the shirt 

Discover How to Protect Your Family’s Hearing Health

Most people are vastly familiar with the concept that healthy lifestyles have a positive and long-term impact on overall health.  Eating nutritious foods and getting an adequate amount of exercise can lead to healthy bodies that are resilient and able to stand against many health concerns, illnesses, and diseases.  Hearing health is not something that most people think about on a regular basis.  However, with a few things in mind, parents can take positive steps to protect their hearing and the hearing of their children.

The Benefits of Protecting Your Hearing

 Planning ahead and taking assertive action to lead a clean and healthy lifestyle can help to significantly promote excellent hearing health.  These actions will teach children how to maintain a good lifestyle and it is always better to prevent something then have to fight against it.

Protect Your Hearing from Loud Noises

There are numerous steps a person can take around the house and at work to protect his or her hearing.  Committing to these actions and teaching children and teens in the family about the importance of these actions will result in long-term benefits that will lead to a safer and healthier lifestyle.  Keeping televisions, radios, and cell phones turned down to a moderate level is one of the most important things a person can do to protect his or her hearing.  

In addition to turning down media and electronic devices within the home, lawn and garden equipment and machinery also should be monitored.  The sheer volume of electric saws, drills, lawn mowers, weed eaters, and other similar equipment that is found around many homes can have a very damaging effect on people who use these devices.   Wearing ear plugs when using machinery or lawn and garden equipment that produces loud noises will be a great way to maintain control over excellent hearing health.

Protect Your Body and Your Hearing

Smoking is one habit that is well-known for having damaging effects on a person’s body.  Smoking can also lead to damaged hearing ability.  When a person smokes, toxins are released into the body and this can negatively affect a person’s ability to hear.  When a person smokes and is around high-pitched noises on a regular basis, the individual is drastically increasing his or her chances of losing their hearing in the future.

Eating a healthy diet also can play a big part in maintaining good hearing health.  Poor diets can lead to diseases such as diabetes.  Diabetes commonly affects a person’s ability to hear.  Overall nutritious diets, adequate amounts of sleep, and proper amounts of exercise can play a big part in a person maintaining and protecting his or her hearing ability.  A smart decision to make along with maintaining a healthy diet would be to make an appointment with your doctor especially if you feel you have been losing hearing overtime.  Your audiologist will be able to test your hearing and find what your baseline hearing levels are.  With these results they will be able to provide you with tips on how to protect your hearing or based on the severity of your hearing, prescribe the use of hearing aids.  Hearing aids will be able to help restore some of the hearing you had lost before. 

Take Assertive Action as Soon as Hearing Loss Symptoms are Suspected

The Mayo Clinic web article on hearing loss symptoms informs people of possible symptoms to look out for if they suspect damaged hearing.  Like any illness or health concern, the sooner a person sees a medical professional if a problem is suspected, the better the chances of correcting or treating the symptoms will be.  Viewing the symptoms listed can help people to remain aware of things that can suggest hearing problems.

Taking action as soon as symptoms are noticed or suspected will increase a person’s chances of overcoming the problem.  A medical professional can offer advice and treatment to help correct or supplement a person’s hearing in many situations.

* An article sent by John O'Connor

Thanks John!

When she's 17..

According to Miss R ,when she's 17 she'll be doing the followings :

1.Go to college ( where she'll party all the time ..(yikes!) ).

2.Work as a chef 

3.Drive a car ( a honda)

4.Buy herself a cellphone.

The future chef decorating a cake

The finished product - done Rhianna's way

Well..honestly,I'm not in a hurry to see her reach 17.Anyway,She said she'll still stay with mommy forever...funny girl.

Jekyll n Hyde

I'm a speech language pathologist who works with special needs children in early intervention program.People often say that Rhianna is lucky to have a mom who is an SLP.I think my profession is both a blessing AND a curse to Rhianna.

When her father is always happy with her overall progress, I often find other areas to work on.

