“I am so sorry I am late. Please tell her teacher that I will not be late like this during the school year. It’s not something I am in the habit of I promise you. It’s just, we are in the middle of moving, and you know it’s been so difficult. Thank you for understanding.

Oh, and one more thing, SJ is wearing boy underwear and baby pants. I’ve got to run, see you at noon.”

These were the words I had for the advisor of SJ’s summer school program this morning. The good news is they are so cool and understanding. Every time I think I am just over the top, out of my mind crazy, they tell me a story about another crazy mom some time before me and I feel much better. Today’s story was about a mom that brought her naked toddler into the deaf school wrapped up in his dad’s sweatshirt. She set him down in his class along with a pile of his clothes because he had been taking his clothes off and she didn’t know what else to do. I get that.

To give a little background, last night we stayed in our apartment which is still pretty much empty. The air mattress wouldn’t blow up and I had forgotten to bring pillows so we slept on the floor with sleeping bags, that’s it. To say I have a lot on my plate right now would be an understatement. Last week I had my birthday, the kids were all sick including SJ having pneumonia, and we’ve been trying to gradually move into the apartment. The day we plan on moving all of our stuff is currently predicting 100% chance of thunderstorms. So, I don’t know what we are going to do, but if the blog seems quiet lately that is why. I’ve got a lot on my mind. I have been writing though. I have a few blog posts ready to crank out whenever I have the time to edit, tweak, or finish them. In fact I would love to show you what J has been working on to make our little apartment cute and functional all at the same time. You will be amazed. Be on the look out for all that, but if you don’t hear from me soon I am probably just off searching for my head so that I can screw it back on.

Not to sound like such a martyer, but summer school is a sacrifice for all of us. We wake up early, we spend a lot of time in the car commuting. We go to the bed when it is still SO STINKIN’ BRIGHT outside. The tuition we raised was costly, gas is costly, and wah wah wah you get the idea. However, everyone is working together and thank God we are seeing results!

SJ’s hearing age is now 7 months and she knows almost 20 words. Some of them she can pronounce better than others, but she understands quite a bit and is rapidly broadening her vocabulary. Her teacher always has encouraging and funny stories to share about what SJ is up to in class. One of my favorite stories was during vocabulary practice she is given a set of items and she has to grab the word that she hears. Here is an example

One day the objects were shoes, tree, and juice. The teacher said “JUICE” and she put one hand on the shoes and one hand on the juice and just shrugged her shoulders implying she knew it was one or the other. Those words sound a lot a like and she’s a clever cookie for trying to choose multiple answers. Here is another therapy video of her with the same teacher.

It’s exciting to watch her make such great strides. I remember the first few months after she got her implants I was always calling her name as a practice to see if she would respond and when she did I would sign and say “good listening”. Now I call her name in the same way I would with any child, just expecting that she can hear me and sometimes she is far away, or outside, or in another room and she can hear me! That doesn’t mean that I can always get her attention or that she is always wearing her implants, but she is doing well and I am so grateful.

If you haven’t read about our search for an apartment you can check it out here. 

I wanted apartment #1. It was attractive and inviting. I really thought we had made a connection, but in the end it wasn’t meant to be. It felt like a failed courtship. The truth is after submitting an application along with multiple phone calls and emails we were rarely able to get through to anybody. It felt like J and I were doing more on our end than they were. It was the “it’s not you it’s me” treatment. I got all the lines like “sorry this just happened to be really poor timing. Can you call me back at lunch” (and then getting his voicemail at lunch). And after a week of not getting a straight answer we decided it was time to move on. So we went with our second choice. In going with my boyfriend break up analogy think of apartment #1 as the popular guy and apartment # 2 as the reliable friend. 

Basically like all good chick flicks it boiled down to the one that was there for us and actually returned our phone calls. So this week we signed for apartment #2 and we get the keys on Monday. So we are moving to Milford Ohio. The apartment is on the third floor and it will be 5 of us in what is barely a 3 bedroom 1 bath. It’s going to be a lot of stairs and a tight squeeze. Go ahead, you can pity us, but on the bright side we are going to be so close to both of the kid’s schools and it’s a really nice area. Every single staff member from the apartment and the schools have made a deposit into my I Love Milford Account. 

Of course J and I want to be home owners again (more than anything), but for the next year we will at least have a home of our own, and that’s a good start.  

I never in my life thought an ABC Family teen drama would have such an impact on my life. I don’t even want to admit it, but the show has been truly instrumental in my ability to sign. Sometimes I dismiss the role sign language has in my life because SJ is in such a grey area when it comes to language, but the fact is even though we aren’t fluent we sign out of necessity every single day. It’s been interesting to watch her learn to talk. She understands and can identify all the parts of her face now. She says (or tries to say) up, down, where, open, outside, no, shoes, I want, and today for the first time I got to hear say bye-bye as she waved to her teacher! She has said it before, but this time was on her own. She initiated the goodbyes!

The other cool thing is that because the concept of vocabulary is starting to click more than ever, she is  starting to use ASL more too. It’s not what I expected, but She has started having a new sign explosion. She has signed sit, swing, swim, wrong, yes, asleep, bed, trash and a few others without any encouragement. It’s strange to see her doing a sign for the first time that we haven’t used since last year. Like I said, my theory is that as she learns orally all the pieces are starting to come together and make more sense, plus she is maturing in other ways of course. I am glad to have Switched at Birth back on so that I can  brush up on the signs that have gotten rusty.

Another area of my life that Switched at Birth has shed some light on is my ear problem. I couldn’t believe when I read a comment on my blog post about Meniere’s disease that the lead character Daphne has it too! I knew she had some kind of mild fluctuating hearing loss, but I had no idea we had the same thing. And in case you’ve seen the show, her deaf accent is acting, she doesn’t sound anything like that in real life.  When I first read about this condition I knew there was somewhere I had heard of this before, and it turns out they implemented it on the show. The character Noah is supposed to have Meniere’s. They talk about it in this clip, but they make it sound more severe than what is typical with this disease.

The Switched at Birth season premiere came at just right time for me. I usually only keep up with one show (if that) and Call the Midwife just had their season finale. My entertainment choices say a lot about my interest; home birth and hearing loss. Okay maybe they just say a lot about how weird I am, or unique. Let’s call it unique.