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I just turned around from the computer because I heard Paula making funny little grunty noises. Maybe she has to go potty?
She's sitting on the floor behind my chair playing with her cars and trains. She has a little Weeble vehicle that has little droopy eyes in front, and she was holding it and signing CRY, complete with the frown that goes with it. The car looks sad to her.
She hugged it, then lowered it and looked deeply into its little painted-on droopy eyes. She continued her little grunty whispers, head angled to the side and one hand out as if to say sympathetically, "What? What's bothering you. Talk to me."
Paula and I spent the majority of last night awake. The upside? I got to watch The Farm Report this morning, at 4. I enjoyed it a lot. For the rest of our five-hour nocturnal odyssey I just kept repeating to myself that even my sister's kids woke her up at night until they were, well, until pretty recently and they're practically teenagers already. Not as often as Paula wakes me up, but that other kids, kids who aren't mine, did this, too.
That was my mantra for most of the night, except for the part where Paula got up and started playing with the night light and made some loud bump. It was about 3:30 and we had been up since 12:30. That was when I got up and yelled at her in my very awkward pidgin signed English, the Spanglish of signing. "MOMMY ANGRY! MOMMY TIRED! WHY YOU NO SLEEP?" We did eventually get back to sleep, from about five (after the Farm Report) till around 10.
Angry outbursts aside, the fact is that the kid is cutting her second-year molars and this is going to keep happening at the very least until she's done with that. After that I'm sure it will be something else. Until then I just have to hold onto the incredible cuteness of seeing my little pixie girl comforting a Weeble car that looks like it's sad.
After that play group on Thursday with the other deaf kids, my perspective on Paula has changed dramatically.
I had been feeling rather pessimistic about her ability to tolerate her hearing aids and how well she would be able to understand speech with them. Instead of letting myself look at and examine my hopes and fears, I just kept downgrading my expectations so that I wouldn't be disappointed, whatever the result. Preemptive disappointment, that's what I call it.
But after meeting the other two children present on Thursday my view of the situation has brightened. The other two kids there are both beautiful, bright and lovable kids. The little boy, Ronin, is almost three, deaf in one ear and has normal hearing in the other, but doesn't speak. Very clever little boy and I loved his mom ("There's no bed in his room because he sleeps with us." Say no more!), but when I saw that he doesn't speak at all, suddenly Paula's many and diverse, though not completely intelligible, verbalizations, took on a new significance for me. She does talk! She talks when she signs, and she can say "cow," "eat," and very clearly, "Coco, DOWN!"
The little girl who was there was deafened from jaundice while in the NICU as a premie. She has other persistent health problems that also result from what I understood to be a near-fatal case of the disease. Well, at three Maya, who has a hearing twin brother, displays the good nature of a child who is already used to sharing things (or having things snatched away from her). She is getting used to a new cochlear implant and Paula's intolerance of her hearing aids also shrank in comparison. The external microphone of the implant is heavy and Maya's mom has to tape it onto her head with wig tape. It looked pretty uncomfortable and Maya took it off before too long. I think they're going to try a lapel mic, which they hope will allow her to get past the discomfort and begin wearing it for longer periods. But I thought about it and even though Paula does sometimes return her hearing aids to me in four pieces (two aids, two earmolds, one tether - okay, that's five pieces), she also does wear them for hours at a time on most days.
Paula was pretty exhausted at the play group because she had been up most of the night, and she got kind of grumpy at one point. She was making this kind of high-pitched mooing that she does when she's feeling irritable. I sat her in my lap and tried to distract her with some of Ronin's many cool toys. No luck. So I leaned in close by her ear, but not close enough for her hearing aid to whistle, and softly sang "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" to her. She quieted immediately. She loves that song. I realized then that Paula is not deaf.
Paula has finally slept through the night a couple of nights in a row, and let me tell you I am loving it. Waking up at five in the morning never felt so good.
And Coco seems to be on the mend after a $300 trip to the vet on Thursday. She's now eating prescription canned dog food mixed with rice and some metronidazole. We had more vomiting this week and I knew she had to go back.
I called Bully Breed Rescue the next morning and said hi, I need some help paying this vet bill and getting this special food for Coco. They are a great group and I love Coco to pieces, but seriously folks. That dog has a lot of issues.
I updated my bio.
