My kids have terrible ears!! (and rockin' hair)

OH. MY. GOSH. If I ever hear the words 'ears' and 'fluid' in the same sentence again, it will be too soon.

As most of you know, Cate is going to be doing some speech therapy through Tennessee Early Intervention for her speech delay. As part of the diagnostic process, we needed to get her hearing tested. So, we did that today and, sure enough, she is showing some hearing loss due to fluid that just will not drain out of her ear canal. The good news is that the hearing loss is not permanent. It should be fixed once the fluid is drained, which can be accomplished with the long awaited tubes. The bad news is that the ENT has the longest wait EVER and we may not get the tubes until sometime in May. Ugh.

More bad news: Max just happened to tag along for Cate's hearing test today and, after testing Cate's ears, the audiologist thought she would do Max's real quick just to show me what the graph for a normal ear looks like. Too bad Max does not have normal ears. His graph (and subsequent hearing test) showed worse hearing loss than Cate's! Again caused by fluid that is not draining. What?!?!?!??? Apparently, super smart kiddos like Max are able to compensate for hearing loss with a host of other faculties, so it can easily go undetected :/

So, I left today with two - count 'em TWO - kids with bad ears, and a ton of doctor appointments to make. Lord help me! I am really hopeful, though, that tubes for Cate will lead to a big improvement in her speech. I hope we can get them soon!!

On a brighter note, Max got a haircut yesterday and (like always) requested that the stylist give him a mohawk. This time the guy actually listened and Max could not be more thrilled with his new look!

He could not wait to style his hair with his new spikey gel for school today and show all his friends! So cute! ... er ... I mean 'cool' :)