M. Kat Shyamalan

This is the premiere of Miss Kat's film debut. She wrote, directed, and co-starred as well as handling all the cinematography and editing duties. 

Bilingual Bimodal Webinar

Bilingual Bimodal Education Webinar 1

I watched this and I loved it! I hope this is the direction Deaf schools are headed! The information was great and I can't wait to watch the next one!

(And now we have a name for Miss Kat's language progress...sequential bilingualism!)

Cute phrases that have popped up...

Miss Kat came home last week and after Daddy thanked her for something she said "Piece of cake!" Tonight when it was time for bed, she said "Bummer".

Also, she has been telling us to "zip" and signing a sort of "zipper closing across the mouth", when she thinks that we are talking too much. We asked where she got that and she answered that her teacher says it at school when she is talking too much! Ah, the joys of having a social butterfly!

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Today we received Miss Kat's FM system!!! We order it through insurance and were lucky enough to get it covered. (We have no need for it at school, since she is in a acoustically treated environment and in classes with no more than 3 other students.) We wanted it for things like church, noisy restaurants or even in the car. She ADORES it! We tried it out in the gym this morning and then we hooked it up to the TV this evening. We are going to work out how to pass it around for church, and other situations, but right now she is learning how to play chess with Daddy in the living room....things are great 

Gee-gee Bells

Miss Kat wanted to sing "Jingle Bells" tonight, and wasn't going to let something as trivial as not knowing the words stop her! So, Daddy found a karaoke video, and this is her working her butt off to try to read the words fast enough to sing it. I would love to caption it, but it is incomprehensible!

Miss Kat's Thanksgiving thoughts

We had a rather non-tradition thanksgiving this year. It is our first away from family since Miss Kat was a baby. We went to the zoo as a family and got to see them feeding the animals, and then we came home and had our version of Thanksgiving dinner. As we were sitting there eating dinner, we were discussing what a typical Thanksgiving dinner would be and she gave me this insight:

"I don't want to eat animal meat. Turkey is healthy food, but I don't want it. It is terrible. I love animals. I want to save them."

Miss Kat has been talking along these lines for several weeks. She has made it very clear that she believes that eating animals is unacceptable. We were extended several invitations to spend the holiday with friends, but each time she asked if they would be having turkey, and when I replied yes, she would say that she didn't want to go.

Later at the dinner table Miss Kat told us a funny little anecdote. (She expressed it in both spoken language and sign. She used a bit of each, preferring whichever language better expressed the idea in the story.) I will attempt to transfer it into written English here:

A little girl went walking in the woods.  She was very hungry. She spotted a wild turkey wandering across her path.  Because of her extreme hunger, when she saw the turkey, it appeared (in her mind's eye) as a cooked and dressed Thanksgiving turkey.  She chased the turkey down, seized it and gobbled it up whole. She then continued on her path, satisfied. Before long, she began to feel a touch of indigestion and started burping. Along with the first burp, came a feather. With the second, two feathers. The last one was a huge, rumbling belch accompanied by one hundred feathers!

Funny, isn't it! I wish we had videotaped it, so the world could see her face expressing the ideas. Miss Kat is such a creative, expressive kiddo. I know for sure that she is what I will always be most thankful for.

Deaf Families with Cochlear Implants Study

I thought this was important and wanted to spread the word: The ASL-Cochlear Implant Community: Deaf Families with Cochlear Implants Study