From ASL University:
What is a name sign? Within the deaf community, a name sign is used in place of spelling out the whole name (Wilbur, 1979). These signs are used to identify a person, kind of like a nickname. Sign names are used for introductions and references to that person, but in conversation references to people present are made by indexing or gesturing (Isenhath, 1990).
A person cannot give himself a name sign. Someone needs to come up with a name sign for that person. There are two basic types of name signs. Sign names that are descriptive and those that use a handshape from the signed alphabet. Signed names using a letter from the alphabet (also called Arbitrary name signs) are more commonly used than the descriptive signs and contain information about a person's family or heritage (Shelly & Schneck, 1998). A descriptive name sign can tell you something about a person. A tall, small, or thin person might have a name sign with that characteristic.
***
Paula got her name sign today.
We got together with our new Deaf Mentor, Karen Putz, and two other moms with deaf kids. It was a great time. Karen and I had talked when we first met last week about what Paula's name sign might be, but I was reluctant to just pick one myself. From something I read I had the idea that if a hearing person picks a name sign (for herself or someone else), it's like in Boy Scouts when they sit around a campfire and give themselves "Indian" names like "Running Eagle," or "Flying Wolf."
So when I saw Karen today she asked me about it, and I said I wasn't sure. We talked about it some more and she said one possibility is to make the letter "P" (for Paula), and the middle finger touches the corner of the mouth, tracing an upward curve to show a smile. I like that one. So that's Paula's name sign: I guess in English it would be something like Smiling Paula.
Paula does have an amazing smile, for those of you who haven't met her. Yesterday at Joel's school we sat in the auditorium balcony watching the winter assembly. Paula got fidgety after a while and we must have made fifteen trips up and down the aisles, between the similarly fidgety first-graders who reached out to touch Paula's hand as she held it out for balance while descending the stairs. At each step she turned and bathed the lot of them in a smile that says, "you, each of you, in particular, are so special to me."
Paula's smile has done great things for me, and I'm not just talking about my mood. When we first moved into this house we met the Tapias, our neighbors to the south. By the time we had lived here a few months we felt rather overwhelmed at the thought of such a big family (10 people) living so close, especially because the eldest daughter had shared rather too much personal information right when I first met them. When summer arrived and we could hear their arguments through our and their open windows, I thought of a friend's comment. She said that Jesus knew he was raising the bar when he said to "Love thy neighbor." We know so much more about our neighbors than we do our friends - and it can be hard to love someone you know so well.
But last summer when Paula and I started hanging out in the back yard and the Tapias put up their pool, everything changed. Paula kept crawling through the grass to the chain link fence, pulling herself up and turning on that smile. Within days Hilda Tapia had become a friend. Within weeks I knew the names of all of the kids and looked forward to seeing them jump the fence to come play with Paula in her little wading pool. I have to say I don't know how I would have fared over the last six months without Hilda's friendship. She and her family are much easier to love than I had ever guessed.
Wherever I go with Paula that smile lights the way before us. People look at us, the harried mom, the hairless toddler with hearing aids, and who knows what they think. But then Paula smiles and they become her friends, her fans, her well-loved neighbors.
About a year ago, my brother emailed me that I should think about submitting an essay to NPR's new series, This I Believe. Well, I clearly needed some time to think about it. This is what resulted:
I believe that housework offers its own reward, and those who perform it are bounty hunters.
I believe that getting a toddler - much less two or three of them - fed, dressed and in the car should be an Olympic event.
I believe that dried-out baby-cut carrots left out since yesterday hold nutritional mysteries as yet unexplored.
I believe that baths are a form of entertainment and naps are a prerequisite for mental health.
I believe that if you can get your children to play quietly in the other room while you do dishes, you have done your part for world peace.
I believe in caffeine.
I believe that someday, somewhere, a housewife, a homemaker, a stay-at-home mom will combine hot cocoa, stain remover, breast milk, fingernail polish, baby spit-up and bubble bath into a drug that will cure all known disease.
I believe that a full night's sleep is a myth perpetuated by the childless.
I believe that food on the floor is clean until proven dirty.
I believe that no one knows more deeply and precisely what a child needs than its mother. And that mother probably needs a night out with her friends.
I believe that if I can get the bathroom to myself for five minutes I can achieve Nirvana. Or listen to Nirvana. Either way it's unlikely to happen.
I believe that teething should be medicated to the fullest extent of the law and that peanut butter comprises a whole dietary system.
