Hearing test and other things

Hello everyone.

Friday I brought Miss Katharina to Albany Medical Center for her second hearing test. My brain IS SO out of it that I thought this was our first test, I thought the test in June was for Alex. Hmm. Good thing I write everything down, eh?

Anyway. Katharina was fantastic. She sat relatively still and allowed the testers to put probes in her ears, she allowed them to talk through head phones to her--she only had that one time before--her FIRST hearing test last June. Pretty strange concept if you think about it. She pointed to pictures of six different objects when requested to through the headphones, most of the time correctly. Considering that most of the time she sees ice cream it is in a bowl (a girl who has limited strength and control in her hands is not often given an ice cream cone!) she did well in choosing the cone or the cupcake-they both looked similar, ice cream-with sprinkles--at the appropriate time.

Then they had her listen to the headphones again and whenever she heard a noise on whatever frequency, she had to drop a block into a pail. That is a hard concept for Kath. It entails listening for something (while wearing probes and wires in front of strangers who stare at you!), taking a block and throwing it in a bucket. That's several activities. The audiologist was great. She took her time and taught Kath what to do, especially once she saw that Kath was actually watching her every move and learning. It took an entire bucket of blocks to understand but understand she did and she aced the test. The audiologist told me afterward (not sure if she said it just to make me feel good or not--though I will take her word!) that it was an activity that 3 1/2 year-olds struggle with. Kath turned 2 in November.

She passed the tests with flying colors, cognitively too. The tests for the most part really just inform us that her ears work--it cannot tell us that the messages are going back and forth to the brain. But she gave us pretty great indicators that things are working just fine.

Alex will have her first real hearing test on the 6th of February at Albany Med. Poor kid. I thought I did it already, considering she is getting speech therapy, it is a good idea for us to make absolutely certain that she is hearing correctly and all her listening facilities are in working order. We will be taking Katharina back to the neurologist and to a hematologist at Albany Med in February and we are also going to Boston Children's Hospital on the 12th of February to the Children's Stroke Unit. I guess it might be called a second opinion, I am thinking of it as an overview.

This week we have been the house of sick. Kath was throwing up in the beginning of the week, and now she has had diarrhea since Friday. Alex has had diarrhea. Roger and I have just felt blah and uncomfortable. Chris was vomiting as well. (Nick is very happy he is away at school--he had a meet at St Lawrence College this weekend--he jumped 19 feet in the long jump.)

I have some funny/good stories I will have to leave for another time--such as the floor crawl by me and Kath waking up and sleeping with me, but I am pretty tired and I have school tomorrow.

As a side note--I have chosen to sell Avon again as well as natural made candles. I will be posting my websites to this blog page soon. I am trying to improve our financial situation by: enabling us to pay our bills on time; saving money for emergencies, helping the boys pay for college, saving for the girls college, saving for our retirements. Avon is always great-they have great products and I buy these candles myself because they smell great and they burn clear-they don't leave dark rings on the glass jars, so they don't leave bad residue in the air for you to breathe. So, if you like either or are interested in either--I will have more later on the sidebar. :-)
What a saleswoman!

My true goal is still to complete my story for Kath and I am working on that too.
Have a great night!