This little boy will not allow me to call him "little" anymore. He's big! He's four! He's practically bigger than Ava (not quite)! Apparently, for Jace, 4 was THE number he's been waiting for. Now he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, pack his own lunch, and buckle his own carseat.
Of course, when he was sick today, he still spent the whole day curled up by my side, so I guess he's still just a little bit little. I'll take it.
Even though I spent roughly half his birthday in the hospital and he spent the majority of the rest of it in school, he had a great day. He woke up at 5:30, had his very special Larry Boy cake for breakfast, and opened his presents. His very favorite was a bike he had been begging for, and the first thing we had to do was deface it with as many Spiderman stickers as possible. It was the concession I made to get him to agree to get a bike that wasn't actually the Spiderman bike that had like, 1 star reviews. I don't even know why he likes Spiderman so much...he's never seen a comic book, movie, or cartoon. He has no idea who Peter Parker is. But Spiderman? The Bomb. Just because. I hate character stuff.
After school we headed out to try out his new bike. Ava was in super big sister mode, as she helped him remove himself from a few curbs and get back on his way.
The morning after his birthday, Jace woke up and said "Am I still four?!" When the answer was yes, he grinned hugely and said "Thank You!" He's such a funny boy.
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I loved all your comments on my last post! You guys crack me up. I'm kind of ticked that I responded to a bunch of comments and apparently they never went through. That's annoying.
Tomorrow, we're heading up to St. Augustine for the weekend for the Florida Summit on childhood deafness. I was able to attend last year, soon after Seth was diagnosed as profoundly deaf. I spent the whole weekend listening to lectures about choices in deafness, the importance of early intervention, visual and auditory learning, and I got to meet some great people, including the person who became Seth's audiologist, who I love. LOVE. I'm thrilled to be going back this year with all the experiences I have under my belt now, and I hope there are parents with new babies there who can benefit from the great start that I was able to get having all of these great, experienced professionals around in one place to talk to.
I was packing up Seth's CI stuff today, back ups and extra cables and whatnot, and I made a mental note to pack the car charger for Seth's batteries. Then I literally cracked up at the irony that I can recharge my kids ears while I'm driving. Isn't that wild? It all seems so normal until I stop and think about it, and then I realize...that's pretty weird. I'm sure people in the grocery store give us really weird looks when they hear me tell one of the kids to put their brother's ear back on. It's so funny the stuff you get used to.
In fact, the other day I was thinking about the new baby, and I actually thought "I will be really prepared this time around...maybe we can get her implanted at 6 months instead of 8."
I'm so used to Seth that I literally forgot that there's no reason for us to think that the new baby will be deaf, too. In fact, there's very little chance of it, as Seth's deafness is not genetic. But still, I actually can't imagine having a hearing baby, one who won't sleep through the kids screams, who will startle and wake to a voice instead of a touch.
I think it's been on my mind even more because at Ava's 5 year old check up, she failed her hearing test 3 times in a row in the same ear. She passed in the other ear, but consistently failed in her right ear. It's odd, because the test was one she passed last year, and it's a test that identifies a completely different type of hearing loss than Seth has, so there is no tie in there.
Seth's audiologist is going to do a complete evaluation for Ava next month, and we'll get some answers about what's going on. When I talked to her (she has no idea she even had a hearing test, much less failed it), she told me that she could hear better out of one ear than the other, and every time I asked her which ear worked better, she pointed to the one that passed the test. It was interesting, and I'm anxious to know what the deal is. I'm not worried, as either way we'll be fine...if it's nothing, that's great, and if she does have a hearing loss, well, we're well prepared to deal with it after all we've gone through with Seth.
It's always something around here, huh? Apparently God thinks something really bad would happen to me if I was allowed to be bored for even a second.
What are you doing this weekend?
