the spirit of christmas

Hope your Christmas was just as wonderful as ours.

tidings of great joy

Abby had a sound booth test today where they tested what she could hear with her implant on (with her hearing aid turned off.) Across the board, from 500hz to 4000hz, she responded to tone bursts at 10-15 decibles.

That's a whisper, a bird whistle, the rustle of the trees!

Abby, who is COMPLETELY deaf in her left ear, can hear at 10 decibles with the aid of her implant and after only having it for four months.

That is a miracle, people.

i've held my tongue long enough

I just came back from a late-night milk run at Walmart. It's 12:30 am. As I was waiting in an excruciatingly long line, a lady got in line behind me. She had her mom with her and her two children. One of them was probably four or five, and the other was about eight years old. The grandma asked what time it was and the mom looked at her phone and passively said, "it's 12:00." No biggie apparantly. I looked at the eight year old and she was laying her head on the shopping cart with her eyes closed. The little boy was acting up and her mom said, "why are you being like this?" and other comments like, "Santa is watching everything you do, so you better be good."

oooohhhhh.... I was so close to saying, "lady, did it ever occur to you that maybe he's TIRED, and that's why he's acting up?!"

Okay, yeah, I understand that some people have different schedules because of their work, and so your kids sleep when you sleep. But 12am? Really? And I also know that sometimes there are extinuating circumstances where it might be necessary. But this was obviously not the case. These kids were visibly tired and needed to be in bed. I just don't understand why the grandma couldn't have stayed home with her kids and put them to bed while she shopped.

And this definitely isn't the first time this has happened. EVERY single time I make a late night shopping run, there is someone there with their kids. And its never a single parent with kids. It's always a couple of adults with the kids. For heaven sake, one of you STAY home and put your kids to bed.

Yeah, I'm far from being a perfect parent, but you will NEVER see me at Walmart at midnight with my children. But if I ever do, and I get in line behind you, just turn around and slap me.

movin' on up

Brian got promoted!

He has worked SO hard.

I am so proud of him.

still lost

We haven't found Abby's implant yet, but her teacher pulled all the surveilance videos and, although very grainy, it's pretty clear that she had her implant on at school. Somewhere between 10am in the activity room and 12 noon thirty feet away in her classroom her implant got lost. Mrs. Adams has searched the school like a mad woman to no avail and several other teachers have looked as well. I think the next step is to send a letter home with all the students and hope that one kid saw it laying around in the activity room and decided to take it home. There is still a possibility that it got flushed down the toilet, but Abby is too attached to her implant to send it down the drain.

This is all so madening! Please pray that we find it! For our sanity's sake more than anything.

abby's first published quote

There's a house close to us that totally decks out their entire house and yard every Christmas. This isn't the house, but it looks a lot like it.

Anyway, we took the kids to see it tonight and as we pulled up to it Abby said, "Oh, that's a mess!"

They call it like they see it, don't they?

the death of me

Abby lost her cochlear implant today. I put it on her this morning and her teacher called me at noon to say that Abby didn't have it on. Somewhere between then she lost it. Abby told her that it was in the car, so I searched the car high and low and didn't find it, and the teacher tore apart the school looking for it.

I really have no idea where it could be. There's a pretty good chance that wherever it is, its safe, and we just need to locate it, but there is a slim possibility that Abby discovered that its magnetic and stuck it on the outside of the car, and if that's the case, its long gone. But she's never done that before, so lets hope that didn't happen.

She's only worn the thing for three months! There is a ONE time replacement for it, but after that, we're screwed. We have a back-up implant, but it takes disposible batteries, and its a pain. We're using it until we can figure out where the other one is, so its not totally the end of the world that she lost it. But I swear, if my kids keep losing their hearing aids, I'm going to go crazy. And to think I have 16 more years of this.

*sigh*

But to end this post on a positive note, here's a picture of Abby and Anna in matching $2.50 Children's Place dresses. I'm not sure which is harder to believe; that we got these for $2.50, or that these girls are cousins.

why i don't blog anymore

I feel like I hardly blog anymore. I'm never short of random things to talk about, its just that I don't have much gumption anymore. I've been doing a lot of photo shoots lately, and with that comes the editing process of the pictures, which, for a person like me who is still new at this whole thing, takes a long time. I'm getting faster at editing, learning some tricks and such, and I'm also *trying* to get better at taking pictures so I don't have to do too much to them. But I've also realized that I really need to try not to edit when the kids are awake, because I feel guilty taking time away from them. And since my kids don't take naps, that means I'm editing late into the night sometimes.

I know it will get better. I will become more proficient and efficent and find a balance with the most important job of motherhood. But I have learned in the past nine months that there's no way I could ever give this up. I love it too much.

So here is an example of a "before" picture that could use a little editing. It was too dark, and the contrast between mom's face (sorry, Carrie) and baby was too extreme.



So with a little work, here's the finished product.

dear self

You just unloaded the dishwasher in 5 minutes flat. Why then, do you procrastinate unloading it every single time it's clean?

5 minutes, self.

5 minutes.

geez.