Monday, January 26, 2009

Yard Sale Anyone?


Thanks to the fact that my neighbor has had multiple yard sales in her front yard my kids are familiar with the concept. I came outside the other day to see that my kids had loaded our front grass with a bunch of random things. When I asked them what they were doing, Treyson said they were having a yard sale. Ashten then said that they needed to get rid of "all this junk". I thought it was so funny to see all the things they gathered together from our garage to have in their yard sale. Eventually I made them clean it all up and I don't think it was as fun to take care of it as is was to collect it in their bucket the first time. So if anyone is interested in any of the items pictured, my kids might be willing to let them go. That is for the right price of course.









Thursday, January 8, 2009

Ears!

It seems like a while since I have posted anything about Traxton and his ears, so I will try to update everyone. He seems to be doing really well. We took him in to the audiologist last Friday to have them tested again, but he didn't cooperate long enough to finish the whole test. We have to go back in this week and hopefully be able to finish and find out if his hearing loss has gotten any worse. Last week we had a state advocate for the hearing disabled come into our home and talk about a lot of resources that are available to us. Apparently, the state of Utah doesn't feel like children with hearing loss have enough help before they get to school so they have started a program where an advocate is with the child until the age of three. Our lady will be able to come into our home 1-3 times a month until he is three. She also told us about speech pathologists who can help him learn to talk, signing classes for us, and even a physical therapist who can help him with balance since the aquaducts (which are enlarged and causing his hearing loss) controls our balance. The best thing about all this was that she said everything is FREE! I couldn't believe it. I actually cried when I got off the phone with her. We have had a lot of people tell us about different programs and "help" we could get, but to have someone actually tell us exactly what we can do to help him and be ready to jump right in and get started with it all is awesome.
Stefanie, our state advocate, watched him for a little while and was really impressed with how much he "talks" and rolls around. We have been told that if he wasn't hearing, he wouldn't be jabbering like he is. Stefanie also said that most babies with aquaduct problems don't roll at all because it makes them too dizzy, so Traxton is doing really well to be able to move around as much as he is. We feel really good about things right now and are excited to get things started with Stefanie. She will start teaching us different methods to talk to him that will best help him learn to talk. He is such a good little boy and we love him so much. I have even become quite fond of his cute little hearing aids, if only we could get rid of the hidious tape.