Learning Something New

Today was a big day! We had our second post-placement visit with our social worker (one more and then we will hopefully finalize the adoption in December!) and I also met with Nathan's speech therapist. It was a full but wonderful day!

Spending most of the day talking about my amazing little Nathan has me in such a reflective mood. It was really something to talk with our social worker about all the changes that have occurred in Nathan and in our family over the last couple of months. To see how far he has come and how much he has changed...it really astounds me. God has been so good to us in blessing us with this precious boy!

And then to talk with his speech therapist, to talk about where he is, how much he has learned already since getting his hearing aid, to make goals for the next six months and look forward to all he will learn, well, it made me smile. I just love this little boy so much and I am just blown away by him every day.

When we accepted Nathan's referral, we didn't know exactly what to expect when he came home. We knew he had hearing loss, but we didn't know how much hearing he really had. The Korean doctors talked about hearing aids and possibly cochlear implants, and we wondered how much hearing he would have and if he would ever be able to hear. We decided to accept his referral knowing that we may have to learn sign language as a family and being prepared to do whatever was needed to help him. There were just a lot of unknowns until he came home.

Every single thing since then has surprised us. His hearing was better than we expected when he came home. He has no other delays (other than speech) and he is already picking up so much English. He can follow simple commands now and is starting to try to say words. It is amazing how far he has come in such a short time!

We have been learning signs as a way to help him communicate so that he does not get too frustrated. It has been so much fun and we are so thankful to have a way to talk with him! Matthew absolutely loves signing and we use signs frequently throughout the day.

After talking with the speech therapist, I sat down and made a list of all the signs we use. The ones that have a star beside them are the ones that Nathan will use independently (not just copying us) and he has shown he knows the meaning of these ones. I was surprised to see how many we have learned! Nathan knows 16 signs and has even used two together ("more" and "please").

We love the Baby Signing Times videos and that has been a nice easy way for me to learn signs! We look forward to adding more signs to our list in the coming weeks and months!

Did I mention Matthew loves signing?

"Shoes"

"Up"

(This isn't technically a sign - Brad just made it up!

But both of the boys use it all the time. It's so funny!)

"All done"

"Cracker"

"Cat"

That's not a sign...just a cute little boy :)