Coming to terms

For part 1 of this story, click HERE.

Well. It would seem that my sweet, perfect baby does, indeed have a permanent hearing loss in his left ear. We haven't yet met with the ENT so I suppose there is the outside chance that the initial testing is wrong, but it is evident in his behavior that he truly cannot hear on the left side. It has taken me quite a while to digest this information, but I think I have just about come to terms with it. Today I had to take him back to the audiologist for a THIRD time, because they wanted to re-check his right ear to be sure that he's hearing well on that side. Of course there was no way he was going to go to sleep at the office, which I suspected would be the case, so the audiologist we saw today decided to try a different kind of test that is usually reserved for older babies/kids. He responded pretty well to it and as a result, she was confident that his hearing is normal or at least darn close to normal in his right ear. His left ear, however, shows probable nerve damage, which is permanent. She told me that he can likely hear very loud sounds in that ear, but definitely not softer sounds like normal speech, etc. The good news is, because of the one good ear, his speech/language development should be just fine. The bad news is, he cannot localize sounds, and will probably have a hard time filtering out background noise- turns out you need two ears to do that, so he's going to have to rely more on visual cues than those of us with "normal" hearing.

Maybe it was just that I've had some time to process, but hearing that today didn't come as such a punch in the gut this time. The ultimate truth, for me, is that God has blessed us with an absolutely JOYFUL little baby, and he is perfect just the way he is. And as tends to happen in these situations, God puts people in our lives who allow us to see Him in just the way we need, at just the right time. One of my favorite people happened to be soliciting prayer requests on her Facebook page recently, so I gave her mine, and this is what she said: Sue...oh sweet Sue. I will pray. I will pray for your heart and for your sweet Micah. I think, as believers, the "Ahhhh" is in knowing that none of this surprises God. He formed Micah in His image ...divine design. He already has a purpose and plan for him and every bit of this now...all if it weaves into shaping Micah and preparing him to fulfill the destiny God has already prepared before him. So rest easy, Momma...love him, protect him and watch God do mighty things with him. :)

And so I read those heartfelt words and I cried. And after that my heart felt better, because I knew she was right; and not only that, I learned in that moment to separate the clinical diagnosis of "hearing loss" from MICAH. He is awesome-so awesome that I've threatened on more than one occasion to change his middle name from Alexander to Awesome! He does not know that he can't hear the same as everyone else, nor does he care. He has his Daddy's smile and personality and he's just HAPPY. I don't know why things worked out this way for him, but I do know that as I drove to Children's Hospital for our appointment this morning, I was very, very thankful that it wasn't an appointment for something much worse, even life-threatening. So as my grandmother used to say- this is one of those times when I need to just keep both oars in the water. We'll figure this thing out together, one step at a time. I have been blessed with an amazing husband and family, the very best friends, and a double batch of awesome kids! Can't ask for more than that.

Coins, Coins, Coins!

So here's a "frugal living" themed post. Have you ever used one of those coin-counting machines you see in the front of most grocery stores these days? I've done it just a couple of times before, most recently when I was on a late-night ice cream run in my hubby's car and decided to dump his cup of loose change in to see how much was in it. It paid for the ice cream and then some, by the way- almost $9 in loose change just sitting in his center console, and I left him a bunch of quarters, dimes & nickels for parking meters!

In the past I usually would just walk right on by those machines, because of course they charge a fee for counting all those coins, and I have kids who can do that! Coinstar charges 9.8 cents on the dollar for coins counted in their machines-ouch. HOWEVER, this time, I noticed a FREE option. That's right- you can now dump your change jar into a Coinstar machine and trade for a gift card or eCertificate to quite a variety of places. (Amazon, iTunes, Old Navy, Starbucks- just to name a few of my favorites!) Maybe this has been going on for awhile, but it was news to me! There's more specific info on the Coinstar website if you're curious to find out more. But you can bet I am now itching to take my big bucket of coins to trade in for an Amazon gift card!

Speaking of Amazon...I have also gotten hooked on using SwagBucks as my search engine of choice, because I can earn points that get me Amazon.com gift cards! There are lots of other options, those have just been my prize of choice. I have "earned" about $30 in gift cards just by searching the internet via the SwagBucks toolbar. If you'd like to check it out and get started for yourself, would you do me a favor and use my referral link below? That way I get credit for you, too!