I believe that if I can make it through the next 16 years of colds, nocturnal stomach aches, t-ball games, library books, school projects, skinned knees, Barbies, slumber parties, text messaging, social scenes and college applications, this toddler whose nose I wipe, whose diaper I change, whose cries I comfort, might just become someone I will absolutely hate letting go of.
This I believe.
Paula just came into her playroom where I am trying to escape my parental responsibilities and made a sign I couldn't understand. It wasn't the sign for HOT, but she sounded like she was saying "hot." I followed her into the living room.
I still don't know what she was trying to convey, but when I got into the living room I saw a big puddle, complete with surrounding splash, of watery dog vomit. I guess it's time to feed Coco.
Coco hasn't been fed yet this morning because I have to make her food for her. Yes, boiled ground chuck and instant white rice, because anything else gives her the runs. She eats better than three quarters of the world's population.
But before I could make her food, I had to wipe up the mess. I grabbed a receiving blanket - our answer to towels of all kinds - and used it to absorb the foamy liquid, then added the blanket to the bag of puked-on stuff from last night. We're not doing so well when it comes to keeping peristalsis going down.
Last night was one of those doozies that comes along after a week of sick baby, bad sleep, restricted schedule (due to crankiness of said sick baby), and the desperate yearning for a sense of control over my life.
Paula didn't go to sleep when she was supposed to, and by 10:00 I had lost my patience with her. Joel took over trying to get her to sleep. But once again she proved herself able to outlast both of us.
Separated from her frazzled, touched-out and non-maternal-feeling mom, Paula dipped into her repertoire of blood-curdling screams. She doesn't like to be separated from mom, no matter how mom is feeling. And Daddy doesn't cut it.
I curled up on the couch with a pair of surprisingly ineffectual ear plugs and repeated to myself that she would soon fall asleep. Nobody can scream like that forever, right? Well, I was right. Paula couldn't scream like that forever, so she upped the ante by vomiting all over Joel. I ran into the room when I heard him yell out a loud and unmistakable obscenity.
Paula immediately jumped from his arms into mine and then doused me in regurgitated juice, chamomile tea, soggy potato chips, undigested fruit snacks (wheat and dairy free!) and whatever else her stomach had been holding just moments before. I sat down on the floor.
Cleaning up after something like that is difficult because you don't want to turn on the lights and in doing disturb the now very relaxed toddler resting in your soggy lap. We finally did turn on the light because I had the crazy idea that if I could sign to Paula about how important it is to go to sleep when Mommy says to go to sleep, her face would light up with understanding and she would sign back to me, "YES! SLEEP NOW! I LOVE MAMA!"
Well, that didn't happen but I was happy that Paula actually maintained eye contact for the duration of my little lecture on how Mommy gets tired from waking up every three hours to give her bottles, change her diapers, put her on the potty and listen to her playing at night. So I'm hoping something got through.
This morning I'm trying to look at last night as simply part and parcel of life with my daughter, and accept that things are often out of my control. Yesterday at the health food store she seemed to intuitively select two natural medicines that she does actually need, and put them into our cart while I chatted with the eccentric musician who works there. Intriguing. I recall how I first knew I was pregnant with Paula: I felt her spirit inside me before I ever suspected I had conceived. This kid is different in a lot of ways, and ordinary expectations for an ordinary life just may not be part of the deal.
So we'll throw all those puked-on clothes in the wash, get dressed and go our separate ways today. Joel is taking Paula with him to Guitar Center, and I'm getting together with Annie for coffee, then I'll go look for a dress for my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary. When we come back together later I'm sure I'll be ready for more of the controlled chaos of family life.
Joel has started teaching drum lessons in what used to be the junk depot of our house, the back bedroom. Last weekend he worked long and exhausting hours hauling out all manner of useless household items, things we need to give away, things we never should have bought in the first place, and straight-up trash.
Now the room, once the color of your grandma's orthopedic shoes, is a beautiful robin's egg blue, except for the two walls that are kind of a light blue blotched with white. Joel ran out of blue paint so he mixed white primer with blue paint and painted that on the remaining walls, only to discover that they don't mix very well. But it was either light-white-blotchy blue or burnt umber left over from the arch in the dining room. And frankly I don't think any of his drum students are going to notice inconsistencies in the color or application of paint.
Because of Joel's bizarre paranoia that people will go home and talk about it if his house isn't clean - I mean, come ON! - he insisted that we get things looking nice before his first appointment at nine this morning. His approach to housework is that it's something to get done when other people are out at bars trying to hook up. They're looking good in the dim lights, getting buzzed and brave while Joel wipes down that flat part behind the toilet seat where hair accumulates.