Rhianna is doing great in kindergarten. She finished top 5 students in the 5 year old class last semester.Her academic skills is on par with her hearing peers and in some subjects,even better.So of course we are happy but I'm still worried about her social skill.

She tends to be a bit shy with new friends and she often needs plenty of warm up time.If the social situation gets too stressful for her,she will just observe and not participate or she will just play alone.

People (her father included) told me to let her be.She will develop better skills in good time.
At moments like this..inside,I will be like Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde.As a mother I agree (that's Dr.Jekyll). I should accept her and give her time and enough support to develop her confidence level.
As a therapist, I itch to intervene.In the end Mr Hyde wins.

So we are trying a few things like joining more after school activities, planning more play dates and role playing different social situation.
So, no rest for the weary...my poor child.

Things that I should do..

1.Smile more and frown less.
2.Work less and play more (according to Rhianna)
3.Eat more cupcakes (according to Rhianna)
4.Take more walks
5.Kiss and cuddle my child more (Rhianna disagrees on this)
6.Laugh more
7.Worry less

That's all we could think of for now.We'll post photos of our recent road trip soon.Have a good day everyone!

She's 5!

Rhianna turned 5 on Mother's day..So mom didn't get to rest on that day.Rhianna was busy planning her party at least a month before the actual date.She browsed the internet with me and selected the cakes that she liked for her two parties- at home and at school.She invited her friends from day care, prepared the goodie bags and made thank you cards which we will send out to our guests.This was the first time that she actively participated in her parties preparation.

For home party,we decided to have it at our apartment's swimming pool and we invited the neighbours' children and our friends.Luckily we prepared plenty of food as the children were pretty hungry after swimming.A couple of friends brought cakes so we ended up with more cakes than we could eat.It was lovely to see how many good friends turned up.It reminded me of how much Rhianna is cherished by others as well.

Cake 1 - A princess crown cake,selected by Rhianna.It was pretty and tasted surprisingly very good 

Cake 2 - A jelly cake lovingly made by one of our friends.Cooling and refreshing.

Cake 3 - A chocolate cake brought by a good friend of ours.This one was adults' favourite!

Barbie cupcakes by another friend. Rhianna loved them!

The children enjoying their cakes after a good swim

Kids having fun in the pool

The birthday girl's goofy face

So many cakes to choose from.She ended up eating too much cakes for the next 2 days

Checking out the mountain of gifts from our wonderful friends later in the evening

Checking out her new bike before bedtime.See the "I'm tired but I don't want to go to bed" look?

This is from her party at school on Monday.Great effort from the teachers and all the children had fun!

In the end, Miss R had tremendous fun with her friends on her birthday.It is wonderful to see that she is making friends everywhere and she actually enjoys spending time with them.
It is bittersweet watching her grow and watching her develop her personality.She's growing more and more confident and she's coming up with new ideas everyday.I'm grateful for all that she's learned and for her amazing progress...I just wish that she would remain my baby a bit longer.

A chance to help others

I always say that my daughter was sent to me for a purpose.I've learned a lot of life's lessons just by raising her.Her deafness is what makes her special.

We are so fortunate to be able to have her bilaterally implanted and to have her progress at such amazing speed.There are many others who are not so fortunate in Malaysia.We don't have insurance coverage for CI operations  here. Some children will get fundings  from the ministry of health and some from sick children's fund but it is very limited.

Recently I was approached by the group of doctors who are responsible for bringing CI technology to Malaysia.They are a group of passionate doctors and wonderful people who have been helping deaf children in Malaysia hear for over ten years.They are currently trying to propose to the government to provide more funding for CI operations so that more children will receive the benefit.

So we put together a video that chronicles Rhianna's hearing journey from the time that she was signing until the time that she is stringing many words to form complex sentences.It was amazing to see how far she has come and how hard she works to achieve all this.We hope to show people the endless possibilities for these children when they have this miraculous technology.So we are hoping to get free CIs for many more children in this country.

