Confirmed Suspicions

Being Deaf, coming from a Deaf family, I always thought that one of my children would be Deaf. Marrying a hearing man with no deafness in his family (that we know of) means the chances of having a Deaf child diminishes, but the possibility is still there.

Of the four children I have, I always felt that Evelyn would have some hearing loss, but really, any one of them have a chance of it.  As Evelyn grew older, she's soon 11 next month, I saw signs of hearing loss in her-- not responding when I call for her, having to repeat what I say (though that could be me mispronouncing something), getting one of her siblings to get her attention for me...  small little things like that.  We would ask her if she was ignoring us or really didn't hear us, but we knew the answer to that already. 

Finally, we made an appointment for her to have a hearing test.  If she did indeed have a hearing loss, better to get hearing aids for her sooner rather than later. Today was the big day and a very nervous and unsure Evelyn went into the sound booth to get her ears tested.  I have had my ears tested so many times that just the sight of her in there with the headphones on, I swear I could hear the beeps and tones in my own ears!

 

A half-hour of testing later, and it is confirmed, she does indeed have hearing loss.  The audiologist wants to have a re-test in a month or so, but she's pretty sure that the results of this test are right on.  She has a 60 db loss, which is pretty high, but the good thing is she already has her communication skills developed.  She speaks well and already knows sign language, so I'm not really concerned about communication issues. Being Deaf myself and from a large family of Deaf people, Evelyn is already at an advantage with me as her Mama.  We know just what to do and it shouldn't slow her down one bit.

 

We had a good Mother/Daughter day after the hearing test and spent the day talking about her hearing loss and what will happen in the future.  She has a pretty good handle on things and I have utmost confidence in her and her future endeavors. It's nice to know for sure now what we've always suspected and now we can move forward and work towards making life a little easier for her and helping her to adjust to her hearing loss. She is still Evelyn, still our baby, and we will always love her!

 

We love you baby girl!

 

 

Catching Up!

So, April has been a really crazy month. I can't believe how fast it went by!  We helped celebrate Andrew's parents 50th wedding anniversary and then we all got sick with upper respiratory infection which knocked us all out of commission for a week or so. 

We've been trying to get the garden started but with us being sick and then the rain and the usual busyness around here it just hasn't happened yet. 

I bought some plants this week hoping that it will give us incentive to get busy on the garden. I don't want to complain about the rain since rain is good, but

jeez! The ground is just too wet for us to till!  Fingers crossed we get the plants and seeds in by the end of the week!

April also seemed full of visitors from our past! Andrew and I both got to see old friends from our school days and it was an absolute blast! I got a weekend away and stayed at my best friend's house and  saw people I hadn't seen in more than twenty years! Good times!

May has only just begun and already children are singing the "I'm bored" song! Oh dear! This is going to be a long summer isn't it?  So Sylvia looks through a craft book and comes across an earthworm puppet. We have just about everything needed except for brown tissue paper, so we used blue and instead of an earthworm, he's now a blue caterpillar!

 Peter's caterpillar puppet. 

Sylvia's puppet. Pretty cute and easy to make: poke a hole in a plastic cup; trace the child's hand three times on green paper for the grass and glue or tape to the cup. For the worm/caterpillar, use a bendy drinking straw and cover in tissue paper that has been covered in a half and half mixture of white glue and water. Wrap around the straw then push up to create the wrinkles and pinch together the tip for the head. Glue googly eyes on the head then wait for glue to dry. 

When dry, just pop the straw into the cup and watch your worm/caterpillar puppet pop his head out of the grass!

Now if I can find more easy-to-do projects like this to last the whole summer then I'll never have to hear that "I'm bored" song again!

Here's to a busy May!