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be but its not something i can visit anymore unless i close my eyes and think real hard i say all this because i feel like i m about to experience one of those remarkably special christmases again even though god has been so good and gracious to our family and to marae the day we learned marae was deaf was such a dark day we ve spent the last 7 months teaching marae to listen and hear those quiet sounds that slip in and out of her hearing we ve spent all this time waiting for her chance to hear i m so thankful that i ve always felt that marae understood me without my words voice i have learned so much about and that it is so much more than the words we say it s been a remarkable experience and one i do not wish to take back or change i have felt such incredible joy amongst struggle and in that sense i ve come to understand more about the peace that god gives i remember when we lost mom my sister said she wondered what god was preparing us for in many ways that experience helped to prepare me for this though they are two completely different experiences so now for the good news marae is going in for surgery on november 1st to receive her first cochlear implant to say that i am excited is putting it mildly i feel like a little kid at christmas i m so excited that i have a hard time settling to sleep at night i am ecstatic for my baby girl to hear every word i say to hear the dog bark the car drive by to hear the birds singing or the crickets or the sounds of her brother and sister these are things we take for granted until they are taken from us yes marae hears some things but they aren t full words just little sounds here and there as they travel in and out of various frequencies i ve thought about what i ll say to her the first time they activate her first implant i m going to tell her how much i love her she ll have no idea what i m saying of course but she ll know that i m saying it and she ll hear me for the first time loud and clear then begins the fun journey of attaching meaning to all the sounds she will be hearing it s going to be amazing the activation of her implant wont happen until november 28th she ll miss out hearing her first thanksgiving but she will hear her first christmas season we ll be sure to post on our blog how the surgery went thank you for all the prayers regarding the timing of this surgery god gave us a surgeon who does the surgery earlier than most so marae will receive her hearing before there has even been a delay shown in her speech god is good posted by katielrust at 11 03 am 1 comment friday september 23 2011 welcome back ok its a little embarrassing but its been almost 3 months to the day since my last post all i can say is life is busy and we have plenty of life in this house remember when i said having three kids wasn t that hard well our little third kiddo has really turned into an active person and let me tell you 3 is a lot i m trying to remind myself that it s only going to get harder when three are walking and running in three different directions so enjoy the moment katie but i ll do what i have done all along problem solve on how to wrangle them all in one direction whats one more right i wonder if it is this complicated when your kids have more of a spread between them i still believe for us that the closer the better yep number 4 should be coming soon we re thinking around maraes 1st birthday provided her surgery goes well i grew up in a family with quite the distance between kids my parents didn t intend it like that but my older siblings were almost ready to graduate high school when i came along my closest sibling was 5 1 2 years older so as hard as this is sometimes i m having so much fun watching all the kids play together marae is now 6 1 2 months sits up on her own eats solids waves hi and bye vocalizes when she pushes a car and always has her eyes on those tall yet miniature people who are forever hovering over her sometimes all 3 of them will be giggling uncontrollably those are the moments my heart melts then there are those moments when noah is trying to wrestle marae or like today poke her in the eye with a straw and he just doesn t understand that her screaming means no we re still trying to teach noah that marae is delicate or as luke likes to say delicate like a flower only problem is that noah likes to pick the heads off flowers he is such a boy this has been a great summer if you could call it a summer and all my fellow seattleites will understand what i mean by that we managed to have a few vacations and do a lot of activities here are some pictures of some of the things we had fun doing marae had a break from her auditory verbal therapy the therapists have schedules like teachers and are required to only work 4 weeks during the summer break the great thing was that we were still working hard with marae and she was young enough that i didn t feel like we needed a hole lot of help yet plus we kept in close contact with star i would say our biggest issue was trying to prioritize the busy schedules that we were are acquiring and making sure we actually have family time luke and katie time and some time alone with each of the kids the bigger the family gets it s insane how busy things can get luke and i have set a lot of goals and prayerfully set some plans in motion for our family we decided for kay s benefit and my own we would enroll her in preschool at listen and talk she is so smart and really needed to be challenged more she was ready for a classroom environment something that was just tipping me over the edge all the time trying to do maraes stuff make sure noah feels loved and played with and then do all the learning things kay really wanted to do so she goes to preschool monday through thursday from 12 45 3 15 i miss her but i am so encouraged during this break the two younger kids sleep in their seats during the car ride to school and for the first hour there after while i read or do anything i want yes time to myself something i havent had in a long time then when they wake up we either go into the school to the family parent room and play or i take them for a walk in the stroller down the street to the coffee shop and then the park i had forgotten how easy it is to get around with only two kids and how easy it is to give them each their own attention my attitude and energy have definitely improved with this change listen and talk is located in the maple leaf neighborhood just north of the university district and west of the children s hospital if you are familiar with seattle it s a bit of a drive from our house in west seattle luke and i have felt like we are really at a transitional point in our lives our three bedroom town home is getting too small and when marae turns one we would like to start trying for our final 4 th child so we need to move to a bigger house and our needs seem to be taking us up north we discovered that we liked the shoreline area our church has a campus located there its a very short drive to listen and talk and the school district historically pays for preschoolers with hearing loss to attend listen and talk this school is not cheap and can cost up to 2k a month depending on the child s needs so this would be a huge burden off of us the only way we would not have help financially from the school district is if marae did not need an iep individual education plan which could be very possible a lot of children with implants are not delayed