There is a lot to celebrate at our house! The smallest girl has managed to keep her panties on and clean for one day; not today, but it happened. So we have hope that it will happen again someday. If only that were how all of us measured success; wouldn’t life be happier? Clean underwear for the win, and everything else is icing.
The big girls are each having their birthday parties this weekend. At first glance this seems masochistic, but it means we only decorate once AND the leftovers from the first party are served at the next, so it’s actually kind of brilliant (and exhausting).
The man of the house just turned almost 40. Okay, 37, but since he reminds me often that our lives are nearly half over, I round up. What? He started it.
But the real party is for the boy. All because he now has many new vocational options open to him, such as: piano tuner, safe cracker and music critic. It’s not that these are our lifelong ambitions for him (although, now Glen is hankering after unlimited back stage passes); the thing is, we simply want him to have every opportunity.
When we adopted S it was with the understanding that his hearing loss (moderate-mild) was quite likely permanent. He has many risk factors for sensorineural hearing loss. One of the reasons the social worker first looked at our profile was our experience using sign language and dealing with a significant speech delay. We were prepared for it. I had the ASL app loaded on my iPhone and we had bounced around a few ideas for adjusting our life to compensate. We would be fine.
BUT they put tubes in his ears shortly before we brought him home. And there was a lot of fluid. And we had hope that this would help and maybe even clear it up altogether.
AND IT DID! On Tuesday afternoon we squeezed into a claustraphobic audiology booth at children’s hospital and he tested “Normal.” Gold Stars all around!
Quote
“Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.”
~Henry David Thoreau
App
Most of the time iPhone/Pod/Pad apps lead to solitary play. It’s a treat to find one that not only encourages family interaction, but teaches proper grammatical terms. It takes a team effort to create silly stories with this app. Not only does Mad Libs have us all talking and laughing, but we clarified adjective vs adverb and discussed the meaning of “plural”… in the summer… for fun. You’re welcome, future English teachers.
Video
Julie Tennant is incredibly wise. And she loves her life. And she has Down Syndrome. And I kinda love her.
“I’d rather be slow to learn, than slow to love.”
Religious Joke
My fellow Christians, one of the best things about us is the ability to laugh at our own cheesiness. Those who can’t usually fall into the Pharisee camp. Or they’re just really dull. Or they actually do think it’s funny, but are too full of fear/guilt/angst-masquerading-as-reverance to show it.
The penultimate example of Christian cheesiness – Footprints in the Sand poem. That’s not to say it isn’t profound. And meaningful. And true. But oh, so very overdone.
Dorky Joke
Yes, this is my favourite kind of joke. This one was on George Takei’s FaceBook page… not always appropriate, but ever so funny.
Thank you http://i.imgur.com/4wwhM.jpg
So here’s me, with two, count them, two birthday parties this weekend. One is a spa-themed slumber party for 12 year olds. The other involves a kiddie pool full of jello, volleyball with a fish and hamburger shaped cupcakes. At least one of my children is normal.
So Here's Us... 
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