The best baby sign language videos!
As you all know, we’re beginning to sort out the future with Baby Zeke and his health, but in particular at the moment (since it’s all we know for sure), his hearing impairment.  Despite the fact that his hearing can be improved with hearing aids, we’re still solidly in the deaf and hearing impaired community.  As such, we’ve begun the process of learning sign language!

We’ve had tremendous success with a series of videos produced by the Coleman family, pictured to the left.  We discovered their story only after we began using their videos – it resonates with our experience very well as their business grew out of a need to respond to the birth of their deaf daughter.  Things then accellerated with the birth of their second daughter, which you can read all about in the “about us” section of their website.

Their compelling story aside, the product that they have produced has been fantastic for our kids.  Zeke is obviously too young to begin signing yet, but the other three kids have been fascinated and enraptured with these videos.  I have been amazed to watch their signing vocabulary grow over even just the last two weeks as the signing begins to sink in.  Even Jed at two years old jumps up and down and screams when it’s time for Baby Signing Time; he’s using signs almost as much as he’s using the spoken word.

The most exciting thing is that as Zeke grows and hopefully begins to comprehend communication, our other children are poised and ready to teach him their new language.  It’s also becoming a regular part of their lives and won’t be a new change or adaptation when Zeke gets older – their signing skills are already in place!

I want to also be clear on the benefits of signing in young children even absent any hearing or speech impediments.  It has dramatically cut down in the frustrations that Jed (at 2 yrs) experiences in his  efforts to be understood.  He regularly comes upstairs and signs “hungry” or “thirsty” to Jesi.

We’d really encourage everyone with young children, hearing or otherwise, to check out these videos… They’re having a big impact on our daily lives and we’re excited to keep learning with the kids as they grow!

This is an open letter to our friends and family… if you’re reading this blog, you qualify!

Family and Friends;

As you are all no doubt aware, this has been something of a crazy year for us.  The events surrounding the birth of our fourth child, Zeke, have made us question almost every aspect of our lives over the last three months.  If you’re not familiar with Zeke’s story you can read all about it, starting from the bottom,  at:

http://thebabyzeke.com

We questioned our purpose, the direction of our lives, even what tomorrow would bring us.  Some of those questions were made more urgent last month when a reassignment at work meant more hours for less pay.  Critical Response LTD and it’s website, CriticalResponseFirstAid.com are the realization of months of soul searching, purpose seeking and life redefining.

A little bit about the purpose – the medical experiences we’ve had with Zeke have opened our eyes to a lifestyle we’d previously ignored as young, healthy people.   We’ve come to appreciate how delicate life is and how many things can go wrong in the blink of an eye.  We’re still working on entirely rejecting the fear and living boldly, but we’re appreciating that part of living life to the fullest means being equipped to respond to the emergencies that we all will inevitably face.  If you’d like to see numbers, feel free to visit the American Heart Association’s website; Cardiac Arrest is 90% – 95% fatal.  Utilization of an AED in under four minutes drops that mortality rate to just under 50%.  Since Cardiac Arrest can happen to any one, regardless of age or heath, you can begin to appreciate why we are sharing the goal of the AHA – to make AEDs as common as fire extinguishers in public places.

A bit about the business – first off, I am not asking you to buy anything.  Most of you do not have any requirement for an AED in your house or the type of first aid products that we offer.  Without some extenuating circumstances (such as we have in our house with Zeke) our kits are above and beyond what the average family needs to be safe.  But each and every one of you has influence in a highly populated place – each of you goes to college, has children in school, goes to church, works in an office building, knows the jobsite safety coordinator, works with foster children, owns your own business…  The placement of AEDs is quickly becoming commonplace in these environments – speak up and let the people you love know about the resource that our company provides.

Also, you may wonder if, given the economy, this is the best time to start a business.  As we weighed the path before us, we eventually realized that not only should we start this company, but this was the best time imaginable for us to start it.  We’ve found a cause that we can get behind – not only financially, but morally and spiritually as well.  We firmly believe that while the events of the last six months each carry their own significance, their sum has brought us to a purpose – a purpose for our entire family.

I’ve touched briefly on what we’re asking from you – nothing more than spread the word.  Be our fans; forward this to your friends that I don’t know.  Tell your family about us.  Watch for our updates and keep supporting us emotionally; we’ve discovered the depth of our friendships with all of you through the last few months – we’re still going to need it!  Thanks again for everything and tell everyone about us!  In case you are interested, here’s a discount code for 10% off; feel free to give it to anyone you think will use it!  Just plug it in at checkout – Friends10

Thanks again and God bless you all!

-Dave & Jesi

http://CriticalResponseFirstAid.com

Zeke earlier today - getting hearing aids fitted!