in their speech by the age of 3 in this case the price is still expensive but not the amount of our mortgage the shoreline school district is also great and has built in fm systems in most of their classrooms it s the ideal place for marae and all three of the kids should get a great education at this point we are planning on enrolling our kids in public school or a charter school and this has been something we have talked back and forth on i don t want to make it controversial or say that other parents have made the wrong decision as the decision of where and how to educate your children is the right of every parent and should be tailored to each child it s not that i don t think having a christian education is a good idea my own husband attended a christian school but i am concerned that a lot of christian schools promote and breed an attitude of elitism and don t teach the kids about outreach and sharing their faith two combinations that can be dangerous a good number of the schools we ve seen are also affiliated with one church and lack any sort of a music or art program so everyone from that church goes to that school and then you begin to get a stagnant pond with no creativity as our pastor put it once this isn t to say that we wont ever place them in a christian school but it would only happen if we found a christian school that we really felt good about we also feel like god placed our family in a city that needs jesus and we want our kids to grow up learning what it mean to share your faith be that beacon of light and to love unbelievers just as jesus did i think it is so important that our kids know the difference between being judgmental and having a discerning heart lastly a move to shoreline would allow for luke to move around more in the boeing company we would be smack between the everett campus and the renton campus so lord willing we are planning to rent out our town house in seattle and buy a 5 6 bedroom place in shoreline hopefully this will all happen in the next 18 months or so but we are listening and if god should lead us to a different area in the city we ll certainly go there we are in the final stages of marae s ci candidacy last thursday she had her mri and ct at children s hospital she handled the anesthesia really well and it was pretty much a non event this thursday she has a behavioral hearing test just to observe what she does to environmental sounds then next thursday she has her aided and unaided hearing test with that we should know exactly how much she is hearing and how much of human speech she is actually picking up right now we re figuring she is just hearing portions but obviously not everything or she wouldn t need ci s after next thursday we meet with the surgeon and discuss the mri ct and all the findings from the hearing tests just to make sure everything looks great for the surgery then we set a surgery date which is where prayers would be welcomed we are hoping for an end of november surgery date or beginning of december after surgery she will have 2 3 weeks to heal before the implant is activated i have said all along that i really want her to hear for christmas it s a very busy time of year to be doing all this but it s also the most opportune time luke has a large chunk of time off and with all the follow up mapping apts its necessary for him to be off work for a bit i m hoping we can save his vacation days for a special vaca next summer minus children the other prayer is that she would be approved by the insurance to have both implants done at the same time it s rare for insurance to approve that before the age of 1 but if anyones insurance will do it it would be ours we are really at an exciting time and i ll save all maraes videos and new sounds for a post coming to you soon for now we are enjoying her just as she is perfectly made and looking just like her sister check out the resemblance below happy fall marae 6 1 2 months kay 6 1 2 months posted by katielrust at 4 09 pm 2 comments saturday june 25 2011 unexpected blessings i m sure most of you look at marae s deaf diagnoses and think to yourself thank god it s not me thank god it s not my child i know because i ve done it myself when i ve had a friend or family member receive bad news i can think of four cases right off the top of my head i came to a surprising conclusion last week i m sure many of you wont understand how i can say this but after searching deep in my heart god revealed my true feelings about marae s hearing loss i think we go through life thinking anything out of the normal a loss of something immediately means despair grief and ultimately a loss in quality of life god has been teaching me a lot about that stereotype maybe you can examine your own hearts marae on our family walk if god came to me and gave me the option of restoring marae s natural hearing or living life with her hearing loss from the bottom of my heart i would chose for her to be deaf i m sure some of you parents are cringing wondering how i could say that and still be a good mom don t we want the best and easiest path for our children god knew what he was doing when he gave marae her hearing loss it wasn t something that just happened he planned it this way he has known from the beginning of time that my marae would be born deaf i have realized that marae s life will be better because of her hearing loss not in spite of it i cannot explain how much joy has come to luke and i these past few months our journey has been unexpected and unexpectedl y a perfect blessing we have come to see all the ways marae s hearing loss will aid her in receiving so much this side of heaven the opportunities she will have the people who have been placed in her life and genuinely deeply love her the families and friends the community we have met have been some of the kindest most generous people i have ever met in my life they grab your hand and they want to do life with you walk with you they encourage you they bless you with their words i have grown up in the church and even having done that these parents and families have shown us kindness we haven t experienced before i am so proud to be apart of the hearing loss community and i believe marae will be as well we attended the listen and talk early intervention program and preschool picnic a week ago to give you an idea there are 100 kids with hearing loss in the l t early intervention program ages 0 3 and probably another 50 kids in the preschool maybe more that s a lot of families i walked away from that gathering thanking god for the friendships he is giving us and realizing how blessed marae will be to have these friendships as she grows that s when it hit me that i didn t want to trade all these blessing and experiences marae has or will receive for a life with normal working ears she will still hear and the slight inconvenience of having to wear an implant is going to be far outweighed by the opportunities and blessings she will receive because of it what a great place god has brought us to i actually love having mare s hearing aids visible when i take her out and about as i expressed in a previous post i was afraid how people would treat her well her hearing aids have brought about some great conversations and i love talking to people about them for instance we were out walking the other day and we came across another family that stopped to chat with us marae s hearing aids were falling off again and i was adjusting them the mom asked me about them and i to...