Now, maybe I understand God's plans better.

Recent trip and (not much) photos

So we went to Langkawi Island to spend some times with our family.Rhianna had a blast with all the activities but what she enjoyed most was spending time with her cousins,aunts and uncles and grandparents.
We stayed at Four Point by Sheraton hotel.We loved the hotel.The room was beautiful and enormous and the view was great.

Our balcony view

We went on a boat for mangrove tour and eagle feeding session.We were supposed to go island hopping to the small beautiful surrounding islands but the weather was not very cooperative so we decided to skip the trip.I was actually hoping that we could go fishing ( the last time we did it, we caught a big barracuda )
but we figured safety first since we had children and seniors on the boat (sorry dad!).

Enjoying the mangrove tour

The eagles coming down to feed.The locals said that we could see more eagles if we came in the morning.Since it was already in the afternoon,we just saw maybe 10-20 eagles.Pretty amazing sight.

We also visited the Underwater World where they have a lot of exotic fish (no pictures-you should have figured out that I'm not much of a photographer.These photos were taken with the blackberry only).We spent some times at the animal farm where we fed the deers and rabbits.

Rhianna and Lucy the Australian pony.

The animal lover and her bunny friends.The rabbits all had fat bellies when Rhianna had done feeding!

We all had fun in this beautiful island.Rhianna got to do a lot of swimming in the hotel's gigantic pool.The aloksak works great.Rhianna was singing the whole time she was in the pool.It was lovely to see.Her hearing in the pool also makes my work a lot easier.I had to do a lot of bribery and threat to get her out of the pool,remember?

See that look? Know what I mean?

We finally did it!

Well,we finally did it! We read stories,watched youtube about others who have done it but we never tried it.Now we finally did it! Well,Rhianna did it.She swam with her CI on...what a glorious day!

I've read about people who let their children bathe or swim or play with the sprinklers with the N5.We have seen people waterproofed their CIs in various method.Aloksak bag,food saver metbod,balloon method but we were too scared to try.We don't have back up processors here.We don't even have insurance for these equipments.We have to pay everything out of our own pocket,.. imagine the fear.

But I'm determined not to let these equipments restrict or compromise my child's lifestyle.I want her to be able to do what other children can do including hearing while swimming.So after some research and thinking,we decided to try the aloksak bag.We found the only supplier in Malaysia and they are in our neighbourhood!

After some trials and errors and lots of complaints from miss R (the headband is too tight,the bag is poking her neck,the magnet won't stick etc) we finally managed it.And she loves it!

We just use one processor for swimming purposes which is the N5.
It is just too hard to get both sides on and the old side is nucleus freedom which is not as waterproof as the N5.So we figure that we'll just use the N5 which is her new side. That way,she could also have more practice listening with just the new side.Smart eh?

So here you go..

With best friend Mr Turtle

The smile is precious..the ability to hear is priceless

A complaint or a compliment?

So,I don't post as often as I would like to mainly because we're always busy. Another reason is because there's not much to report.

Miss R is doing very well.The only complaints that we get from pre school is she talks too much. That is not really a complaint,more like a compliment to me.I grinned when I heard that. Seriously,my deaf child likes to talk.I love it (most of the times anyway).

We have stopped worrying about her speech and language development.We just continue trying to give her more language experience to further expand her vocabulary.So we have a couple of trips planned.In March we're flying to the beautiful Langkawi island for a lot of fun family activities and in May we're taking a one week road trip to our national park.
It will be fun,fun,fun!

A princess bike and an angry bird cake

It's been a long time since we last posted anything so Happy New Year to everybody!
My (not so little ) girl is doing tremendously well in term of speech and hearing.I can say she is bilingual now even though her Malay is a bit better than her English.

