Hearing, Keys, and a Showing.

On Tuesday I took the five kiddos down to the children's clinic we use for most of our specialists.  It is an hour and a half drive each way...taking us down into our neighboring state to the south.

I was taking Elisabeth for her 3-month follow-up to her hearing evaluation in February that surprised us by showing hearing loss.

It was about time for Daniel's regularly scheduled follow-up with this ENT also.

AND, I decided to throw in hearing tests for Noah and Lily Kay also...just for kicks and grins.

And G was just along for the ride.

LK is the only one who did great on her hearing test.  Dr. H said she was "the only one who studied for her test."  We actually would not have been very surprised if she had shown some hearing loss.  She is very loud.  All the time.  Apparently she is simply one of five children, and fighting to be heard, I suppose.

Noah has fluid in one ear, and it is interfering with his hearing some.   Noah was aware of this, and he had told me for the past 2 or 3 weeks.  Gotta love seasonal allergies..one of the better parts of living in "The Allergy Capital of the World." The doctor wants to see him back in a few months.

Daniel's hearing loss continues to be stable, and we don't need to go back to the doctor now for a year, instead of the normal 8 months.  Promotion!

Elisabeth does still show hearing loss.  It also appears that she has fluid in her ear, according to the tympanogram.  But after the doc's examination of her ear he said it doesn't look like she has fluid at all.  But it may just be completely clear.  And her audiogram is very unusual looking.  It shows "mixed loss".  It has a weird dip at the highest end...which the doctor says looks more like "noised induced loss"...like a very loud noise caused the loss when she was younger.  She continues to baffle and confuse all of us.  He wants to see her back again in 3 months also.

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One of my finer moments of this year:

As we arrived at the children's clinic, rushing to get in (as usual)...I was taking G out and slammed the back door of the Silver Bullet...and realized (about 2 seconds too late) that I locked my keys inside.  And my purse.  And phone.

ARGGGHHHH!!!!

Despite my instantaneous terror and anxiety, I remained calm on the outside.  Something about not wanting to cause my 4 older children to be anxious and cry helps me to hold it together!  With the help of several very nice employees at the clinic, I was able to call Pop-A-Lock and the whole thing was over in less than an hour and only cost $41.95 to remedy.  The children were doing their hearing tests with two different audiologists while I ran down to the parking garage to meet the locksmith (who arrived less than 10 minutes after I called!)  G was on my back in the Ergo so he had a front-row seat to see the locksmith do his thing.  I wish the other children could have actually seen it...they would have loved it!


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Someone came and looked at our house this morning.  The second showing we've had during the 3 months it has been on the market.

The children, Jason and I raced around last night and this morning getting the house presentable for Mrs. Pat.  With all the running back and forth we've been doing for going on 8 weeks now, this place needed some spiffing up before anyone saw it!  But once we do something like that, I always think, "Ahhhh!  This is so nice!  Why don't we just keep it like this all the time?!?!"  The very lived-in-ness of a home of a homeschooling family-of-seven.  I wouldn't trade it, but it is not one of the facets of homeschooling that I love.

Although, I personally think all of this timing and circumstances would be perfect (considering we plan to actually move out in 9 days)...I'm praying the Lord's will be done in this situation.  I want Mrs. Pat (a recently widowed woman we used to go to church with) to be exactly where the Lord wants her.  And the Lord knows exactly what our finances can handle, in terms of dollar amounts and timing.  He knows much better than we do what should happen here!