"Mommy, look at my picture!" In speech therapy, Isaac has been learning about body parts. First he draws the face with marker. Then he copies over it with a glue stick. Then he sticks all the parts into place. Coincidentaly, he loves locating and tickling ears on his pictures, on him, on me, and on others who will play along with him. He can say "ear, nose and hair" but I haven't heard him say eyes or mouth yet. Such a cute time in toddlerhood!
In other news, we FINALLY have all the parts to his new FM hearing aides. This has been a painful process that started about a year ago and is still not finished. Let's travel down memory lane for a minute... Lt. Duhon first orderd the FM system before he moved away, last September. It took about four months for them to actually arrive in Rota. It was the middle of February. By this time we didn't have a local audiologist so we had to wait until May for our next audiology appt. So in May, we had high hopes of getting them fitted and set up for use. Lt. McArthur switched out his original hearing aides with these new ones but was unable to get the FM attachments to connect. She decided it would be better to send them back to the States to be fixed or replaced and try to set it up again at our next appointment. She left for three months and while we waited, we regularly checked on the shipping status and was assured they were in process, blah, blah, blah. By mid July, we still didn't have them back so I persisted to get more details because our audiology appt was coming up in about 3 weeks and we still didn't have the FM system back. After more generic, non specific responses about "Isaac's FM system," I finally recieved an email from our audiologist (based in Naples, Italy) explaining that it wasn't here, wasn't coming and she didn't know what to do. So, she flew into Rota the day before our appointment and looked around the offices, didn't see them sitting around, wasn't sure if they had ever even been sent off, decided to call it "lost in the system" and started the paper process of ordering new replacement parts. I hated going to this appointment because I was so irritated about the whole process. Isaac was acting horrible during the whole appt and we barely got a little hearing test squeezed in that basically just confirmed that his current hearing aides were working at the set decibles. I think they are a good setting but his responses to hearing tests would be so much more reliable at this age then the last time he was tested. I really want him tested in a sound booth to confirm or adjust the information we've been working with for the last 10 months. (sorry, I got off track for a minute) Anyway, she started the re-order process and after not hearing anything from her or the audiology clinic for three more weeks, I had to start "stomping my feet again." ...blah, blah, blah... her original emails didn't get any response so she started over with a new person from Phonac and within two weeks, we FINALLY recieved the FM parts, again. For now, they are sitting in their boxes, waiting next to my suitcases, as we are packing up and moving back to America in just a couple of weeks. After house hunting, family visits and vacation time, we'll be ready to find a new audiologist and hopefully get these things hooked up for use! This will be in November. (sounds like forever away) What a painful process! ~grrr
