The more I poke around learning about deafness and the auditory-oral therapy, the more I wonder about it, ironically. On the one hand, a lot of what I hear sounds like what I do, what I’ve been doing with Eric forever: just talking. Talking all the time, talking about everything I’m doing, talking about what he’s doing, talking about what everything is. On the other hand, I keep hearing and reading that it is such an involved process, so very much work, and I look at the fact that we are approved for an hour a week with someone from CID, and I wonder … how are we going to pull this off? Something so hugely important as teaching our child to listen despite a hearing impairment (no matter which audiology report you believe, he’s definitely hard of hearing) – it’s overwhelming sometimes to even think about.

Eric, I think, is a later talker. He’s not majorly behind or anything, and I remind myself that if I think he’s late, Daniel is going to be light years behind. That being said, he has really blossomed lately. He’s going through a phase of “What’s this?” That seems to be coming out of his mouth all the time. “What’s this? What’s THIS? What’s THIS?!” Sometimes he parrots back, sometimes he doesn’t. John mused that he is just soaking it all up right now, and I agree; one day, he is going to just start spitting all of this stuff out like crazy. He catches me off guard sometimes; this morning, out of nowhere, he says, “shirt!” Daddy was getting dressed, and he knew he needed a shirt. Then he points to the one he’s wearing. “Shirt. Pants?” He wasn’t wearing any yet. I just sat there for a minute – when did he learn that??

He’s also stringing two or three words together, and assigning ownership to a lot of things. Mommy’s water, Daddy’s chair. Please, Daddy, chocolate milk, Daddy. Yes, he’s learning some manners too. He’s great about thank you (though for some reason I have to remind him to say thank you when I give him milk, though he says it for all sorts of other things). We’ve been working on please, and he’s starting to use it, though he says “meeee” instead of please.

A part of me is looking so forward to this process with Daniel, and at the same time I’m apprehensive about how long we may have to wait for it. All I can hope is that we are able to work out the hearing therapy without totally losing all of our time for relaxing too. And I think Eric will be a great help too; I imagine Eric, as much as if not more than John and I, will be teaching Daniel so much language.

I have to slow down, though. There is a long road to even get there. I just like having something to work toward, something concrete, in all of the chaos and uncertainty. I hate to admit to being a little disappointed by the latest audiology results, because it returns us to chaos. I liked having something definite I could wrap my arms around.