11 months!!

To celebrate Paul's 11 month "anniversary", the Duke Blue Devils, brought home a national championship!!! The final game was pure torture to watch, but deep inside I knew that Duke would pull it out....why? Because it was fate!! The correlation between Kai's first year and Paul's first year are.....well, SPOOKY!! In both Kai and Paul's first year, the Yankees won the World Series, and the last time the Yankees won it was when Kai was born. Duke won the National Championship that SAME year, and it was the last time THEY had won it, as well. Not a coincidence!! I mean, Duke was not picked by anyone to win it this year, but I think they can thank Paul Daniel for his contribution to their win.....it HAD to happen!

On a more somber note, I took Paul to the ENT specialists on Monday. Because of the many ear infections, the doctors wanted to check his hearing to see if there was any loss. He first checked his ears, and they are clear, thank goodness! Note: He had had a high fever last week, and when I took him to the pediatrician last Thursday, they said that it was a virus and there wasn't anything they could do for him. His fever eventually went down and he seems to be over all that now - ofcourse, now we think that his molars are starting to come in. Adam's mom checked back there (brave soul!) and saw that his gums were puffy, so that probably explains why he's been so fussy. Ok....back to the ENT appointment....After the doctor checked his ears, we then checked his hearing. The audiologist checked the pressure in his ears with a little machine, and apparently there wasn't much air going through them. We then went into a hearing booth where they called his name and checked his hearing through different sounds that were pumped into the speakers. Apparently he has had some hearing loss, and so the doctor talked to me about some options. The choices were to do nothing and see if it clears itself up, give him some medication, or put in tubes.

It's agonizing making these decisions for this little guy - I wish that I had a crystal ball to know that the decisions I'm making for him are the right ones. I have heard good things about putting tubes in, but there are still risks involved with that, and I'm not sure I want to subject Paul to that right now, since he is so young. Not to mention that we would have to pretty much pay for the procedure ourselves since our insurance has such a high deductible. Ofcourse, that's not as important as doing what we need to do to help Paul. I finally decided (after a silent prayer) to go ahead and schedule the tube surgery, but in the meantime give Paul the medication (Singulair) and see if it has any impact on his hearing after a couple of weeks. If it helps him, then I can just cancel the tube surgery. So we'll just see what happens.

To be honest, I would never think that he has experienced hearing loss just from what I see in Paul's behavior. He hears sounds behind his back - I shake a rattle behind him softly and he turns to it. It's just so hard to know, since he can't talk and tell us what's happening with him. We have a follow-up appointment with the ENT in about two weeks to see if the medicine is helping, so only time will tell.

Meanwhile, Paul's first birthday is coming up!!! Yaaaay! They wanted to schedule his tube surgery for that day, but that was NOT going to happen!!! We're going to have a little party for him on May 1....I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures of that day to share!! :)