Ahhh! Summer

There is nothing like being at the start of another boiling Arkansas summer to make you want to pack up and move north. People here hold out for parking spaces with shade (no matter how far they have to walk to get into the store or building), do yard work in the wee hours of the morning or after the sun starts to go down, and they search out any cool water or AC they can for approx. 4 or 5 months out of the year. More or less if you live in Arkansas you better not be put off by being sweaty ALL the time. However, when there is that occasional reprive and the sun is shining, humidity is low and there is a cool breeze people come out of the woodwork and bask in the outdoors with all thoughts of inside chores forgotten until the weather changes again and we are driven back indoors.

One of the best ways to beat the heat is to go swimming. We have gone swimming more this year than in the last ten years combined. Luckily Nana and Poppi have a beautiful, big swimming pool at their house. They also LOVE to have Norah come over. Oh sure they like seeing us too but lets not kid ourselves Norah is the star of the show. Whenever we say we are going swimming she immediatley starts doing the signs for Nana and Poppi. She can tell you which roads to turn on to get to their house and applauds enthusiastically when we pull up in the driveway. We have even delayed putting up her little pool in the backyard because she loves going over to her grandparents house. It also helps that Nana and Poppi think that she is the best thing since sliced bread.

Getting ready to go swim. I'm not quite sure why we needed socks and sparkly pink princess shoes to go with the swimsuit.

Someones just a little excited.

This is the same kid that we had to trick into getting in the tub the first few times after we got her in China. Now we have to send the muscle out (Brandon) to get her out of the pool.

This is Norah's closet. We recently had to put the two bins that contain her pj's/underwear and shorts/swimsuits up on the top shelf because she would empty both bins and try everything on and then rub it around on the floor causing mass amounts of laundry. The night that we did this Norah deciede that she had to have a full set of pj's even though for the last 2 months we were lucky to even get underwear on her without a fight. I thought that it had been awfully quiet in the back of the house. Then there was crying. Well, Norah had built herself a staircase out of her toy bins and climbed up pulled out a pair of pj's and then fallen off. She only had a red spot on her foot but the "staircase" was a good 4 feet tall. Maybe she'll be an engineer when she grows up or a circus performer. Who knows.

Boo has become somewhat of a gypsy since he graduated from high school this month. He is now hanging out at my brother and sister-in-laws house playing the part of man servant. They have him doing housework and other odd jobs while helping him get a resume together and look for a job. My brother and Brandon have always been close and him and his wife are a good influence on Brandon. I will attempt to get some pictures of him this weekend, although here lately he is as elusive as Big Foot or Nessie. With 4th of July and his 19th birthday coming up this month we should have some prime opportunities to spend some time with him and his girlfriend.

Trip to Branson

Chinese children reunion in Branson.

We took Norah to go see the Acrobats of China in Branson. She really liked the show and was clapping the whole time. The show started late. They said it started late because they were going to wait on some other parents from far away that were coming, but I think it was because they didn’t sell enough tickets for the private show for the adopted kids. So they waited until 3:00 o’clock when the regular show was going to start. Anyway so the adopted kids from China didn’t get a private show like was advertised but Norah didn’t know it was suppose to be private any ay. She didn’t care, but waiting the extra two hours at the theater wasn’t too fun for her. She did have a good time at the pre show festivities at the Welk Resort and got to have fun at the water park associated with the resort. She spotted this baby bird that had gotten so wet from the storm the night before that it could not fly.
Ha-ha! In one of these photos she has my MP3 player on her side because she thinks it is a cell phone and she wants to be like Dad. She will wear it all day take it out and talk to whoever it is she thinks that she is talking to. Norah still does not talk much; we still think that will come with time and lots of practice.
What else. Oh our fruit is doing very well this year. Some to well. I need to pick some of it off before it breaks the branches.

Good news from the hearing test today on Norah's new ear.

Norah has moved along so well with her new ear that she got her right ear put back on today. And we will test in the booth with both ears next month.

As you can see she has almost every letter sound for speech in her range for hearing now.
I need to have my hearing tested now because I could not hear the sounds when they were produced below 20 DB. Remember a whisper is at (30 DB). I was straining as hard as I could to hear the sounds that were being made in the booth with Norah but couldn’t. She would drop a toy on que everytime the audiologist made the sound from behind the one way mirror.

Norah was hearing so low (15 DB) that the audiologist would try to trick her a couple of times but no, Norah would only drop the toy if she heard the sound. The lady inside the hearing booth with us stopped being able to hear the sounds too so I wasn’t the only one.

So that is right my daughter who is deaf now hears better than me!




Some of you know that Lori is a secret artist; she drew this upside down on the porch with Norah the other night with chalk. Pretty good I would say.


Norah has to help mow the grass.

And one more final bit of good news is that Boo graduated yesterday! Such Good news all around. We are VERY proud of him.

Finally! an update.

Norah turned 5 years old this month and had a wonderful birthday party at Nana and Papa‘s house. There were more toys, cake and ice cream than any one of us needed. Lori got Norah an “It’s My Birthday shirt” to wear that was big enough to wear next year too. Lori had also bought Norah a Princess and the Frog doll for her birthday gift. The swingset was Norahs big birthday present but we wanted her to have something small to open up at her birthday dinner.

We have had to start bribing Norah to get her to do her listening practice. She now has to listen three times. After each lesson she gets to put a sticker on a page we printed out and then after three stickers she gets a suprise. The suprises are just stuff that we picked up at the dollar store and wrapped up. It really seems to be working. When we were doing listening practice the other day Norah's prize was a frog house. She asked me to get her a frog for her house, so I went outside and in two minuets was back with a frog for her. Oh my, she was so excited, she helps me put the frog into the house and runs to her room, returning with princess Tiana so she could talk to the actual frog. Norah played with the frog and doll as if they could understand one another. It was to funny watching how her mind works and seeing her having fun using her imagination. After about 20 minuets I liberated the frog back outside so that he could get some rest from what was fun for Norah but I’m sure traumatizing to the frog.
Norah has only been wearing her new CI on her left ear and is doing extremely well with it. She tested at 25 DB in the booth but we all know she can hear at a lower level than that. The problem is that Norah wants to recognize the sound and then work on figuring out how to say the sound back before she will respond. She can now hear so low that you can’t get your voice to make a eeeee, ooooo, ahhh, or mmmmm sound that's too low for her to hear she can hear them all. So the only sounds we can get make that low are the sssss or shhhhh sound and that is just putting your lips togather and blowing very softly. The 25 DB she got in the booth is what they call a "super score" she can actually hear alot lower than that but will often freeze up until it is loud enough to where she can recognize if she is hearing ssss or shhhh and say it back. So the good news is Norah can now hear a nat fart. We know she is in a good map and we will give her back her other ear after she develops very good discrimination in her new ear. Then we will start working on discrimination by picking the right photo when she hears words like rat, bat, and cat. Then hopefully advance to things like movie, moving. The next few weeks we will be working on her using her voice to respond to signed questions. If we ask Norah a question in sign language that is a yes or no to have her answer with her voice yes or no. She can say the word no but yes is very hard for her still, maybe it will come around.

In other news Miss Annie went back home to China this week. I drove her and her friend to the airport last Tuesday. I am so proud of her and we look forward to her coming back in August for next school year. I'm sure that Annies family is VERY excited to have her home for awhile. They are wonderful people and love her dearly.

Brandon is still working away at school. He missed the May 14th graduation because he has another class to complete. His new finish date is June 7th. Other than that he is hanging out with his girlfriend and being a typical teenager.

2 short clips of Norah