4.26.2006

My many hats

The other day Tess and Selah were playing with Hubby. He had a hat on and there happened to be a hat of mine in the same room.

Tess took Hubby's hat off his head and put it on her own. She stood in front of him and said in her best deep-daddy-voice, "My name is Hubby and I build houses." Accurate. For the most part.

Then Selah grabbed my hat that was sitting on the back of the couch. She put it on her head and said in a high pitched girly voice (which happens to be very unlike my own voice actually), "My name is Margo and I work for my kids!"

I'm thinking of approaching them about a raise. If they are, in fact, in charge. That would at least explain some things. And I could maybe just go ahead and get those bon-bons after all.

4.25.2006

Some help, maybe

Elliot has hearing issues.

We realized it when he was in Kindergarten. I received a note in the mail saying that he'd failed the hearing screening at school. I sort of shrugged it off, figured it was nothing. He failed the screening again next year and I figured I should probably take him to a doctor. So off we went.

The audiologist in town said that he had a severe hearing loss and required a hearing aid. We were dumbfounded. How could our kid have such a severe loss that he needed a hearing aid and we didn't even know it. Nice attentive parents, huh?

At the time of that testing Elliot happened to also have an ear infection. We were told that we needed to clear that up for the proper fitting of his new appliance but that taking care of the infection would not change the fact that he needed an aid.

Hubby was beside himself. I wasn't quite as upset, I just wanted Elliot to be able to hear. But we both had reservations of our kid having to go through life with this handicap. We know how cruel kids can be. It scared us to death.

The night before Elliot's next checkup Hubby prayed and prayed. In fact, he fasted the day before. He prayed that God would heal him and make it known that He had taken care of it. We went in the next day for the screening and the audiologist called us back with a dumbfounded look on her face. Elliot can hear, she told us. Not great, but not so bad now that he was even a candidate for amplification. She had no medical reason as to why this happened. Couldn't explain it. Wow.

The next year Elliot passed the hearing screening at school. However, last year he failed again. When I took him back to see the audiologist here in town she got such a completely different result that she referred us to a specialist in another town.

So that's where we've gone for a little over a year now. I should mention that Elliot has also had some fainting spells and often suffers from nausea for no apparent reason. In an attempt to find some sort of correlation between all these ailments poor little Elliot has been put through the ringer with tests. ABR's, MRI's, CT Scan's, EEG's, EKG's, 3 hour glucose tests, etc, etc, etc. Everything is always normal.

In the last several months we've been treating his progressive hearing loss with a diuretic and low sodium diet because the doctor thought he had Cochlear Hydrops. However, it hasn't seemed to help and at his checkup today his hearing in his right ear was down once again. Thankfully, his left ear is in the normal range. It's the low end of the normal range but normal nonetheless. At the rate his right ear is going though, he'll likely be completely deaf by the time he reaches high school.

So all this background information on his condition is just to say that it looks like we might now have a "fix". It's so obvious to us now that he can't hear. We'll say something and he'll repeat something back to us that isn't even close to what we said. He struggles with hearing us and it's painful to watch. He needs a hearing aid. However, because of the type of hearing loss he has a normal hearing aid will only amplify the mumbled words he hears. Like he needs louder nonsense going in his head. What this means is that he needs one of two things.

One is a cross reference hearing aid. That means an aid in each ear. One acts as a speaker that throws the right sounds over to the good ear. It's not always very clear though and many patients with this type of loss have had complaints about it.

The other option is BAHA, or bone anchored hearing aid. This is what we think we'll do. It's a small titanium implant that is put into his head behind his ear. Sound is transferred through the bone of the skull, stimulating the cochlea in the hearing ear. Then the brain can distinguish between the sound that it receives from the deaf side via the BAHA system, from the sound that it receives directly from the hearing ear. Apparently, the end result is the sensation of hearing from the deaf side.

Wow. Kind of a big deal huh. But wouldn't it be great if he could hear. And he didn't feel like he was always being a pain saying, "What did you say?"

4.16.2006

The not-so-little Mermaid and other stuff

You know in The Little Mermaid, where she finally gets her legs and is trying to walk and she's all wobbly and giddy with excitement? That's how Marleigh was on Friday night when I finally let her shave.

There just hadn't been a good time since I bought her razor kit. So Friday she came home from spending the day at a friends house and I took her into my bathroom where I told her to close her eyes and hold out her hands. Did you hear that squeal? It was loud, and ear piercing. She was absolutely thrilled.

We looked at all the shaving tips together and I gave her a few of my own. Then she sat on the edge of my bathtub with Selah and Tess and myself all looking on and she shaved. I think she's shaved every day since then. It's still new and exciting. I give her a month before she's sick of it and wishing she'd never asked to start.

