Three Hundred?!

This is my 300th post. Wow! I remember reading a friend's blog when they posted their 300th post and thinking "Man, that is a WHOLE lotta posts!" I meant to commemorate my 100th post, but I forgot, and so here we are!

I'll go the whole cliche'd route and say that if I had known the day I made the first post here on this blog that when it came time to write the 300th post Seth would be able to hear, I would have laughed. When I first started this blog, we weren't even completely certain that cochlear implants were the direction we were going.

But oh, how glad I am that we went down that path! Because of Seth's cochlear implants, he hears his brother and sister tell him how much they love him. He hears the dog bark, he is startled by a knock on the door. He says 11 words meaningfully. Because of Seth's cochlear implants, our 12 1/2 month old son, who is 11 months adjusted age and has either an 11 month hearing age (if you count from the day he got hearing aids) or a 3 month hearing age (if you count from his CI activation) passed his latest speech and language evaluation with flying colors. He speech and language fall solidly in the 12-15 month range! This blows me away. We are talking about a baby  who was functionally profoundly deaf, who has auditory neuropathy, talking and listening like any other 1 year old on the block. How awesome is that?!

So, three hundred posts later, I am still in awe of my son. He still surprises me every single day in the ways that he has surpassed our wildest expectations. I am still in awe of all of you who have jumped on this train with us. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I am still in awe of all the people who have allowed Seth and Eli's stories into their lives and hearts and emailed or commented to tell me how my boys have changed them. Thank you for letting my sons' lives become meaningful in a much larger way through you.

The day I received an email telling me that a woman had read Eli's story and it made her appreciate her kids more, or a comment telling me reading about my situation has helped them with theirs, or the email telling me that someone had accepted Christ through our story made it all worth it. After Eli died, I said that it would never be okay, that I would never understand. Well, I still don't understand, and I still miss him. But now I know that his life saved someone else's, who will now get to meet him in heaven,  and that's more than a lot of us can say, even if we live 80 years.

This blog has been an amazing release and source of community for me. Thank you for reading. Thank you for coming back. I hope we're still here sharing together for 300 more posts. I would love to hear from you.