19 months

We're doing well here. Isaac is 19 months old now and is still crawling all over the place with little spurts of walking only if he has a FIRM grip of someones hand or finger.   He's not speaking at all but communicates pretty well (I think) with several definite signs and other gestures. The older he gets the more we see the gap in some of the "normal" milestones so in that way it's frustrating but I have him set up with good hearing aides and weekly speech therapy so I think we're doing all we can for him right now.

We have a military audiologist that comes to our base every 3 months or so for testing and follow up appointments. The last time she was here, she tested his hearing and found his hearing loss to be closer to 40 Db rather than the original diagnosis of 55-65 Db. So I guess that means he has more of a mild/moderate hearing loss to deal with. I think that's good news but not really sure how reliable it is.  She did all his testing in one appointment and reset his hearing aids accordingly.  From what we did before this, and from what I've read, it's more reliable to do many, multiple hearing tests in order to get a good reading on all the sounds and pitches.  He has a short attention span and a moderate tolerance for being in the testing room. There is good technology for us but he's still so young that I don't think we really don't know for sure how he's hearing right now.

Keeping the hearing aides in daily is a big energy investment for me too. I often wonder if they bother him more than help him. Sometimes I'd rather just talk really loud and purposefully with him instead of constantly dealing with the aides. I'm looking forward to getting plugged into stateside programs, having an available pediatric audiologist, and a speech therapist with hard-of-hearing pediatric experience. I just think having second opinions and "been there/doing it" experience will help me feel more comfortable with how we are supporting his needs.  Tentatively, we're planning to move to Florida later this year. Oct./Nov. possibly.  I'm thinking it will also be nice to plug into social groups and make friends with families that are dealing with the same sort of issues: hard-of-hearing baby raising.  Like I said, we're doing pretty good here but maybe there's "a better way" in our horizon...(maybe not).  Leaving it in God's hands so I won't stress about what we do or don't have available in this foriegn land called Espana.