We’ve had a pretty eventful month, considering that it’s tax season and I try reeeallly hard to not do much when it is! Maybe life is trying to tell me to suck it up and get over it?!?
Daniel had his little surgery last Friday. Though, when he’s under anesthesia for 90 minutes, it doesn’t feel “little.” Thankfully everything went well and he is recovering nicely.
There was so much negative pressure behind both of his ear drums (due to the “glue” that was in there), that the first bone in the middle ear was in a horizontal position in both ears. For those who are not familiar with the workings of the middle ear, the first bone – the Maleus or “hammer” - is supposed to be in a nearly vertical position. The pressure was sucking that poor little bone – along with the eardrum – way into his middle ear. The results of the ABR were good. His auditory nerve is functioning beautifully. He does have some residual hearing loss, however, and we will need to follow up with the audiologist to get more detail on that. And is eyes are beautifully non-goopy! It is so nice to actually see his eyes first thing in the morning!
We had a fun evening with our local Down syndrome group the evening of Daniel’s surgery. We went bowling – which is always “fun” with small kids who can hardly move the ball but refuse any and all help. After we had been there for around 30 minutes, the lights turned black and we went Cosmic Bowling. The kids had a great time with that, and they especially loved my jeans with their white stitching and jewels on the back pockets.
For the most part, the weather has been so springy this winter, which has been wonderful. The kids have been out to play in our snowless yard several times. Caleb was brought in, completely against his will, on Friday (man, Friday was an eventful day for us!) because he was eating the dirt. I asked him why he was eating the dirt, and he whimpered, “Because I was hungry.” Uh huh. The twelve dozen snacks plus meals he has in a day just weren’t cuttin’ it for him.
Grandma L. came to visit for Prsident’s Day. She gave us a fun, much-needed break from the everyday stuff we always do. And what’s a visit without trying to get a few pictures of (almost) everyone?!?! This was probably the best of several. Can you see all their personalities?
Funny faces!!
Oh, and we can’t forget about the fun day on Tuesday. I was working on homework with Emily, and Rachel was attempting to use the bathroom when she yelled, “Hey, who turned out the light??” I immediately accused Caleb (hey, it’s just this kid’s M.O.), and he said, “I didn’t do it!” Oh. Turns out the power went out. No big deal. We continued working on homework and trying to get things done. We still had no power at 4:30, so I told the kids if it wasn’t on by 5:00, we’d go get pizza and they’d be coming to Mutual with me. Jared WAS going to come home early, but no sense in him doing that if there is no power. So at the appointed time, and still powerless, we headed out for pizza. As we drove up our street, it became apparent that the other houses all had power. Odd. We stopped back after dinner and, of course, the power was still out. I gathered up what I needed for Mutual (in my mostly dark room) and then decided I’d call the power company. Their automated system said they were aware of the outage and that crews were there working on it. They expected it to be back by 8:00 p.m. We still had time to kill before Mutual, so we went and got ice cream at McDonald’s. We drove back up our street on the way to Mutual, and I could tell that the power outage was only 3 houses, ours included. Seriously, of all the times, it has to choose a Tuesday!!
And lastly, the physical therapist told me to get Daniel a pair of lace-up, hard soled shoes. I wondered if there were going to be any SMALL enough to fit his feet! These are a size 1, and this picture really does no justice to just how tiny they are!
