How time flies!

Well, would you look at that - it's over a year since my last post! Oops...

Sorry to those of you who have been wanting updates, obviously i've been either busy, or slack, or both...how about this: here's a summary of 2011!

All Australian Hearing appointments standard, no change in anyone's hearing levels. No ENT appointments! (Is that a record?!? Probably.) Jarrah enjoyed Preschool immensely all year, and finally started to accelerate in his language development. One day in Feb 2011, it was like the fog lifted. All of a sudden, on our way to speech one morning, something happened. I don't know what, but it was obvious and instantaneous, and from that moment on he was present in conversations, he listened to what other people said much better, and from then his speech & language really improved. I still don't know what happened that day, but it was a real turning point in his life.

Kaelen continued going to Kindy 1 day/week, and also enjoyed it. His language has continued to develop nicely, and although he had a patch of blocked ears due to illness in the middle of the year, this doesn't appear to have hampered his progress at all.

Jonica grew and changed so much...learned to crawl, started signing in about June (aged 9 months!), and saying "bye-bye" at a similar time, by mid-November (aged 13.5 months) had about a 20-word vocabulary of either words or signs, got her first teeth in December (aged 14 months), and is showing every sign of normal language development.

So far in 2012, things have continued along a similar vein, although there have been some major changes:

- Jarrah started Prep this year! Quite enjoys school, we are *so* pleased we kept him back the extra year, and he's loving all the input. His language is still accelerating, which is wonderful - one of his latest phrases is "I am very surprised!", which makes us all laugh, it's very cute.

- I have gone back to some daytime work, teaching instrumental music in schools. This makes life even more busy than before (if that's possible!), but it's good to "get back into it" a bit

- Due to the previous point, Kaelen is now at Kindy more...this is a mixed blessing. He needs the input also, and i think enjoys the learning, but he's a boy who needs his cuddles so i think he misses being at home with me sometimes

- Also due to my work, Jonica is now in care too; she attends the same Kindy as Kaelen, and they love having each other there even though they're in different rooms. She has settled in nicely and loves the staff there. She's the tiniest one in her room but the other kids seem to love her

The most exciting development in the last few weeks is that Jonica can now walk! She started taking steps 2 weeks ago, and today i think i saw her crawl 3 times...she walked the rest of the day! No more baby in our house, we're into toddler-world!

The only recent concern with hearing is that Jonica's latest Aus Hearing results weren't so good; she had an appt in January but she was out of sorts that day and they didn't get great results, so we re-scheduled...and by then her middle ears had blocked up, meaning she was about to get sick :-( She has duly been sick, and our next follow-up appt is Wed 28th March...hopefully her ears have cleared by then and the results will be normal!

And let's hope i can post slightly more regularly in 2012...