I, on the other hand, prefer to clean while last night's revelers are still crashed out in their or other people's beds, hair still stinking of smoke, jaws hanging open, shoes kicked off at the foot of the bed but otherwise mostly still dressed in those flared pants and uncomfortable bra marketed as this year's answer to high waists and big hips. I work as the sun rises.
Paula is actually the one responsible for my schedule, of course. Because she doesn't party, she doesn't relate. To be perfectly honest, I never was much of a partier either. And even when I did stay out late, I never slept much past nine. Now nine o'clock is the holy grail of sleep times. I mean, to sleep until nine o'clock would be like something out of a dream, except I'd be dreaming about something else at the time.
So this morning after luxuriating in bed until 5:45, Paula and I got up to finish watching March of the Penguins. Then I got to work.
By nine the house looked presentable and I even had a shower. I walked out of the bathroom - fully dressed, thank God, but hair dripping - to find Joel escorting one of his students to what is now known as The Studio.
Paula went down for a nap at 10 - the poor kid is teething or something, just not herself today - and there I was, awake, hungry and with time on my hands. I entered the kitchen.
That's how I ended up with my apron on, baking cookies (wheat- and dairy-free!) a pot of mostaccioli with meat sauce on the stove and feeling for all the world like I was putting on some kind of show for Joel's students: see how neat and tidy Mr. Martinez's house is? See how his wife occupies herself with domestic work, domestic tasks, domestic bliss? See?
Oy. Well, next week they'll get a different picture, I imagine. Something along the lines of chocolate-crazed, wild-haired mom trying desperately for a nap after being up since 3 a.m. cleaning.
Recently I've had some great conversations about the Baha'i faith. It's something I often keep very personal - I loathe the idea that anyone would feel I was trying to push my religion on them. But others may find it as fascinating and rewarding as I do.
So here are some basic facts about the Baha'i faith, the youngest of the world's independent religions:
Those are what Baha'is call the "Three Onenesses:" Oneness of God, Oneness of Religion, Oneness of Humanity. These form the core of Baha'i belief and all other beliefs radiate out from them, such as:
If you would like to learn more about Baha'i, a good place to start is the international Web site for the Baha'i community.
You can download a searchable and comprehensive Baha'i and interfaith library at Baha'i Education.
And of course you are welcome to ask me if there is something you would like to learn about Baha'i. Have fun!
Some days having a deaf slash hard-of-hearing slash hearing impaired child is frustrating. Paula won't look at me so I can't sign to her. I stomp on the floor, nothing. I turn her face toward mine; nothing. Communication is at a standstill and I'm pounding my head against the wall.
But in spite of those days I can think of a lot of things I love about the fact that Paula is the way she is, whatever you want to call it.
These are my top 10 favorite things about Paula's hearing loss.
10. Justifying that huge subwoofer on our entertainment center.
9. Talking on the phone while lying next to my sleeping child.
8. Having a perfectly good excuse to be blasting hip-hop music at 10 a.m. on a Sunday.
7. My house is a drum! Those wood floors really sing out when stomped.
6. I look great as a parent because my kid learned a heap of signs in just a few months.
5. How many kids do you know with bright purple hearing aids?
4. People come to my house to teach my daughter all kinds of things, and I just play along.
3. My daughter sees details I've never noticed and points them out to me - she's my second set of eyes.
2. How hugging, tapping, snuggling and touching are major forms of communication.
1. I get to learn American Sign Language!
Don't worry, I totally chickened out. I can't stand the idea of actually paying money for something made with a dead animal's fur. Well, kid, maybe we'll find you a nice Gund.
My friend Jane is a vegan. She eschews all things animal, including but not limited to meat, egg, milk, leather, wool, and down. If it's got animal in it, Jane wants nothing to do with it. She's even worked for PETA, but found she had to compromise her integrity too much to work there - that's my friend Jane.
She's not a crusader, though. She won't get into a heated debate with you about the evils of vivisection and fur just because you order an egg salad sandwich. Nope. Jane lives out her beliefs. She is happy to discuss them with you. But she's not hitting anyone over the head with them.
Still, I think she might object to my current avenue of inquiry.
I'll back up a little. Coco has continued to be ill this last week as I have waited for the rescue group to send me some worm medicine for her. Yesterday she was so listless I knew I couldn't wait any more. That poor animal was a mess, and it was time to take her to the vet.
