can you hear me now?

This last Wednesday, we had an audiologist come in to evaluate Tennyson’s hearing. Our speech pathologist gave us a referral because we want to rule out any hearing issues being behind his speech delay.
She brought a tympanogram with her to see if he had any issues with the eardrums that might be affecting his hearing. The machine is able to measure eardrum movement by changing the pressure in the ear canal and seeing how the eardrum reacts to it.
A normal tympanogram reading looks like this:

Which is what Tennyson’s left ear looked like.
His right ear, however, came out as a flat line:
 
This meant that his eardrum wasn’t reacting to any pressure changes. She peeked in his ear and noticed there was quite a bit of wax buildup, which could have been effecting the eardrum’s ability to move. In addition, he might have had fluid behind the eardrum, but we couldn’t tell that until we had the wax removed. We called the doctor once she left to make an appointment to get his ears looked at and we were very lucky that they could get us in the next day.
The appointment was quite a fiasco. First off, I’m never happy at our doctor’s office because the wait is ridiculous. I never understand why if I’m more than 10 minutes late, they cancel my appointment, but then they make me wait for 40 minutes in the waiting room when I show up. Once we got in, the doctor took a peek into his ear and agreed that we needed to get both ears cleaned out. This is where the fiasco starts.
We haven’t really given Tennyson much reason to trust doctors. He hates doctor offices. And he hates doctors. So you can imagine he was not happy when, in order to clean out his ears, me and one other nurse had to pin him down on his back to a table while another nurse took a water pick to his ears to clean out all the wax. The whole process took about 20 minutes. 20 minutes of screaming. They had to try three separate times to get all the wax out. Each time he thought they were done, they’d start over. Poor guy. He was a trooper, though, and we got everything cleaned out and the doctor was able to come back in. The doctor took one last look into his ears and found that the right ear had an ear infection.
The thing about having an easy going kid is that we never know when something is actually wrong with him. We’d have never known about this ear infection had we not been going through all the speech therapy and seen the audiologist. Luckily, we now have some antibiotics to clear up the infection.
We go in on Wednesday to see the audiologist again where she is going to perform some more testing on how he reacts to sound. The tympanogram could only measure eardrum movement and really didn’t tell us too much about his hearing, so this testing will tell us more about whether he’s hearing everything right.
We will keep everyone updated.

A Week in Pictures {Apr 1-7}

sunday. brand new ipod.

monday. helping mom clean up.

tuesday. cuddling with dad.

wednesday. sound asleep.

thursday. scientific discoveries.

friday. dinner and a movie.

saturday. the thrill of the hunt.

Easter

In a strange way, this year was Tennyson’s first real Easter. He just missed Easter 2010 because he had decided he wasn’t going to come out of mom’s belly. And we spent Easter 2011 in an airport, not really what I’d consider a celebration.
So it was kind of fun this year doing a first Easter with a 2 year old. I don’t think many people get to do that. It was fun learning what Mike’s traditions were, and teaching him some of mine.
This year Tennyson was old enough to color his own eggs. A tradition in my family. I didn’t know until this year that Mike apparently has no recollection of ever coloring on Easter eggs. I also didn’t know until Mike told me this that not everyone colors on Easter eggs… I just thought that’s what everyone did. The things you learn.

very focused on the task at hand.

tennyson's finished products.

the fun mike and i had.

 
On Easter Eve, before putting Tennyson to bed, Mike introduced one of his family traditions. It’s a book called “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes” and it’s all about a bunny who becomes one of the best Easter bunnies. It’s gloriously dated, since it was written in the 1940s and it teaches kids all about how “only a country rabbit would go and have all those babies” and also that rich kids and poor kids are delivered different eggs. But it also teaches values like being wise and kind, so I guess those can be overlooked.

On Easter morning, we had to wake Tennyson up since he was so excited for the Easter bunny to come that he decided to get up and play from about 11-1 the night before.
Then we did the worst thing ever imaginable. We disrupted his morning routine. Instead of giving him a vitamin and waffles, we gave him an Easter basket.

Clearly not okay. Until he learned there was a waffle cooking in the toaster and that there was chocolate in the eggs. Life was okay again.

Then we got dressed up for church. He looked so dapper. I looked the same as I do every week because I only actually have one maternity skirt and only one shirt that both matches the skirt and still fits around my belly. Mike wore a fabulously vintage-y awful tie. He calls it his Easter tie, and I let it slide for one day of the year.

how could you not love this face?

After church, Tennyson went down for a long nap. We used the peace and quiet to enjoy our Easter meal, since we knew Tennyson would much prefer mac and cheese over anything we could make. Mike made us a great meal of ham, green beans, and funeral potatoes. Then we ate some of Tennyson’s Easter candy, because he’d never know it didn’t make it into his basket.
When Tennyson woke up, it was time for the official Easter egg hunt. We’ve been doing them every day for a while now… but this one was “official.” He found and then re-found and then re-found the eggs for the entire afternoon.
We learned pretty quickly that Tennyson has an aversion to orange eggs. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. He would tantrum if we even tried to sneak one back into his basket. Weird kid.

It was a fantastic day. I love that Tennyson is at an age now that we can do holidays and celebrations and he is able to participate in them. It is magical to see a holiday through a child’s eyes. And this Easter was pretty magical.

Found

Today was our church Easter egg hunt.

Tennyson proved to be a champ.
 
We’ve been practicing hunting for eggs. It’s become one of Tennyson’s favorite games. We fill up his basket with eggs, he dumps them out, and then he runs around collecting them all to put back into the basket. So for him to see what must have looked like a billion eggs covering the church lawn, his eyes lit up and he knew exactly what to do.

He carried around that giant basket of his and found his allotted eggs in record time. Then he dumped the basket out and found all his eggs again. And again. Until we made him stop and carried him crying back inside.

The crying stopped once we showed him the chocolate that was inside the eggs.
Don’t worry, Tennyson. We’ll be hunting for eggs again real soon. And until then, we have plenty of candy to hold you over.

Let’s Make a Deal!

Mike here. Yes, apparently I am still a contributor. So today Nichelle and I decided to take a little trip out to the Tanger Outlets over in Howell. It looked like they were having some good sales that would justify spending the gas to get there and back. Plus, it was kind of a nice day out and walking around the area could be fun.

So, we went and spent a few hours poking in and out of some of the stores; Nichelle (being 8 months pregnant now) got to poke in and out of the restrooms to pee; and Tennyson got to poke in and out of wherever he could run off to. It was fun, we hit the clearance racks pretty hard, and managed to find some pretty awesome deals if I do say so myself.

Here’s a picture of what we came away with. Nichelle got a shirt at the Gap; I got one from Banana Republic; Tennyson got socks, a bowtie, a necktie, and a pair of sunglasses; and we got two pairs of tights and a pair of shoes for she-who-must-not-be-named. All in all we spent less than $35 on what would normally cost over $200. Not too shabs if you ask me.

I think Tennyson made off like a bandit. Look at these shades:

And even more importantly, this tie: I’m pretty jealous.

After finishing up at Tanger we realized that it was getting kind of late and Tennyson was pretty hungry and tired. So, we headed over to a local restaurant for dinner, The Tomato Brothers.

Nichelle used to frequent this place when she lived in Howell during high school. For nearly two years, since we moved to Michigan, she had told me numerous times about how good the breadsticks are at this place, and I was finally going to get to try!

They did not disappoint.

Neither did the pizza.

Tennyson was tired, but enjoyed watching Toy Story 3, if nothing else.

It was a good end to a good trip. Now I’m going to go eat some leftover pizza.

Until next time, this is Mike, signing off.