Can you ear me now?

It's going to be a big few days for the left ears in our family...well, at least the kids' ears. Let me 'splain....

As some of you may know, Delaney was born with a little ear. Yeah, kinda like Nemo. Technically, it's called an atresic ear with microtia.  You can kind of see it here.

She has no hole or canal, and no hearing in that ear. We've been to a number of doctors for various discussions, and Texas Children's convinced us to go ahead and do an ABR (auditory brainstem response) test to see if she has middle ear/inner ear functionality. If she does, then her hearing will be able to be restored after they rebuild her ear when she is about 6-9 years old. She has fantastic hearing in her right ear, so even if they can't do the restoration, she should still have no problems. Depending on which ENT you ask (and we've asked several), it may be worth considering a bone conducting hearing aid, but we've about decided to wait and see how her speech develops before we consider putting her through that. I digress with the back story. Her ABR is tomorrow morning at Texas Children's Hospital and then we meet with the ENT to go over the results. They will have to sedate her for a few hours. Although it's a mild sedative and we're sure she will do great, we still ask for prayers for a successful day!

Tuesday is Justus' turn. In late June, he had his tonsils and adenoids taken out. In then process, his ENT found a benign tumor in his left ear, which he originally thought was a lot of fluid that just needed draining. We've learned that the cholesteatoma needs to be removed because if not, it could potentially cause permanent hearing loss, facial paralysis, brain damage, etc. We are so fortunate the doctor found this because Justus had not been exhibiting any symptoms. Tuesday is his surgery follow up where he will have a few tests and we will schedule his surgery to remove it.

Not a fun topic today, but important to us and we ask for prayers for an easy few days for the kids and continued prayers for healing for both of them. We will have surgery in the near future for Justus and distant future for Delaney, but we will definitely keep everyone posted about that stuff.

On a much lighter note, someone turned 8 months old yesterday!! Happy month-day to our little princess!

You love...your brother, more than anything

Your favorite food...pretty much any baby food, but you really dig the veggie/meat combos (that's my girl!)

Your least favorite food...avocado.  It's the only one I can't get you to eat.  Admittedly, I've only tried a time or two, but you've never rejected anything else like that.

What you're doing now...not yet crawling, but I can tell you are so ready to be mobile

                                  ....grabbing anything that is unfortunate enough to find itself within arm's reach, and putting it in your mouth; 

                                  ....jabbering away with mamamamama (my favorite, of course) and babababa

                                  ....Smiling all the time!