Eighteen months later…
Eighteen months later…
We have a sweet friend who is also a photographer. She has captured photos of Arabella since she was a newborn. We hope to keep the tradition going where she’ll do a photo shoot of Arabella each year. Check out the photos to see why I woke up at 2:30 am and saw the photos and have since then not been able to go back to sleep. These photos show how our family is on a daily basis: Arabella’s endless expressions, all three of us laughing all the time (if one person starts laughing, the other two follow and it becomes a jolly fest), and lots of love between all of us!
Here’s the link:
http://www.kisibelphotography.com/p162250539
Cueingly Yours,
M-B
Wasn’t I just 9 months pregnant and overdue yesterday? Nope. It was an entire year ago! Well, a little over a year now that I’m just posting this.
People aren’t kidding when they say time flies when you have a baby. Honestly, those sleepless nights feel like they’ll never end in the moment, but once you blink.. 5, 10, 20 sleepless nights have passed. Funny…as I type this Arabella has been asleep for 9 hours straight and that has me wide awake since 2 am making sure she’s still breathing. Ha! #mommyism There goes that hashtag again. I rock!
Arabella has hit so many milestones in just one year. It’s been an amazing journey for Aaron and me. Every day, it’s something new! Last night before bed, we had a total heart melting moment. She’s been saying the words “bye” and “daddy” by themselves for a good month and a half. Last night, when Aaron was saying good night, I see her say “bye bye daddy”! Two word phrases?! What?! Slow down girl!
This girl has the most determined personality. I’m not sure where she gets that from….? (haha) She’s a go-getter. She is such a social bug, too. When I take her food shopping with me, she gladly sits in the front of the cart and puts on a show in the store. She’ll find people to wave to and will continue waving while saying “hiiii” until they look at her. This mama, who is typically always on a mission to get in and out of the store ASAP, will put a smile on her face and go with the flow. I also can’t help but laugh because the reactions on other people’s faces are pretty hilarious to watch. I always get the question “how old is she?” because Arabella is on the tiny side. She may be 1, but we come across many 9 month olds who are bigger than her.
She still cue babbles and is such a bookworm. Books are her thing. She is the BIGGEST helper, ever! I don’t think I’ll have to hire a maid until she’s old enough to understand chores are no fun. She’ll find a towel and walk somewhere in the house and start cleaning. I’m honestly not sure where she learned that from because I rarely have time to clean!
I could go on and on…. but she is such a happy little girl. Her toothy grin and giggles are all we need for us to know we’re going to have a good day which is every morning when she wakes up. She sits up in her bed and talks to make the monitor go off and waits with a smile on her face knowing we’re coming to get her. 1….2…3… AWWWWW.
We are excited to see what the next year will bring although I don’t want her to grow up. Boo hoo.
Here are some photos below that Aaron took on her 1st birthday when we took a family trip to the pumpkin patch (I took the third one just as we were heading back to the car when Arabella was waiting for me to show up).
Cueingly Yours,
M-B
If you haven’t seen our first three videos, be sure to watch them before viewing the newest video!
Cueing to a Newborn
Cued Speech for Infants
#CueInfants Attending
AND our latest video –
Purpose of Video
To show our audience how we incorporate and expose our daughter to a wide range of vocabulary through Cued Speech, or more specifically cued American English.
Receptive Cueing
How do we know she understands what we cue to her without voice? She responds by looking/pointing in the direction of the object or location. At times, she will include meaningful cue babbling and she has a large range of words she understands. Some examples are: bed, diaper, shake (verb), fan (noun), and several body parts including the belly button, nose, ear, mouth, and toes. She also demonstrates comprehension of the question form “where,” such as in “Where is Mommy?” and “Where is the cat?”
Expressive Cueing
Our daughter has been trying to imitate our cueing for a few months now. In the last couple months, the open hand imitations have morphed into hand shapes 1 and 5 and most recently 6. She is rocking the vowel placements, which goes in line with typical language development where children will be able to express more vowels than consonants. Some examples of words we know she’s associating expressive cues with, aside from what is shown in video, include: milk, vacuum, water, cat, sheep, and mommy.
Verbal Language Acquisition
“Cued Speech enables a deaf child to learn verbal language in the very early years, so that he/she will think in that language even before being taught to make very many of the sounds of speech.” – Cornett and Daisey, Cued Speech Resource Handbook for Parents of Deaf Children.
We appreciate the efforts that Dr. Cornett made in educating parents about Cued Speech. However, we believe that it’s important to reframe Cued Speech as a universal way of expressing verbal language in the visual medium. Therefore, Aaron came up with a new statement.