Today is Easter Sunday and we went to church for the first time in a long while. We'd started back up full throttle at the first of the year and then fell out of it again. I hate that we do that. I'm going to try to make a very good effort to stay active. The kids need it, I need it. I teared up several times during songs and a video they played this morning. Just thinking of the sacrifice that was made for us and how I just don't nearly show the thankfulness that I should. Gotta get better. Really do.

Hubby has had the budget talk with me several times in recent months. The one that goes, "We really need to get on a budget." Now he's switched from that to actually making a budget which has me quite scared. I'm a bit of a shopaholic. Champagne taste on a beer budget. That's me all the way. Except that I keep spending the money like it's there which is, I think, what drove Hubby to come up with this budget of his. So far we have not sat down to go over it but I know I'm just one big shopping trip away from it. Not good.

4.10.2006

Ready or not

I've decided to bite the bullet and let Marleigh shave. I think part of me is under the impression that if she doesn't shave then she won't keep growing up at such a rate that is giving me anxiety attacks. I think someone probably needs to slap some sense into that part of me.

Actually, after my last entry about her desire to shave I did some thinking. I decided maybe I would at least look at the razors next time I was at the store. Maybe I'd even pick one up and surprise her with it.

I did look at them the next time I was out. I even stopped and picked one up. Then I kept on walking.

I did some careful try-to-be-sly leg inspections when we had 10 friends over this weekend for her birthday party. What I noticed was that several of them have already shaved. And of those that looked like they have not yet had that rite of passage, they aren't nearly as hairy as my Marleigh is. So I decided to bite the bullet and buy a razor.

Tess and I had to go to the store this morning so I picked up a snazzy little razor kit. It looks like it's meant for a first-time-shave experience. It includes some stickers and tattoo's along with the razor and some shave gel. And instruction cards for shaving. All packaged neatly in a pink carry bag.

She's going to flip when she sees it. She really is. I think anyone in a 20 mile radius of our house will probably hear her squeal when I give it to her.

So I guess I need to figure out a time to present it to her. I want to do it at a time that I'm available to help her and be sure she doesn't go all Edward Scissorhands on her poor little hairy legs. She doesn't have school on Friday so maybe we'll do it Thursday night. After her volleyball practice. Yep. I think that's what we'll do.

Wish us luck.

4.09.2006

We made it 11 years

Today was quite an adventure.

We went to a birthday party for an adult friend. It was a surprise party and an Elvis theme. The hosts have quite a thing for Elvis. It was crazy.

So the kids were all riding around riding on a golf cart. The hosts Grandson is a friend of Elliot's and he's been driving this golf cart around for a long time. I really didn't have any concerns with the kids riding on it. However, at one point the boys thought it would be a good idea if the dog rode around with them and he apparently wasn't crazy about the idea. So he got squirmy which made Tess fall off. In her words, "The doggy pushed me off the cawt!"

I was eating at the time and I heard her crying. Not a major "I'm hurt bad" cry. She came and sat with me and cried but it really seemed like she was more embarassed about falling and that her pride was hurt. She said her arm hurt. After a few minutes Hubby took her and realized that she wouldn't move her arm much, wouldn't grip his finger, etc. So we decided to take her to the doctor.

Of course it's Sunday, and there's no such thing as an emergency clinic in our town, so it was off to the ER. Hubby drops me and Tess off and has to head home to get Marleigh ready for practice. Within about 30 minutes I wondered if I should just tell the receptionist nevermind. Tess was griping my hand, moving her arm. Seemed to be much better.

We get back to a room where a nurse comes and feels her arm and pushes on it. She doesn't make a peep. Doesn't really act like it hurts much at all. She says it hurts but won't say where specifically. She's not consistent with her pain either. One minute it does hurt here and then next minute that same spot feels fine.

So then the doctor comes in and feels around. She does the same with him and I confess to him that I have a feeling it's not anything very serious and that she's probably not being very accurate. Basically, I thought she was faking. I think he thought the same thing but wanted to get an x-ray just in case.

After the doctor left the room I asked Tess if she was fibbing. She got all teary and said she didn't want to get in trouble. She said it DID hurt but that now it was better and she just wanted to go home. Too late, in comes the x-ray technician with the portable machine. Oh well, we'll go ahead and get a couple pictures just for the heck of it.

Tess cried during the pictures but I was sure it was because it really was a bit scary. A big huge machine over her and some weird heavy apron covering her belly. She just kept saying she wanted to go home. Hubby was there too at this point and kept telling her to calm down. Frankly I think we were both just a bit embarassed that our just-turned-4-year-old was able to dupe us.

