Adventures with The Rogers!

So we are at almost 7 months post activation with Keira's Cochlear Implant. Since the 3rd mapping her vocalizations and attempted words have grown so much! She now wears both her Neptune and her Naida processors. She still prefers the Neptune but she is much more tolerable of her Naida. She is also wearing her hearing aid with her Cochlear implant more and more. She still doesn't tolerate the hearing aid in the car for long periods but she does great at her toddler class and during speech with the aid. She is becoming more and more aware of music and likes to dance now! :) Her sign vocabulary is steadily growing too as is mine! Just the other day during her toddler class she impressed me so much! They take the kids out one at a time and do a "focus" time which is similar to speech and lasts about 15 minutes. We were reading a book with Keira that had flaps and there was a frog and our specialist was telling her "Jump, jump, jump" & Keira picked up the bo

So we've been having a rough time the past few weeks with our insurance and our doctors billing department. They started to deny more than one appointment for our mapping sessions so Keira missed her mapping session last week. We pressured the audiologist into bumping her up significantly since she was behind & we were not noticing responses with the implant. We were actually getting a little discouraged because it seemed like she responded so much better with her aids and still does in the left when her aid is on. She took her up 170 clinical units this appointment and put her in the sound booth! We got continual and clear responses at 60dB!!! We are still being conservative from here though because they want to make sure it's not too much too soon for Keira but we were all pretty excited! We've noticed an increase in awareness with the implant at home too! Here she is in the booth below!

Keira had her cochlear implant surgery on Thursday! Her surgery went great and they were able to insert the electrode with no problems. So grateful for that! It's always nerve-racking when your baby goes under.... even though we knew she was in great hands with her surgeon you still worry! She was groggy and tired the first day, Friday she started to get her spunk back and by Saturday we were at a ball game! Now we wait for activation day to see how she responds! There will be lots of mapping sessions in the coming months to fine tune the implant. Hopefully she starts responding immediately! At the ball game at Chase Field Family baseball fun! Peyton enjoyed the game much more than Keira... Keira wanted to touch everyone in front of us :/ Car ride home from the hospital with her Melody monkey from Advanced Bionics :) Day prior to surgery Playing with her Melody evening after surgery

Well... we've got ourselves a kindergartener! I can't hardly believe it! Time sure does fly by. Keira's Cochlear Implant was finally approved and authorized and we now have ourselves an implant date! Tricare ended up denying her twice and her Dr had to schedule a peer to peer with United healthcare/Tricare. Everything seems to be on track now though. I'll try to keep on top of updating the blog after the implant to show her progress :) K for Kindergarten! :) Pledge of Allegiance at the flag ceremony

Well the past 8 months have been pretty busy... we had my Dad and Adam's Mom come out in November for a week, we headed up to Flagstaff in January to see snow. We had a hiking excursion in February at Thunderbird Park in Glendale... hiking with small kids= long hike! We also hit up the Arizona museum of natural history in Mesa. The girls really had a blast at this museum! They had some great exhibits and tons of activities for the kids. March was Peyton's birthday, a hot air balloon ride to celebrate our anniversary and a visit from my Aunt! May was a trip to Florida (this was under sad circumstances) & preschool graduation for Peyton. So far this month we've had some summer adventures checking out the natural bridge in Payson & parks, splash pads in our area. Hope everyone is having a great Summer! My Dad carrying Peyton away from the tarantula on the hiking trail at Lake Pleasant!  Tarantula in the wild!  Seeing snow for th