During the long semester break we worked on her reading skills and I'm proud to say that she is now reading very well for a not yet 5 year old.She is reading for both languages and her Malay is better than her English of course as it is very easy to learn to read in Malay.She mastered the CVCV  form in just 2 weeks.I'm so proud of her and she is proud of herself too.She is now fully mainstreamed in normal kindergarten with no special assistance whatsoever and doing very well too.

She speaks in long sentences and has acquired the higher language skills like reasoning,predicting,bargaining and other creative things.She can keep quiet for 3 seconds at one time.Really!We once played  "who can stay quiet"  game in the car during a long drive because everybody need some break from her continuous chatter.She lasted 3 seconds max!
So before this I complained that she doesn't talk,now I complain that she doesn't stop.People say that she is making up for the silent years.I say that she is born to talk and so she talks.I also think that her enjoyment of talking is one of the reasons why she talks so well and catched up very fast with 2 languages.

Another skill that she acquired during the long semester break is riding a bike.She can now pedal and handle her bicycle nicely though still with training wheels.She couldn't pedal before because of her vestibular and proprioception issues but she can now.Guess what happened next?
She requested for a new bike of course!
Her current bike is still so new because she didn't ride before.But being a talker,she talked us into buying her a pink and purple Barbie princess bike with glitter.I don't even know if such thing exists.

So far we are having a good year and looking forward to many new and wonderful things ahead.The only thing is I can't really accept the fact that she'll be 5 years old this May.
How time flies...
Happy New Year !

p/s : and for her birthday she wanted an angry bird birthday cake.The bird must be a pink coloured girl bird with a ribbon on her head.Any ideas?

Fun girl down

So,my fun girl was down from one illness to another.Last couple of weeks she contracted a viral fever complete with coughing and vomiting.Not very pretty,yes.She recovered in a few days but was cranky for a while.

Last Saturday she contracted  stomach flu, a severe one too and it nearly got her admitted to a hospital.Luckily she didn't refuse fluid so we were able to keep her at home. I had to give her 75 ml of ORS fluid every hour.If there was any vomiting or diarrhoea, I was to add another 90-120ml.Believe me,that was A LOT of water and I had to give it in sips not gulps to avoid more vomiting.So we were stuck in bed taking sips of water for at least 8 hours while watching Strawberry Shortcake DVD over and over again.It gave us plenty of cuddle time which was nice.The not so nice part was when she refused her CIs (which is understandable considering how sick she was feeling).

However,her not hearing left me feeling so inadequate.She talks like she normally does when she has no CIs on and she read lips quite well but only within context.If you try to explain something new,it would be terribly hard and she would start to guess a lot and we both would end up frustrated.Then,I would start feeling sad,upset and nervous over how much language opportunity that would be lost during these silent hours.

Ok,I know I should take it easy but it takes a lot of struggle on my part to relax when I have all these mixed up feelings.It doesn't help that Miss R refuses her CIs every time she is sick.How do I explain to her that the injection will only sting a bit and it will help stop the vomiting or she has to sip the water and not gulp no matter how thirsty she feels to avoid vomiting or the sips of water will prevent her body from getting dehydrated and many other things like that if she can't hear me?
Maybe we should start our sign language course soon.

Anyway,the good news is she's almost back to her own happy self.

Miss R and her army of dolls

Two years of hearing (and nonstop talking )

So, Miss R celebrated her 2nd hearing birthday on September 15th.She was switched on at 2 years 4 month of age and has moved at lightning speed since.She learned to detect,discriminate,identify and imitate all Lings 6 sounds within 2 weeks of switch on and produced her first words at 3 weeks post switched on.She started combining words about 2 months post switch on and she achieved all these milestones with us struggling to keep the CI on her.She hated her CI initially.I really didn't understand it since she was learning so much and enjoying the sounds that she could now hear.I guess she must have enjoyed giving us a hard time then.