Several minutes later the doctor walks back in and starts off with, "Well, dog gonnit..." I'm certain he's going to finish with, "...I can't figure out why it's hurting. I think she must have just bruised it." Instead he says, "She broke her arm".

I wonder what went through his mind when Hubby and I both looked really surprisingly pleased with his announcement. Not that we would wish her a broken arm. But she wasn't faking! We were at the point that we thought we were crazy for rushing her to the ER. I think we were both thinking that we should have taken her home and watched to see how she did instead of just rushing her to the hospital. But we did the right thing. Yeah us!

Her diagnosis is a Proximal Humeral Fracture. Her arm is broken up high, between the elbow and shoulder. Apparently they don't cast a break in this area. So she's in a brace. It goes around her upper abdomen and there are "cuffs" that hold her upper arm and lower arm in a bent position so that it can heal. She has to wear it for a month and in 2 weeks we go in to her regular ped to see if it's healing correctly. I was sort of surprised that I don't need to follow up with anyone for 2 weeks. I guess that's normal?

I recently saw a friend that had broken her foot. I asked her how it happened and she rolled her eyes and said she was just walking across her yard. I told her that she really needed a more exciting story. "Try something like, 'I went skydiving and had a really bad landing'" I told her. So this evening Marleigh said we should come up with a better story for Tess's broken arm. I said, "I think being pushed out of a moving golf cart by a dog is a pretty good story."

Did I mention that Tess is right handed and it's her right arm? This should be an interesting month.

We've been parents for 11 years now. This is our first broken bone so I guess we're doing pretty good. Hopefully we won't have any more. It's awfully hard seeing your little ones in pain.

4.07.2006

One of these days...

...I'm going to do an entry in here that isn't just me whining and complaining. Promise.

Today though I'm stressed. Really stressed. It's hard being a mom. At least it is for me. I wonder if it's just me and everyone else is just sailing through.

Marleigh's birthday party is tomorrow. I waited too long to order the party favors and craft stuff. So when I finally got around to doing it on Monday I had to pay an extra $20 to have it shipped quickly. So yesterday a box arrives, but it's only one of the many things I ordered. I got online to look at the tracking and I see that it's coming in two boxes. Box number 2 was to arrive last night at 7:00. When it never came I got on to track it again and find that it's now scheduled to be delivered on the 11th. The party is the 8th.

Um, not gonna work.

Also not in the time frame of what I paid for in shipping. I just got on to look again. It seems it went from Kansas this morning to Texas now. Why they didn't just leave it in Oklahoma is beyond me.

So I'm doing the last minute scramble trying to figure out how to make things work. As well as trying to figure out how to get a bunch of junk made for our entire family to wear to a stupid Elvis party on Sunday. If I could get out of it I would. But I can't. So I shant. I spent $60 this morning on Elvis accessories for Hubby and Elliot. And I still don't have stuff made for the rest of us.

Stress I tell you. Complete stress.

So all of that will work out. I'm sure it will, it always does. I stress about it all and freak out and then afterwards I look back and think "what was the big deal?". That's how it works.

But tell me what to do about my poor 9 year old son who has a crush on someone. I guess Hubby heard him crying last night so he went to check on him. It turns out that the girl Elliot likes now likes someone else. His poor little heart was broken. I'm sure this is the first of many broken hearts but it sucks. He's just 9 for crying out loud! How's he going to react when he's a teenager and some girl decides she likes someone else? And the kicker is I didn't even KNOW he liked someone. He hasn't really expressed any interest in girls. He's just a really happy go lucky kid who loves to make people laugh. He's got a big following of girls but until now it's been fairly obvious that he's kind of clueless about it. His teacher even mentioned at his last conference that the other kids fight over who gets stand/sit/partner with him and the great thing is it doesn't go to his head and he doesn't seem to notice how popular he is. So he went from that to just laying in bed sobbing about a girl. How does that happen?

And Marleigh wants to shave her legs. She's wanted to for a couple years now and of course I haven't let her. But she has friends who have started. And more than the pressure of wanting to do it because others are, I think she's now actually feeling embarassed about her appearance because of her hair. She's blonde, so it's not as noticable as some girls might be. But it's pretty thick. I can't remember how old I was when I started shaving. I do remember my mom going on and on about how once I started I wouldn't be able to stop. I didn't care, I just wanted to shave. And now she's going through the same thing.

As I've said many time before...it sure would be nice if they came out of your belly holding some sort of manual. A manual specific to that individual child and their own personality. Wouldn't that be nice?

Ugh.

Where'd I put those bon bons?...