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We got back from Atlanta on Friday, same day Joel got back from Nashville. Man, I missed Joel. Paula did, too. She has almost completely changed her outlook on the old man after this 10-day separation.
Every day of our trip I showed Paula the video of Joel I had taken in the airport.
"Hi, Paula, it's Daddy. I miss you - am I signing that right? Daddy ... misses ... you! And I love you, but I don't want to 'represent' too much in the airport. Anyway, I can't wait to see you when you get home. Give my love to your grandma and grandpa, and your cous - I mean Uncle Kit and Aunt Desiree. Have fun, you, too, Mama. I love you, bye-bye."
Every time Paula watched that video she got such a huge smile on her face and made the most excited, jazz-hands DADDY sign ever (her five-hand up by her forehead). She says, "Dada!"
She had been a little lukewarm on Joel for a while there, maybe it was fallout from the whole weaning experience. That seems to have receded into the past these days. Now I can change clothes without hiding from her, and when she asks to nurse it's just a passing thing. Now when she sees Joel her eyes and mouth open wide, she grabs her forehead, then flings her arms out in an expression of unbridled joy.
Almost as good as seeing Joel when we got home, I found a package waiting for me. It contained the progesterone cream and adrenal-gland supplement that I'm taking now following the results of salivary hormone testing. Apparently my progesterone is low and my adrenal glands are shot.
So I've started using this cream, and I have to apply it to a different part of my body every day. The instructions say to rotate through the upper arms, either side of the abdomen, and finish out on the inner thighs. First left, then right. It's like a very very slow version of the Macarena that is supposed to improve your moods, reduce your risk of heart disease and osteoporosis and best of all improve your chances of surviving a major head trauma. Get down.
I think the supplements might actually be helping. I do feel like my energy is better, and last night I even considered dusting off my old Pentax K-1000 (15th birthday present from my dad) and taking some real photographs. I haven't felt like that in a long, long time.
Oh, how I love a change of scenery. After a week of staying in and being sick back in Chicago, Paula and I dragged our congested selves onto a plane to fly to Atlanta. We made it with only minor discomfort and are now enjoying the company of my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and the warm and welcoming people of metropolitan Atlanta's Baha'i community.
The scenery here is particularly welcome after the flat, brick, 50's-era monotony of my airport-vicinity neighborhood back home. Here the pines tower and even though my mom says the colors are not as brilliant this year, everything looks both verdant and boisterously colorful. My parents actually live closer to their airport than I do to mine, but the effect is quite opposite the one I get at home. Even the airport-vicinity park-n-rides are so shielded by trees that you would never know they were there if not for their colossal signage. I suppose that cannot be helped.
Best of all we are here for one of the holiest Baha'i holidays, the birth of the Prophet-Founder of Baha'i, Baha'u'llah. It's wonderful to spend this time with my family. Last night we realized that my parents' little community of College Park hadn't planned its own celebration, so Mom and I made calls, cleaned up, and picked up a cake and some roses from the Wayfield grocery store.
Our friends sat in a loose circle around my parents' little living room, and we watched a Web presentation someone put together for the occasion. We read stories about Baha'u'llah's early life, Bahman chanted a prayer in Persian. I felt we were like the early Christians, celebrating their most holy day in someone's little home as the world around them went on with its business, unaware.
On October 16 I began keeping a record of Paula's new signs and words. She was already using a number of signs at the time, but it's amazing to look back three weeks and see the virtual avalanche of language she is acquiring and putting into use.
I realized recently that learning ASL is my top priority for Paula and I. Joel is learning, too, as I know he will, but my personal priority is to be able to communicate with Paula and feed her hunger for language. This hunger is evident in the way she sign-babbles with her hands now, in addition to babbling with her voice. That avoidance of eye contact that caused me no end of distress has, well, ended. Paula now looks at me more and more often when she wants to communicate or when I sign to her. I have seen her looking to me to translate when someone is speaking to her. She is getting that language comes through her eyes and goes out through her hands. This is big.
The fact that we are able to communicate means parenting has become something completely different these days. We have a lot of fun together. My stress level is lower than it's been in two years. Gosh, I really like this! A few mornings ago I found myself wishing that Paula could tell me specifically what food she wanted. That evening she signed and said, "Apple!" This is heady stuff.
The fact that Paula has hearing aids means that she can enjoy music, listen to speech and get a better idea of what familiar words sound like - and she does like to voice the words she signs. It also relieves Joel and I from having to practically yell at her, and from having to stomp on the floor to get her attention. But right now her hearing aids don't do much else for communication. That won't come for quite a while. Right now communication is visual, visual, visual.
Since I started keeping track on October 16, she has signed each of these at least once:
BIG BOOK WANT COLD APPLE THANK YOU PIG GOOD SMELL GRANDMA HERE, WATER, THIRSTY, READ (all four in one day!) GO STOP FISH HELP
When she signed READ, I about started to cry. The way she signed it, hunched over slightly, with a slight scowl of concentration as she looked at her hand and traced imaginary words with her fingers, told me she was connecting the sign with something she has seen us do. It was as if she was saying, "Yes, that's what this is called!"
As for the progress with the hearing aids, it's just a long process of putting them in, her taking them out, putting them back in. I find the best times are when I put on music for her to dance to, and of course I dance with her. She likes something with a good beat. That's plenty of progress for me right now.
Monday Paula and I saw the geneticist at UIC about Paula's hearing loss. This was where we were trying to find out if her hearing loss is what they call "isolated," or "syndromic." Which is to say, is it associated with a kidney or heart problem, for example, or not.
The good news: it's not.
The rest of the news: we still don't know if her hearing loss is genetic at all. If it is that could mean a risk of future children having hearing loss, too. Up to a 25 percent risk.
I had gone in thinking, "I don't care if it's genetic or not. I don't think it's worth it to stick Paula with a needle just to find that out." But that number, 25 percent, kind of tripped me up. That seemed like a lot.
Joel said he was inclined to want the test. "I want to know why," he said. I figured he would.
I thought to myself, "I know it's a roll of the dice to have a child, but I'd like to know what's on the dice." So we said, we'd go ahead and have the test.
A couple of days passed and we talked about it again. "We're already set up for a kid with hearing loss," Joel said.
The next morning I told him, "You know, it's a roll of the dice any time you have a child. You can never know all your risks, or what's going to happen. You have to be willing to live with that level of uncertainty if you're going to conceive a child."
And Joel said, "Yeah."
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