But then Paula signed to me that her stomach hurt, and I started wondering if it could be a side effect from the Zyrtec she is taking for her ever-present hives. Well, they're not ever-present anymore because of the Zyrtec. She's been taking it about a week. I called the doctor, thinking they would just tell me if abdominal pain is or is not a side effect. Instead I got the warning, "If you don't bring her in today it'll be the weekend and if she gets sick you'll have to take her to the emergency room." Fine. I'll take her in.
So there I was with a very sick dog and a not-very-sick-but-nonetheless-doctor-bound daughter. I somehow got them both into the car and found that Coco benefited from the fresh air and change of scenery. Paula completely rejected her hearing aids yesterday, which added a level of complexity to the proceedings. I somehow got both dog and daughter out of the car and into the vet's office - though by this time my patience with Paula's resistance to her aids was wearing thin. Fact is, I can't let go of her for a second if she's going to run into the parking lot and not hear me calling her back. Keep hold of dog, keep hold of daughter.
Dog at the veterinarian, we headed to the pediatrician. We met a very nice doctor - Paula just loved this guy - who took a thorough history, did a thorough exam, and came back with the attending. They rested chins in hands and looked thoughtful. "Well, she could just have a passing bug," they said. "But what if she swallowed a hearing aid battery?"
That didn't sound likely. I'm pretty careful with spent hearing aid batteries. But they scared me and I agreed to an X-ray. Just as we left for the radiology office, the attending said, "Oh, yes! Zyrtec doesn't cause abdominal pain."
THEY COULDN'T JUST TELL ME THAT ON THE PHONE????
Anyway, Paula and I were both exhausted from little sleep the night before and having two more stops to make before home was almost intolerable knowledge for me. As we waited for the X-ray tech, Paula took to running out of the waiting room and down the hall. This meant I let the stroller collapse backwards onto the coats, purse and princess backpack I had loaded onto it, and I took off running after her. No, she doesn't hear me when I call. Of course, my nephew Brandon was like that at this age, too, and he can hear. Somehow that doesn't make it less frustrating.
But Paula was a total trooper when she had to lie still on the table for the X-ray. She just kept still, let me hold her hands over her head. When we left I felt so thankful I wanted to give her ice cream.
We arrived to the vet and got Coco all checked out. She's now set up with three doses of antiparasitic that would kill a bear, or a dog's tapeworms. As I paid the bill Paula discovered something: a toy cat covered with rabbit fur. It was so cute and so soft, and of course Paula didn't want to let go of it. She kept signing CAT, smiling and petting that silky fur.
This is the part I hated, though. I had to take it away from her, though I let her carry it all the way to the car (as the vet tech helped with Coco). She had had a crappy day, and so had I. She had been such a trooper, even after I had gotten impatient and yelled at her, signing forcefully in my broken ASL. Yes, I felt guilty.
All the way home she cried and signed CAT.
So now I just want to find a toy cat like the one she saw at the vet. I'm not even sure how to find one, but I really want one for Paula. I know crappy days are a part of life, but a big part of me wants to make it up to her.
So Jane, if you're reading this, I hope you'll understand. If I can find and afford one, I'll get it for my daughter who made it through a stressful day with that playful smile intact.
P.S. If anyone knows about a toy cat covered in fake fur as soft as rabbit fur, please, for the sake of some poor rabbit, let me know.
This is not exciting reading. This is for the record.
This is the list of Paula's signing vocabulary after three months of learning ASL.
1. Baby 2. Bye-bye 3. Later 4. ILY 5. Where 6. Drink 7. Eat 8. Potty 9. Elephant 10. Dog 11. Cat 12. Horse 13. Cow 14. Daddy 15. Water 16. Shoes 17. Socks 18. Play 19. Apple 20. Banana 21. Cracker 22. Full 23. Pig 24. Hot 25. Cold 26. Help 27. Cry 28. Milk 29. More 30. Bird 31. Ball 32. Bed 33. Thank you 34. Book 35. Hurt 36. Gorilla 37. Monkey 38. Keys 39. Diaper 40. Big 41. Wolf 42. Bad 43. Good 44. Sit 45. Chair 46. Low 47. Here 48. Bear 49. Flower 50. Frog 51. Fish 52. Lotion 53. Hat 54. Go 55. Want 56. Smell 57. Grandma 58. Grandpa 59. Read 60. Cheese 61. Bread
I may have missed a few, but this is definitely the bulk of them. I'm so proud of my girl!