Now she enjoys both of her CIs and is a true chatterbox who never stops talking.The only times that I could enjoy some peace and quiet is when she is asleep (late) and napping (rarely). We still haven't tested her recent language skill though we suspect that she is already on par with her peers.It's a tricky thing since we don't have any form of formal testing and no norm in Malaysia where most children are multilingual.Miss R is bilingual with Malay as her first language and English her second.She is learning some mandarin in preschool but we are opting for extra English class in replacement of Mandarin class for next year.We'll just keep her bilingual at the moment.

She enjoys listening to music (something that I couldn't imagine before) and going to participate in talent time contest in December organised by Opus academy of music.All the preparation is being done by the dedicated teachers so I can't write much about this.We'll start her on an instrument (most likely piano) next year when she is more ready.

So,now she looks like other kids and does things that other 4 year olds do except that she has extra gadgets on her ears.Maybe soon I will teach her how to explain her CI to other people.

Now,the only area that needs a bit more adjusting is her social skills.She's fine in preschool and daycare with familiar people but she tends to be very shy with strangers or new people.She will need at least 20 minutes of warm up time before she starts talking.
It's really ok, but it's not fun for me especially when I want to show off my talking child and the miracle of CI to some new people and my chatterbox child decided to keep quite and ignore the person who is talking to her.I have no idea what motivates her to do this, probably only the sheer happiness of exasperating her mother.God knows.

Before, I couldn't stop thinking about her deafness.Now,it has become a non issue.She could hear and talk like other children.Putting on the CIs has become second nature like putting on shoes or socks.Something that  I couldn't imagine possible but is IS possible with a little bit of work and perseverance.

Cookies fun

Miss R is doing very well  with her hearing,speech and language development.So I'm constantly looking for new activities to do to give her rich language experiences.It helps that she loves story books so we could use the books to further enhance her vocabulary.It doesn't help that she normally have loads of homework every day so we have to spend a good portion of the night to finish them.When you're dealing with Miss R,you'll hear a thousand excuses of why she simply can't do the homework - My favourite would be the cat is watching her.I have no idea how a cat can disturb her by just watching from afar.


Anyway,with the Aidil Fitri holiday coming,we decided to make some cookies for her teachers.Here I must confess,I'm not actually a baking person.I cook ,but I just don't bake.I baked cakes before using pre mixed stuffs that come in a box ( hey,don't judge me!)
Anyhow, we made some following a recipe a found in a magazine. Rhianna loved playing with the dough ,decorating her cookies and of course learned many more new words.The cookies turned out a bit hard but Rhianna ate them saying they were nice ( probably because she made them).

No,of course those cookies didn't reach the teachers.We have plan B - store bought cookies (again,don't judge).At least this time I know the cookies taste nice and Rhianna still participated by making the cards to stick on the boxes.

So these are the cookies that made it to the teachers.We had fun and all is well.

They are family too!

We love our pets.They are troublesome for sure but they are entertaining.I grew up with cats,rabbits,hamsters,turtles and fish and now I think my daughter is following in my foosteps.

Meet rhianna's pets :

This is Sam.He was actually my cat but Rhianna claimed him as her own.He was a fat,grumpy cat with attitude but was always so gentle with her.I thought that he hated her for stealing all the attention ( he was the 'baby' before the real baby came) but I found them sleeping like this one day.So I guess he loved her in his own way or maybe he was trying to reclaim his position as the 'baby' in the family.One could only guess.Sadly,he passed away at the age of 10 of rich cat's disease (diabetes).We still miss him.

Meet Benben.He's the sweetest (though not the brightest) cat ever.After Sam's passing,he became the object of torture for Rhianna.He would let her do anything to him.What I love about Benben is that he is a willing model.Here, he was posing for a book that I made for Rhianna to teach her about preposition.All I need to do is put him somewhere and he'll pose.He's such a good sport (or maybe not very bright).

