Sammy's 3rd Birthday

Sammy's 3rd birthday - family celebration
Sammy's 3rd birthday party with friends
Doing the Spiderman Web Walk
Pin the "S" on Superman
Ready to blow out candles this time

Sammy turned three over the summer. We ended up having two celebrations for him ... one for family and Keith's best friend's family and the other with Sammy's playgroup friends. He splashed and played in the kiddie pool surrounded by bubbles on Saturday and enjoyed games like Pin the "S" on Superman and a Spiderman Web Walk on Monday. Sammy is very shy and is easy overwhelmed by new faces or too much activity. There is something special about it being his own birthday and he rose to the occasion and had a lot of fun. At other kid's parties, Sammy is too shy to participate in the structured games and wants to go play in a quiet part of the house away from all the activity. Clearly he was in the middle of the festivities this time and seemed to truly enjoy it.

Sammy's Hearing

I do have an update about Sammy's hearing situation, which is a mixture of good and bad news. The bad news is that I took him to the ENT at the beginning of summer and Sammy's right ear was full of fluid. The doctor advised us to see if the fluid would dry up over the summer and retest his hearing to see if another surgery would be necessary. At the end of summer his right ear was still packed full of fluid and the tympanography exam where they blow air in his ears and hope to see a bell shaped curve to indicate the ear drum's flexibility showed unfortunate "flat as a pancake" lines for both ears. The right ear drum doesn't flex at all and the assumption is that it is because of fluid behind the ear drum. The left ear drum doesn't flex either, but that is because there is a hole in his ear drum from where the tube used to be. So that's not great to discover.

The good news is that his hearing test indicated that his hearing is not only the same in his right ear as it is in his left, it is right on target for the normal range of hearing. So he is currently hearing fine, according to the sound booth test. Sammy was so cute during the exam. He was teetering on the edge of being overwhelmed with shyness, but curious and interested in the test enough that he kept going. He had to drop a little bear in the bucket every time he heard the audiologist talk to him over his headphones ... although, me being ever the realist or skeptic or whatever you want to call it wondered if he didn't catch on to the test and drop the bears every time he saw her lips start moving. The should do that test so he can't get visual cues. Oh well.

The plan is to check his ears again in four months, unless he has problems sooner. The hole in his ear drum is actually beneficial for now as it would let fluid drain out of that ear. Once he outgrows the fluid buildup problem, we can look into patching the hole, if it hasn't healed itself by then.