Well, It’s been a long few weeks.  We’ve been struggling with some job-related things for about a month now, unfortunately the pay cut is now official.  I’ve been working like a madman on a separate project that I’ll be unveiling later this weekend, but for now here’s the latest on Mr. Zeke.

First, the good news!  Zeke grew 20 ounces in 28 days which is tremendous.  He’s also been very responsive and loves to interact with us; his smiles are getting bigger all the time and he’s experimenting with new expressions.  He loves to play, especially after he’s woken up from his nap.  The hearing aids are working very well, he wears them for a couple hours two or three times a day.  When he’s had them in for a while or when he’s tired they become a bit overwhelming for him.  When he’s rested and ready to play, he loves them!  The bouncy seat with the music and flashing lights has become a favorite, especially when he can hear the music.  He was refitted for the part of the hearing aid that goes into his ear today; then we have no more appointments with the ear folks until the ear molds become too small for us to work with.

We had a monthly check up with our pediatrician today; Zeke is looking good and growing well, still hitting his developmental marks on time.  That continues to be a relief and it’s very exciting; he’s playing with us and eating well and starting to get a real rhythm to his sleep at night.  So, as far as Zeke goes, Zeke is doing very very well.

Then the bad news.  We had a long talk with our doctor about the next few months as we move into the winter season.  I want to preface this by reminding everyone that we’ve developed a tremendous relationship with our kid’s doctor over the last six years that we’ve been seeing him.  It’s so hard to find a health care provider that you trust and that agrees with your general health-philosophy.  Our philosophy is generally laid back; keep everyone safe and let things take their natural course.  He’s been tremendous at helping us know what things are serious and what things can wait through the weekend, which preventative measures are worthy and which are a waste of money and time.  I’m taking the time to explain this, because what he told us this week really shocked us and is forcing us to reconsider quite a few things.

It basically comes down to the amount of time that Zeke spent on the oxygen after he was born.  We’ve had a generally optimistic outlook on his development and overall health up to this point, and we’ve been right to be – he is doing well right now.  The issue is his susceptibility to a host of seasonal sicknesses, particularly the respiratory ones such as the flu (swine or otherwise), whooping cough, RSV, etc.  His weakness doesn’t have anything to do with his condition per se, but the combination of the oxygen use and his age (obviously significantly under a year) make him very prone to contracting these illnesses, and most or all of them would be hospital events at the least.

We told him that we’d been feeling like we were somewhat paranoid about taking Zeke out, but that we’d been doing so for the last month or so in controlled environments.  He looked us in the eye and told us that we haven’t been nearly paranoid enough and that we were now moving into the worst part of the year.  We were pretty taken aback, especially given how well Zeke has been doing .  To add to the weight of his verdict, he is a God-fearing Christian who understands fully the need for church and social interaction for all of our kids.   He specifically told us that we can’t bring Zeke to church again and that to do so would be grossly irresponsible.

So we’re not sure what to do with all this – obviously we won’t be bringing Zeke around public places for a few months.  Throughout this entire summer we’ve people ask us if we weren’t being over-excited by some over-zealous doctors.  We’ve strived to maintain a balance between reason and caution, caution and fear.  We’ve sought a variety of opinions on almost all of the issues facing us.  The most sobering aspect of all this is that this strict direction came from one of our more practical medical advisors.  The big specific concerns are not mythical monsters in the closet, either.  We’ve had RSV and Whooping Cough circulate among our friends and their kids in recent years.

At the moment we mostly want everyone to understand what we’re looking at for the winter months…  our older kids can go out and interact (with obvious close supervision and clearly good health in their friends) but we’ve been told especially Jed can’t be in a group babysitting or play environment.  Obviously Jesi and I can interact with other adults, but most if not all of our social interactions for the next few months will have to be divided between us as one of us stays home with Zeke.  We can’t even really have people over (except those of you that don’t have or don’t bring kids over).  We’re basically going to be recluses until the spring; which is going to be tough.

How can you all help?  I don’t know yet.  I’ll have plenty of interaction through work, but I need to make sure that Jesi gets out periodically and can visit with other women.  You can pray for our health – especially for Baby Zeke.  This is not a permanent frailty – once he reaches a year things should hopefully (really, hopefully is all we have) improve considerably from the immunity perspective.  It’s the combination of his 3 short months of age and his 1.5 full months of oxygen that have left him open to infection and sickness.

Needless to say, we feel like we’ve been walking around with a little flashlight and then the sun came up and we saw that we were walking on the edge of a precipice.  We’re starting to get used to these life-changing developments; this is just the next chapter.  This, too, shall pass… at least we hope so!