Some developmental skills

Raphael has learned two new signs:

• "yummy" and
• "hearing aid"

He uses yummy usually when we feed him something from a spoon, particularly if it was something from our plate/bowl rather than something from his own bowl. He uses "hearing aid" whenever we are about to put his aids in. The problem with this is that his hand is in the way.

He is responding quite well to verbal communication while he is wearing his hearing aids but will only verbalize language with grunts rather than pronounceable words or syllables.

On the down side his left ear's hearing seems to have become significantly worse since the gromet insertion (90db loss) this places his left ear in the severe to profound hearing loss category. It is our fear that because it seems to have become worse, it may continue to degrade in the future.

Also at the moment his right ear's grommets are leaking quite a bit of goop which keep on clogging up the hearing aid molds making them useless. We have become quite proficient in cleaning them but it is not a pleasant task to extract a thick glob of puss from the mold tube.