Will I Ever Shake It?

I passed an ambulance coming out of our neighborhood today, and I was instantly transported back to that night when the twins were ten days old and Little Man stopped breathing. I was there again, in the ambulance, strapped to the gurney with my 10-day-old son in my arms. Thirty minutes before, I had found him-- limp and blue-- in the bassinet beside our bed. All the emotions I felt while we fought to keep our boy alive came flooding back, and I drove the rest of the way home in tears.

I wonder how long it will be like this.

Doggie Duty

I think we may have let our dog into the kitchen to clean up under the babies' high chairs one too many times. Last night at dinner Little Man kept yelling "doggie! doggie!" while throwing pieces of chicken on the floor.

Oops! :)

Peanut's Jokes

Peanut is developing quite a sense of humor. Her new favorite thing is to go over to the corner where we put their shoes and socks after school, pick up a dirty baby sock, and take a big exaggerated whiff. This of course prompts us to say "oooh, stinky!!", which makes her giggle and do it again.

Little Man hasn't quite gotten in on the game, despite the many times Peanut has toddled over to him and stuck a sock under his nose. Poor boy, I wouldn't want to smell stinky socks either, lol!

ENT, Round 1

Cribbing from a chat board post, so as to have it here for the record...

Peanut and Little Man had their ENT specialist appointment yesterday. We went because Peanut has had a persistent ear infection (it took 5 rounds of different antibiotics-- back-to-back-- to partially clear it, but she still has it). Little Man was pretty much just along for the ride (he has had some ear infections, but nothing near what Peanut has had).

After talking with us for a bit, the Dr. ended up sending both kiddos for hearing tests (we were at Children's, so luckily this just meant waiting there for the audiologist to be available). This was mostly to assess Peanut's hearing to help us decide whether or not to do tubes.

As it turns out, Peanut's hearing is ok, but she does need tubes because her membrane is not flexing properly.

What really shocked both Sylvia and I is that the audiologist found that Little Man has "significant" hearing loss. The Dr. said he can hear, but it sounds like he's under water and someone is talking to him from above the water.

Little Man is behind Peanut in language acquisition (he says 3-4 words to Pnut's 10+), but we never thought it could be because he can't hear!

The Dr. said there is a surgery they can do to try to help, so we're going to go ahead with that. LM will also get tubes at the same time to help ward off ear infections so we can preserve the hearing he does have.

Anyway, so that's where we are at this point. We're both upset about it all, but grateful that we found out about J's hearing loss now instead of months/years from now when he showed evidence of being further delayed.

Brotherly Love

This morning, Peanut was sitting on Mama's lap fussing because her brother had a toy she wanted. We asked Little Man to get Peanut's paci and bring it to her. Our sweet boy looked and looked for it, and when he found it, he went running over to his sister with it and handed it to her. She said thank you ("tank ooo") and smiled. It is so wonderful to see sweet exchanges like that!

More

Peanut signed "more" for the first time yesterday! Exactly "more" (which looks like this)-- not a rough replica of it, but the exact sign. Yay!!

Of course, after a couple of rounds of "more" while there was still dinner (pasta with sauce) languishing on her tray, I am relatively convinced that "more" means "Rice Chex" to her (she kept making the sign then turning to look at the box), but hey, I'll take it! :)

Dancing With Teddy

Little Man loves music. He's always the first one to pick up a beat, and has this adorable little dance he does, bopping to the beat of just about any music. We take the kiddos to a music class every Saturday, and he *loves* it. After one class in which all the grown-ups were tapping out a song with our feet, he started dancing by moving his feet up and down, almost like he's running in place. He looks so proud of himself while he's dancing-- it's too cute.

Within the past two weeks, Little Man has added new dance to his repertoire. There is a song on the music class CD (which we play at home and in the car) called "Dancing with Teddy," which is about spinning around, dancing with your teddy bear. Whenever it comes on (or whenever we sing the song), he starts dancing in a circle, looking intently at the floor and spinning around. It is so sweet. His little serious face makes it all the more precious.