Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

Enjoying Sbux free whipped cream. Tian loves Mater from Cars, Dora (yes....Dora...especially one particular episode with a blue train named Azul), trains, trains and more trains.  His favorite food isn't really food at all, but milk.  He'd live on milk alone if we let him.  Good thing we've switched to organic. Tian's language continues to grow by leaps and bounds.  His last audiogram at TSD showed that he has close to normal hearing in most settings.  He's completely bilingual, which is fun to watch.  He naturally code-switches between ASL and spoken English, depending on who he is communicating with and what he is attempting to say.  When he uses only his voice, I have to ask him to clarify with ASL.  His speech can be very clear, but it also often tough to decipher. Tian often signs and talks at the same time.  When he does, he will either talk in ASL or sign in English word order.  For example, he may sign and quietly voice, ...

Life has been full since our transplant to Austin.  The Fall flew by, and my blog decided to hibernate. I will skip telling you all of the fun activities we've done since moving to this great city.  Instead, I'll update you on the kids, which is what I know you want anyway. It's been months and months since my last language update. The boys have been at Texas School for the Deaf (TSD) for over 4 months, which is hard to believe!  For the rest of us, it's fun to see new language emerge when they get home. Travis: He continues to add either new vocabulary or new technical aspects of ASL every week.  Last night, I was reading to both boys before bed.  The particular book I was reading has an interactive wrench.  With each page, you help Guido "fix" some part of Lightning McQueen's car. Rewind about two weeks when we were reading this same book.  When we reached the end of the book, Travis recognized his name in an inscription from his grandparent...