And the school year begins...

So, I'm back to work again. I enjoyed my summer immensely though, and I wouldn't trade spending 10 weeks at home with Lucas for anything in the world. There are many great things about being a teacher, like having the summer off. But, work is never finished, and I can never just leave school at school. I always have something to grade or create, and I feel like I'm not able to be either an excellent teacher or mother, but somewhere in between both. After school is Lucas time though, and school work waits until he's in bed, whether it gets done or not. It will be an interesting year, trying to balance a busy teaching load with a busy special baby.

Interestingly. there's a new hearing impaired classroom in our school district, so I'm anxious to visit. Nate also has a new job teaching where I teach. We now make up more than half of the World Languages department at Manheim Central! (there are 3.5 of us... the .5 is a part-time teacher) Nate is closer to home and I love having him right next door to where I teach! We're able to spend more time together and devote more time to Lucas together.

Last week's MRI went pretty well. I'm glad it's over, and they better as heck have the slices of film that they need to determine the status of his cochlear implant candidacy this time. We're still waiting to hear about the results from Dr. Kazahaya. The insurance review has been completed. Our private insurance will not cover the surgery (what a surprise!), but our public insurance will, so we're very lucky about that. We're headed back down to CHOP on October 6 for an audiology appointment, and on October 7 for the next stage of the CI process. We meet with one of the CI audiologists, a social worker, and a SLP. All three appointments are right in a row. Then we have a pre-surgery appointment for the ear tubes and a meeting with anesthesiology. Ear tubes will be put in sometime in October. We don't have a surgery date yet, because I wanted to combine dates with our 10/6 & 10/7 appointments so that I can save my sick days as much as possible. The surgeon's calendar wasn't available yet, but I hope to hear soon. I want a Friday surgery date so I can spend the weekend afterwards with Lucas before going back to work. I'm so picky! But at least I know what I want.

Lucas popped 5 teeth this month is starting to be very mobile! He's not exactly crawling on all 4s, but he's doing an army crawl, which is getting him where he wants to go. He's still not really sitting on his own, although it's getting better... mostly because he wants to either crawl or stand, and doesn't have the patience to sit! We still get no response to sound, but he continues to vocalize, so we're pleased about that! We're just kind of in a waiting game. We continue to meet twice a month with his SLP, his TOD, and his OT, so that's keeping us busy! And we're still using baby signs with him to teach him pre-language. We need a way to communicate with him, since he responds to nothing. He is beautiful, happy and we couldn't imagine life without him. He has taught us SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much about life these past 8 months - what's important, what's not, and that his hearing is our number one priority.