That's My Name!

Logan loves to share things with his younger brother, Chase. Every time he sees Chase in the morning he says, "Chase, wake up, yeah." Every time he gets out of the car to go to school, he says to his brother, "Chase, Bye." Every time we pick him up from school, he says, "Chase, Hi. How are you?" and shows him what he colored at school by saying, "Chase, look." This goes on all day, however, Chase never responds to Logan or even acknowledges that Logan is talking to him, mainly because Logan still hasn't mastered Chase's name yet--Chase doesn't know he is being addressed. I usually repeat Chase's name to him, so that he will look up at Logan-I want Logan to know that his words have meaning, that we are understanding, so that he doesn't get discouraged.

Anyway, today in the car, Logan was sitting in the backseat, behind Chase. Logan found a batman toy in the car that he wanted to show Chase and said, "Chase, Chase!" (with the 'ch' and the 'a' sound sounding very clear). I was getting ready to repeat Chase's name for him, when Chase looked back at Logan and said, "What." He recognized his name! Logan said it good enough for Chase to understand. I grinned from ear to ear!

I feel like this is a start for "normal" brotherly playtime!

Disney World...

We were so excited for Logan to experience Disney World since the last time we were at Disneyland was before he was implanted. The sounds were fantastic to him and he even tried to sing along with "It's a Small World". I would have never thought it, but what a great language experience Disney World is. There were so many new things he had never seen, the characters, the colors, the songs! He loved every minute and wouldn't stop asking how to say everything he saw. Although we had so much fun, unless we were actually on a ride it was very stressful for me to struggle with Logan hearing me through all the crowds. (Another reason we are eager to get the second implant done.) I was shouting most of the time just to get his attention. We also ran into a problem with him wandering off so much. Because Logan is still very visual, so many things seemed to catch his eye and he'd wander towards it. It was difficult to keep track of him because we were also with his two other brothers and their 3 cousins! I would usually keep little Logan on one of those cute "leashes", but that wasn't something he wanted to wear since all of the older kids were free to walk on their own.
All in all it was a great three days and he can hardly wait to go back.

New receptive and expressive words learned from Disney World:
"Mickey"
"Lion"
"weeee"
"Rhino"

One of Logan's favorite rides was at the Animal Kingdom, the Safari. There was a picture list of all the animals we would see on the safari. Every time we saw an animal, he would find it on the picture board, ask me how to say it and try to mimic it.

Tanner helping Logan count to ten...

(make sure to turn your volume up and pause the music, at the bottom of the page, to hear the audio.)

The best sound ever!

He said, it...finally! My little Logan said "Ma-Ma" for the first time! For the past few months, both my husband and I were both just, "ba-ba." I never thought hearing it would sound so sweet. When he first said it, I kind of freaked him out at how much excitement I showed. He looked at me like I was crazy. What's funny is that he said it after hearing my 16 month old say it, he was mimicking him. I knew that Tanner, my 5 year old would be a speech model for Logan, but I never thought that baby Chase would be one as well. :-)