I once read someone's comment that they don't like blogs that are just about what people had for breakfast. I agree most of the time, but dude if you had eaten the breakfast I just ate, you would want to tell the world, too.
Here's the recipe for a truly wondrous breakfast:
First, the sad part.
When we picked up Coco from the board and train place - the place that invited her for a pro bono stay at its supposedly top notch obedience boot camp - I barely recognized her. She was even more emaciated than she was when we first got her. She looked tiny, cowering and miserable. Once I realized it truly was Coco, I cried. The operator of the place insisted he fed her well with top quality food, but Coco's protruding pelvic bones told a different story.
The owner of D.O.P.A. Dogs said he was told she was "dog aggressive" and so he gave her his special dog aggressive treatment: surrounding her with barking, aggressive dogs so that she would be desensitized and/or lash out and be corrected. The kind of thing that is so terribly not right for a sensitive and gentle dog like Coco.
While it is true that Coco does not like to be around other large dogs, she is not dog aggressive in the slightest. She is simply more comfortable being the only dog in the family. When she sees other dogs she needs to make sure they will not threaten her people - that is what D.O.P.A. dude was told, and what he completely misconstrued. What I understand to be Coco being herself: a dog who was bred for loyalty to humans and suspicion of other dogs, he saw as potentially dangerous.
As my brother Kit recently said, if your only tool is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. D.O.P.A. Dogs sees all dogs, or maybe all pit bulls, maybe, as aggressive and "trains" them in a way that lacks either justice or compassion.
Coco was not only emaciated, she was very sick. She brought home a kennel cough that produced thick, dark brown phlegm. Her eyes oozed green mucus and she spent her days curled on a blanket in front of the heater vent. Just heartbreaking.
She improved, though, as I fed her boiled hamburger with ginger and the occasional egg. Her appetite came back, her phlegm cleared up, she began to bounce a little like our old Coco. As my store of hamburger ran low, I began adding her kibble back into her food, and she gobbled it like a famine survivor.
Unfortunately this led to a truly disastrous gastric response in Coco, something I will spare you the details of for your own sake. Besides, words really can't describe the stink.
But she is now recovering well on a diet of boiled rice and chicken. Annie, bless her dog-loving heart, dropped by last night with five pounds of rice and ten pounds of chicken, just so we wouldn't run out.
The good that is coming from all this is that Chicago Bully Breed Rescue, the group that helped us get Coco, will never send another dog to board at D.O.P.A. Dogs. D.O.P.A. will have to get their tax write-offs some other way.
And the hopeful part:
Paula has had her hearing aids for about a month now. For the first two weeks that she had them she took to them very well. She responded to her name when I called her, she stopped shrieking, it was awesome. By the end of the first two weeks she was wearing the aids all day and even getting mad at me when I took them out to bathe her.
And then things kind of shifted. She started taking them out more, responding less, shrieking more. It was a little like Flowers for Algernon, but with hearing aids.
Wednesday at the audiologist, Paula responded poorly to the sound field testing, even with her hearing aids in. Not good.
The audiologist said Paula had negative pressure in her middle ears (measured by tympanogram), and that could be the cause of the change.
Well, today Paula and I went back the the Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic to see the wonderful Dr. Williamson. And he said this: If Paula has any kind of pressure buildup in her middle ear, it is very likely making her uncomfortable enough to take out the aids. It can interfere with her ability to hear with the aids in, and generally retard her language acquisition at this critical stage. So, he said, let's fix that.
So this month Paula will get the little tubes put into her ears that many babies get after repeated ear infections. It's an outpatient procedure, she'll probably be up and around later the same day. Post-op pain is treatable with tylenol, aftercare involves antibiotic eardrops for two or three days.
This is what I love about Dr. Williamson. I come to him with problems, he offers solutions. His goal is for Paula to acquire language, and this is what he pursues singlemindedly when we see him. I've decided that after Joel, Dr. Williamson is my favorite man. He's not a cuddly-looking man, but boy did I want to hug him today.
So I'm left with a number of things to be thankful for. My dog is mending, and her suffering will save other dogs from going through the same thing. My daughter is as charming and vivacious as ever, and her prospects for learning ASL and English look good. My husband - I didn't go into this - is making big, bold, grown-up life decisions in a way that inspires my respect and love. Thanksgiving is over, but being thankful is not.
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