Agent Scully aka 'the wheel of blades'

She's called Scully because she's smart and nosy.She investigates every moving things and every sound that she hears.She's also good at being invisible (a smart cat will acquire this skill to survive living with an active child)The photo is blurred because she hates people getting too close to her.If you try to cuddle her,she'll turn into 'the wheel of blades' and you might get hurt.She's the only pet that escapes Rhianna's torture.She's smart remember?

This is Spots - the baby eaters.She got the guppies from her playgroup with other CI kids.They were working on pets theme so everybody got to bring back the fish.She has 4 guppies- all named Spots (go figure).I love to watch them but I get stuck with the cleaning as the rightful owner is too young to do so.They are baby eaters seriously.One of the females was super pregnant and one day she was flat but no baby fish was seen anywhere.It disturbed me for days.I have 5 baby guppies from previous breeding though.

Nemo - the demonic fish

She's orange so she's Nemo according to Miss R.Another fish acquired through pets theme,this time from her preschool.And again,I get stuck with cleaning the tank.If you wonder why Nemo is alone,it is because she is super territorial or perhaps demonic.I tried giving her a partner twice but both times she bit the males to death.So alone she is as she prefers to be.

So these are our pets which enrich our lives in so many ways.They provide my daughter with so many language learning directly and indirectly.They teach her to care for animals and the responsibilities of a pet owner.Ok,she is still learning in the second area.

p/s : there was also Kiki the stray cat who adopted us as his family.He was a free spirited cat who later became a victim of hit and run.We still remember him with love.

Bilateral joy

I don't post here as much as I would like to.Mostly because I don't have much to report about the Girl's progress...or maybe there is too much to report that I don't know where to start.

I remember thinking before her second implant that it's gonna be hard to take care of two equipments,training the new ear and maybe dealing with her resistance towards the new implant.

It turned out,she loves her new implant and the new ear needs very little training and is now almost as good as the old one performance wise.Taking care of two equipments needs a bit adjusting but is nothing compared to the joy of having a bilateral child.
Every night when I take off her processors I have this sense of joy and contentment knowing that she has bilateral hearing.

I know she loves her two 'ears'.If you tell her that she can only wear one processor,she'll tell you that she wants BOTH of them!
Believe me, I tried. Last month at the beach I thought that it would be too troublesome/risky to let her wear two processors to the beach,take them off to swim and put them back again to play in the sand.So I told her we'd only take one and she grumbled the whole time there.

She now speaks with better articulation.She still occasionally struggles with some difficult sounds but she is mostly age appropriate articulation wise.She's learning to localise sound and her incidental language learning is phenomenal.
She sings all the time.It still takes her some time to learn a song but I like the the fact that she now asks me to explain every new song or rhyme phrase by phrase.It is now not enough for her to just memorise a song,she wants to understand it.

She's doing wonderfully at preschool.She counts to one hundred and she can write them too.She reads simple words,writes her own name and knows all the phonic sounds.She's learning to add and substract.She has many friends and she loves being there.

It never fail to amaze me that she's doing all this wonderful things at just under 2 years of being implanted and I thank god every night for his wonderful gift - this beautiful child of mine.

Glamour girl

Ever since she received the tutu skirt as a belated birthday gift,she has been prancing around in it begging to go to a ballet  class.Then,she begs to shop for new blouses with glitters to wear with the skirt (check out the pic).She's also begging for another tutu skirt (purple,this time).If I knew that this tutu skirt was going to cause me so much problem,I would have stopped my friend from buying this for her.

In another development,the new ear's progress is fast and steady.Her understanding with the new ear alone is almost similar to the old one,only that she might need some repetition at times.So I guess it is still pretty effortful to hear with that ear alone.

She's doing very well in pre school too.She counts and writes up to 30,understands quantity concept (they're starting addition soon),writes her own name independantly,recognises both upper and lower case alphabets.She reads familiar words quite well and was 'outstanding' in spelling activities according to her teacher...well,as outstanding as a 4 year old could be, I guess.

