Aidan going to get his diaper

The last few days I have tried to slow down on signing that way I can see how much Aidan truly knows verbally. He knows quite a bit and we have been working on diaper. I asked him to go get his diaper, no signs, no prompts, nothing but the word and he ran to get it.

Aidan putting together his Mr Potato head

We have been working on body parts with Aidan by using the Mr potato head, books, and ourselves. Here is a video of him correctly getting the different parts of Mr potato head with just listening.

Still going strong

Aidan is doing fantastic picking up language. He repeats 2-3 new words a DAY! He may not keep them but he sure repeats them. We are making a master list of words he imitates, words he uses spontaneously, and then words he understands when I say them.
Receptive(ones he understands)-Hi, ByeBye, All Done, Mom, No, Alex, Andrew, Aidan, Hot, UhOh, Night Night, and Molly(the dog). There are even more but we just started this list the other day and I am writing them as I notice he understands/uses them. His imitated words(ones he imitates without knowing the meaning)-circle, purple, woah, ow/ouch, mine(although I think he may know this one now), help(seems like he is getting the meaning of this too, and milk(seems he knows this one one day and not the next), there are also more here but I want to make sure we are on top of words he is using so I'm not adding the words I heard 2 weeks ago and not since. Spontaneous words-words he uses with meaning with no prompting whatsoever-Hi, ByeBye, All Done, Mom, No No No, Uh Oh, Hot, Molly, Woof Woof, Water, Moo, Baa, Night Night, Thank you, and Star. Now remember, he has only been hearing for 1 yr and he is actually about on the same level as Andrew-he has probably a few more words than his baby brother(14 mths old) but Andrew can do b's, d's, s's and a few other consonants, while Aidan can't get the consonants out yet. So Andrew's "star" sounds like "stah" while Aidan's sounds like "ar" I have heard the r and n come out but never at the beginning of a word, always in the middle of some babble as I think it is easier to do that. I think when you say Robot it takes a little more than when you say star, both have an r sound, but the r is star is easier for him to get out.

Oh, and eval at Tech went good, the students oooh'd and Ahh'd all over him, he is the only Bilateral implant child in North La and everyone was so excited to see him. They were poking their heads out the door in hopes to get him to say "Hi" and he did! He certainly performed for them and showed them what he can do. A lot of people believe that children that have AN-Auditory Neuropathy-what Aidan has-should not be implanted as there is less success in gaining language. But Aidan has shown a lot of people that it is worth it to implant kids like him as he is understanding language, gaining new words everyday and doing really great!