Can You Hear Me Now?

I'm so thankful that this week is coming to an end. It has been way too busy and miserably hot! We had a sleep study done the other night and it did NOT go well. I'll have to write about that in another post because I think we are both still trying to recover. Camden had an ENT appointment on Tuesday to do a hearing screen and check for fluid in his ears. I definitely was ready for this appointment because I want to know if there is any hearing loss so we can get a plan going. Hearing is so important for speech development and a lot of kiddos with Ds tend to have some degree of hearing impairment. They first checked for fluid and it turns out that his right ear is clear, but his left does have fluid. He did end up failing the hearing screen on the left ear and passed on the right. Dr. V said he would need tubes but wants to wait until he gets a little bigger. He has such tiny ear canals that you can't even see the eardrum. He thinks the failed hearing screen is due to the fluid, but wants to do an ABR (auditory brainstem response) to see for sure. This will be able to determine if there is any true hearing loss and to what degree if there is. You have to be really still or sleeping in order for the test to take place. Since it would be hard to time the test with an infant's sleep and there is no gurantee they would stay asleep, they are usually sedated. We don't want to have to sedate Camden twice, so he will get tubes and have an ABR done at the same time. We go back in two months to recheck the fluid and make a definite plan. I'm just ready to get this taken care of as soon as we can because hearing is so incredibly important.

 Carter has been so good at all of these appointments.

We stopped the solid food feedings since we have had so much weight gain trouble. Formula is more calorie-dense so we wanted to try increasing his milk intake and didn't want him getting full on solid foods. Well, that didn't work. He just won't drink more than 4 ounces at a time. Sigh. After having a couple of conversations with my cyber sisters, several of them suggested avocados. They are high in calories and have tons of nutrients. Carter never really liked them so I never fed them to him. I made a banana and avocado purée and Camden seems to really like it. I'm hoping this will help because I don't know what to do anymore. 

This time of year is also fireworks time. We have a small firework's business that we open during the 4th of July and New Year' Eve. It's open for ten days only and those ten days are scorching hot. Since I have two little ones now, I'm not out there that much. On July 4th though we have everyone there working because it is crazy busy. I'm talking 10-20 customers there at a time nonstop type of busy. It's exhausting but it's worth it. We are blessed to have an amazing husband and wife team that work the stand those ten days. They have been with us for several years now and they look forward to it as much as we do. They are the ones out in that 100-104 degree heat everyday working their booties off! Thank you Steve and Diana! You guys are amazing!