“Cued Speech allows children to internalize traditionally spoken language(s) via a visual medium.”
From Parent to Parent
Keep cueing! We very well understand it can get tiring at times and you may start to voice more than cue. Try to remember to stick to cueing all the time and it will pay off in both the short and long run. It’s also very important to reinforce our children’s efforts to communicate expressively, regardless of how that may look.
Communicate with other parents for support. Sharing stories is a powerful thing. Realizing that other parent(s) may have the same or completely different obstacles will give you that extra push to keep at it.
Cueingly Yours,
Aaron & M-B
What a fabulous day we had as a family! We love, love, love our family time.
Arabella adores her daddy. One day I know she will look back and say she inspires her daddy for chasing his dreams. Nothing is handed to you in life. It’s always something you need to work towards. It may be an easy journey at times, and difficult at other times. As long as you believe in yourself and your dreams, you will eventually reach your short and long term goals. Aaron is a great example of this. Thank you for being who you are as a husband and father. We love you!
Cueingly Yours,
M-B
When we had picked our hospital, we made the request for cued language transliterators and made efforts to ensure that the services would be set up using local resources that we had already referred the hospital to. We ended up not receiving cued language services.
Why was it important to us to focus on education instead of legal action?
• collaboration vs confrontation
• advocacy vs activism
• education vs ignorance
• improve the accommodation process
• paving the way for others to follow
Our friend, Hilary Franklin, came to visit us for a few days and spent some time observing our daughter. She has a Masters in American Sign Language as a Foreign Language and is the first native cuer to become a certified Cued Speech instructor. Along with a video of Arabella’s attention, here are her comments on Arabella’s receptive and expressive cueing.
Hello, Rose family and friends!
When Arabella was born, I knew I couldn’t wait to see her; I wanted to meet my pseudo-niece! I made it out to Denver over the weekend, after Arabella passed her six-month-old mark. We weren’t sure if Arabella would recognize me, as she had only seen me a few times in the two-dimensional iPad world. But once I saw her in person, it took her only a few seconds to greet me with a huge smile. (D’awwwww.) This indicates a level of recognition that we weren’t sure would happen, since she’s still so young.
Arabella is an extremely engaging and curious baby! At six months old, she is already doing the following:
• Attending to the current speaker with intent and extreme interest. (She has the ping-pong head movement down pat.)
• Moving her right hand (and sometimes her left hand) in response to someone talking directly to her. She forms handshapes that resemble cues. I saw handshapes 3 (/s, h, r/) and 5 (/m, f, t), and 6 (/l, sh, w/).
• Expecting another speaker to talk and cue. The most incredible thing was watching Arabella watch and listen to an iPad app (“Baby Flash Cards”), turn to her mother for the cued version, and then immediately look back at the iPad for the next flash card.
I believe she is able to do the above because Aaron and Mary-Beth are always cueing. As native cuers, they cue to each other, but they also cue to Arabella. I also cued constantly to her; in fact, she preferred to turn her head and watch me than simply listen to my voice.
I hope Mary-Beth doesn’t mind this little anecdote: Mary-Beth and I would often chat while she was nursing Arabella. When I used my voice, Arabella would stop nursing and twist her head around to look at me. We quickly realized that the only way to get Arabella to focus on nursing was for me to cue without my voice!
In short, consistency and repetition are key. Only time will tell when Arabella starts to actually form cued and spoken words herself, but she seems to be well on her way!
Cueingly Yours,
Aaron & M-B
How we know our daughter is attending to our cueing:
Happy birthday to our sweet daughter as she is now six months old as of this posting.
Cueingly yours,
M-B & Aaron
All is quiet in our house right now. I’m the only one awake. Let’s see if I can start/finish this before house becomes alive again.
Why are we cueing to our daughter?
How do we incorporate cueing into our daily lives?
That’s all for now. Part two will be about how we know she is attending to our cueing. Feel free to share this with anyone. Our belief is anyone can benefit from Cued Speech, not just people with hearing loss.
Here’s proof we have a bookworm. She loves to help turn the pages and must somehow be holding onto the book when we read.
Wow! This must be a record. I started AND finished typing this from the iPad (especially with the most annoying auto correct). I even got on to my laptop to edit. Now I’m going to enjoy my cuppa coffee and enjoy this rare peace and quiet although I feel out of place not having to attend to the cat or the baby. 😉
~M-B
Aaron sent this to me and I love it so much. It’s perfect!!!
http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2013/11/a-year-of-parenting.html