Little Lucas had breakfast with Santa on Saturday morning, and thoroughly enjoyed sitting on his lap. When asked what he wants for Christmas, he responded "presents." I guess he will be easy to please.
We are on day 4 of post-activation bliss, and it's going... I would estimate that Lucas is wearing his new ear about 80% of the time. He won't wear it in the car, and it keeps falling off his ear, so that's not helping things. Then, there are the times when we're not looking and he takes it off and hides it. It's good that he's so verbal that he can find it for me when I ask where it is. I found myself telling him several times today, "you have until the count of 5 to find your ear..." We NEVER had this problem with his old ear, because he is so attached to it. He simply cannot stand to be without it. 2nd CI... not so much.
I've asked him what it sounds like, just to see what he might say. He responded, "beep, beep" and "silly." Interesting.
He will let me work with his new ear alone a little bit. When his SLP was here on Friday, he was in quite a silly mood. He wanted to keep turning on this little music box that plays for about 10 seconds then turns off, so we played along and would freeze when the music stops. Then I suggested to him that we try with just his new ear. He played along for a little bit, but kept putting the old ear back on. But, then he initiated the game himself by voluntarily playing with just the new ear. It was great.
Before bed, I've been trying to condition his new ear with the Ling sounds. I will face him without covering my mouth, while he's still wearing both ears. I'll pick a ling, say it with both ears, remove the old one so that he's listening with the new ear alone, and then say it with both ears on again. I'm kind of sandwiching the sounds so that his brain learns to recognize them. I realize it's still premature, because he doesn't have full access to speech with his current settings, but I feel like it's a start.
So, things are still going well, but it's a little bit of a struggle still. We'll get there though, we'll get there.