She also wouldn't respond when her mom and dad, Jennifer and Chris, called her name. That's when they feared the worst - that Alannah was deaf.

Last May, the Pearces, of Oceanside, L.I., took their daughter to North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park. After discussions with doctors there, they decided to have Alannah, then a year old, undergo six hours of cochlear implant surgery.

Now, a year later, when Chris comes home, Alannah yells, "Daddy!"

"It is a miracle to us," Jennifer said.

The bubbly Alannah and her parents were on hand Tuesday to celebrate the birthday of Alannah's hearing at the opening of the hospital's Apelian Cochlear Implant Center.

The $4 million, 7,000-square-foot center is equipped with therapy and treatment suites to assist the increasing number of cochlear implant patients. It is attached to the current hospital's Hearing and Speech Center, and is named after Queens philanthropists Nishan and Elizabeth Apelian.

The hospital has performed 50 cochlear implant surgeries, and expects to do at least two such procedures a month. The surgery requires a lifetime of maintenance, which the new center is better equipped to handle, according to Andrea Vambutas, medical director of the cochlear implant center.

Previously, hearing-impaired patients had to travel to Manhattan to have such a procedure performed. Now, the medical center is the first hospital in Nassau County and Queens to offer cochlear implant surgery and therapy.

Vambutas said the operation can cost as much as $25,000 per ear. It entails having a hearing device implanted by making an incision behind the ear to open part of the skull - the mastoid bone that leads to the middle ear. The device stimulates the auditory nerve in the cochlea, the inner part of the ear that senses sound, Vambutas explained.

"I'm happy to hear that other families will have the opportunity like we had," said Chris. "It's going to broaden the knowledge base of a lot of people and bring this procedure to a lot of families that would not know about it."

These days, Alannah is a talkative toddler who can focus on where sounds are coming from and who is speaking to her. She has more than 60 words in her vocabulary, Chris said, and is in a class learning at the same rate as hearing children.

But if Alannah is lagging behind, her personality makes up for it, her father joked.

"She's a very bossy and feisty kid," Chris laughed. "She likes to be in charge the whole time."

By Jillian Ogawa, Daily News