Decorating for Christmas

Christmas is our favorite time of year. It has become somewhat of a tradition that on the Friday after Thanksgiving we get down the decorations and get to work. Hauling down boxes and decorations from the attic is a total whipping, so is testing light strings to find the one light that is burned out that is keeping the entire sting from lighting up. Aside from these small nuances we love getting ready for Christmas and this time of year. Here are some pics of our process this year:

This is the outdoor portion of our mess this year.

Once assembled this might resemble a Christmas tree!

Rebecca and Jake are busy making cheesecakes for Christmas Parties.

Making sure each light works, each light is evenly spread out and working is no easy process.

Seven is trying to figure out why I have been outside for 2 hours and won't let him out.

The finished product. Not Christmas related but a good pic, Jacob holding his head up trying to figure it all out.

2 Month Old Pics

Jacob is now 11 going on 12 weeks old. Here are two pictures of him at 1 month and 2 months old.

1 Month

2 Months

Audiotory Neuropathy

This is what Jacob has preliminary been diagnosised with. Below is a link for information if anyone would like to know more about the condition. http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/neuropathy.htm

Appointment with Otolaryngologist

We met with the Otolaryngologist (Dr. Bauer) on Wednesday for the first of many times. In the event you did not know, an Otolaryngologist is an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor, one of many new things we are going to learn about. The appointment was not really so much about a diagnosis but rather talking about what we can expect from here. Dr. Bauer told us that this is most likely permanent and we have to see where to go from here. One of the things that the he ruled out is that this has nothing to do with ear infections and goes way beyond anything tubes could help with. His hearing loss is most likely due either an illness, genetics, or perhaps the hardware is simply not put together correctly. In any event we have an upcoming appointment with the audiologist again on November 13th to get another ABR test (Auditory Brainstem Response) test; this is the same test he received back in mid October that gave us this original news. The doctors want to see if they can get more information than what they received previously; this will all go to help diagnosis the underlying problem. We also have an appointment lined up with a Speech Therapist that we will likely be visiting once a week for quite some time. We are also going to have some genetic testing done to see if we can get more information as to the “Why”, this will also likely help with the diagnosis. In Feb/March timeframe we will have an MRI to see if his ears are developed properly or if that is part of the problem. In between all of this we are going to be getting some hearing aids to see if this may help, however it is likely it will not as the doctors feel this is more of getting him use to having something on his ear for the future. If it’s determined that a cochlear implant will benefit Jacob then we can look at doing this surgery at around one year of age. All of this is being done so that we can give Jacob the best chance at being able to hear, speak normally, and develop just as any other child his age. It is going to be far more difficult, time consuming, and challenging than we ever anticipated but Rebecca and would not trade this for anything.

He's going to be a genius

Here's just a little video of the little man hard at work!!!

A Sweet Treat

Here's a couple photos of our Halloween NightItsy Bitsy Spider

He was orginally suppose to be a tiger but he out grew his costume.

Scary Face

Texas State Bobcat

Justin, Jill, and Jason joined in the halloween fun with their painted pumpkins!