I'm glad that she's picking up a lot in school.She has many friends and gaining more language skills.She continues to amaze us everyday with different vocabulary and different pragmatic use of language.

We have reached a point where people who don't know her do not even realise that she is deaf...until they see the processors, if they could see it since the processors are pretty hidden now that she has short hair.

We still have many things to teach and show her though.Not just how to listen and speak,but how to grow into a strong individual.How to advocate for herself and have a positivite attitude.How to care for other people and give back to the community.How to live well and be happy with your life...for in the end this is what matters most.

New ear update

It has been one month since activation and I'm so glad to report that Rhianna loves her new ear! She wears it all the time and even asks for it in the morning.She said that she likes the old one better but she likes the new one too.I guess she could feel the difference between hearing unilaterally and bilaterally.

The new ear is also catching up very fast.Much faster than I anticipated.She could already understand 2-3 steps command wearing that side alone.She could do Lings 6 sounds at more than 2 meters distance.When tested,the aided threshold for the new CI is between 35 to 40 dB.Not bad considering that the ear has been hearing for only a month and was unaided before.So maybe it's time to start working on the new side more.

So if asked if it was worth putting her through surgery again (not to mention the money!), I'd say yes! She loves it,we love it and it works beautifully.

We did it!

We finally did it! Rhianna's second implant was switched on ,on May19th.I was anticipating chaos and hardship but it didn't happen.Boy,was I glad.

She participated well during the map but was a bit upset after the switch on saying that the new ear is noisy.I guess that's how it is if your ear has not been hearing for the past four years.Anyway,the new ear is turned on very low BUT she was able to detect and identify all Lings sounds by day 3.Yes,we started therapy at home from day 1.Not that we're so ambitious,we were just trying to get her to understand that the new ear will need training too.At first she was quite amused working with the new ear,then she got a bit bored.So we mostly work for about 15-20 minutes each night on sound detection, Lings and some early sounds.
So far this new ear is working way faster than we could ever imagine (talk about cross over effect!).

Kylie the koala is Rhianna's new best friend.She enjoys reading the book on how Kylie got her CI



The new bilateral bionic girl in her pink tutu skirt

 So far,our second hearing journey has been much easier than the first from surgery to switch on to getting her to wear the device.She's been wearing the new ear as much hours as the old one if not more and WITHOUT complaining.Hopefully,this will last forever and ever.
So keep us in your thoughts and prayers people.

She's four! (How did that happen??)

So, she turned four on May 13th and we decided to party,party,party! She browsed the net with me and selected the cake that she wanted to bring to preschool.


Well, it's pink with a picture of the princesses (What more can a girl ask for?)



With her preschool friends (yes,they only have that many children in the school and maybe 5 more not in the photo)

 They played games,sang songs,ate the cake and had a lot of fun.When I picked her up,she was very chatty and telling me all about her party not knowing that we had another one waiting for her at the daycare.



Another party after naptime with her daycare friends



With a cupcake of her own choosing


And later in the evening another party with friends and family (I said party,party,party - so we actually had 3 parties)




Cake ordered and sponsored by a friend of mine- totally amazing!



The trio - The only children in our close circle of friends


And finally the unveiling of the mysterious gift that was kept hidden for the past one month.We saw her drooled over this thing in the store and decided to get it for her birthday and also to celebrate the 'birth' of her new 'ear'.She knew this thing is (damn) expensive and didn't even (dare) ask for it.



Behold the Rosebud dollhouse or the Pink House as Rhianna calls it.



Inside view of the Pink house.It has three floors including the attic

 We only got her the bedroom,living room and kitchen furniture so the house is still quite empty.We plan to do some reward system to get her to work more on her new ear and 'earn' more furnitures for her pink house.Hope it will work out and motivate her to do more therapy.See,we never spend money unecessarily.All her toys were carefully selected and geared towards therapy.

So,that's her birthday story.Yes, she was thoroughly spoiled for the day after all you only turned four once!