Cochlear Implants

We finally heard from our Audiologist's office this past week. They've been in contact with Mayo Clinic in Rochester and sent them all James' information and are currently reviewing the file. They'll hopefully be calling the next couple of days to set up evaluation appointments. They were able to tell us that it'll be a couple day's worth of appointments. Yikes! Andy doesn't get too much PTO at his job so I hate to have him take 2 days off for evaluation appointments when we know in the future that there will be surgery in Rochester. So hopefully (if timing works out) my fabulous friend Heather will accompany me and my boistrous boys to Rochester.
I'm not really sure what the appointments all entail or what they're going to do with James for 2 days. I thought we'd pretty much done all the testing that had to be done here in Fargo, but I guess not :S

James had a pretty busy day this past Wednesday. He went to school in the morning and right after school we headed over to Sanford for his outpatient feeding and language therapy. After therapy we headed down to Healthcare Accessories to get James wheelchair looked it. We were concerned because we can't keep his hips back in the chair. Then he ends up sitting in the pelvic tilt (he doesn't mind at all) but it's not good for his posture and developing trunk strength. They were able to added a piece of foam under his thighs and hopefully that helps. They also did a little growth adjustment. While we were at Healthcare Accessories we had James AFOs adjusted. They were leaving nasty red marks on the tendon behind his knee. He also got his new hand/wrist splints. James tends to put his hand in a closed fist with his thumb between his pointer finger and middle finger. Not a good thing. So these will help keep his hand open and his thumb out.

In other family updates:

Andy is still playing ball a couple nights a week. My cousin's daughter has been watching the boys for us! It's been fabulous and I'm sure a big learning experience for Tracy.
Andy and I were able to slip away for a day and leave the kids with my parent's for a weekend. We ran the Warrior Dash with a couple of my friends in Hastings, MN. Wow was that hard! it was an extreme 5K with obstacles. The obstacles were pretty fun but there were tons of hills to run up.
I'm still busy busy busy at work and taking kids to appointments and scheduling our lives!

Elliot....what can I say. He's two. He's a boy. Wow! He's super busy and definately destructive. He gets into everything. EVERYTHING! We think we have everything out of reach and locked up and he somehow finds more stuff or finds a way around it. Most recently he somehow got the container of Nesquick strawberry powder (we add it to milk for Elliot so he doesn't drink all James' Pediasure) and dumped the WHOLE thing onto the carpet......

I've added a few pictures :)

Andy and I after running the Warrior Dash

James watching fireworks!

got a new movie....with talking animals

wearing mommy or daddy's Warrior Dash helmet!

another Elliot mess

He was so excited to cilmb on there!

Fun day at the park

Now that James has new AFOs we got him back up in his stander!

Monster Jam

Last Saturday we took James and his little brother Elliot to Monster Jam at the Fargodome. It was a pretty good experience for us all. It was our first time going to a big event like this with Janes in his wheelchair

James absolutely loved it! He watches it pretty frequently on tv with his dad in the evenings. He hated when they would stop to switch events. They had Quad racing in between the monster trucks and I think he liked those even better! He had the hugest smile on his face most of the time. I sat in handicapped seating with him, while Andy and Elliot sat a few rows behind us. There was a couple next to us in handicapped seating and they couldn't stop commenting on how much he loved it! Of course we needed to protect his ears from all that loud noise. Although James has hearing loss he can still hear some things and we want to protect his little ears from any more damage that could occur. Wouldn't you know he hated the ear plugs! I tried a coupl different sizes among other things and he just didn't like them. I resorted to taking his hearing aides apart and just using the mold part of them (the part in his ear). I'm not sure how much they helped though because there are holes in the molds to allow for the sound from the amplifier to go through. It must not have been too bad because he didn't seem bothered by the noise. All in all we did good. We didn't have too many difficulties getting around with James' chair and the kids were in a pretty good mood considering it was naptime. Hopefully next year we can go again!