The Smiths: Only October

Here's everything else we did in October!

Joy school fun making play dough with Abigail and Emi:

And Lily, Halle, and Jarvis:

Since then, one other mom has joined our group with her son, Davin. 6 kids is about all I can take at once, but rotating every four weeks is nice :)

Lots of goofing around in October - like Eve showing me her new trick after school.

And Science Spectrum fun!

Cora's a puppy!

Racing bottle rocket cars:

And Eve showing us her amazing bubble skills:

We had some cold days of Eve's soccer games, so the girls and I had to watch from the car a couple times.

Chick-fil-A here in Lubbock did free breakfast give-aways for six weeks every Wednesday in September/October so we'd always stop there on our way to play group. The girls got very used to it and still say, "I'm hungry! Can we stop at Chick-fil-A?" on our way to play group most Wednesdays.

Cora's loves to play at the play ground at Eve's school; particularly throwing the rocks.

She doesn't love ramen noodles as much as Abigail does :)

Another soccer game from the car :)

Wow! A quadruple frosted mini wheat!

On October 18th, Abigail and I went for a visit to the ENT for a second opinion on the auditory neuropathy diagnosis and to see if hearing aids would be a good option for her. She was excited because it was just the two of us and we got to ride in from the parking lot in a golf cart! (The hospital is doing construction, so they offer rides in since parking is a little farther away than usual.)

Waiting in the fun chair for the ENT! Her appointment went well; the ENT confirmed the diagnosis from the audiologist and said he wanted to try hearing aids for Abigail. He also scheduled an MRI for November 16 because he wanted to get a look at the nerves in her brain. Since she passed her newborn hearing screen, but now had hearing loss on just the right side, he wanted to see "if the nerves were damaged, missing, or if there's a brain tumor causing the hearing loss." At my shocked expression, he hurriedly assured me that a tumor was extremely unlikely, he just wanted to see. Spoiler alert. That ENT, Dr. Idicula, saved her life by ordering that MRI and we'll be forever grateful.

More joy school fun - this time one of our subjects was spiders! We played with different kinds of spider webs:

And made spider cookies for snack!

(Abigail was being fussy about something at first....)

But quickly warmed up to it!

A week after her ENT appointment, on October 25th, Abigail and I went back to the ENT to be fitted for a hearing aid. She did so well as they filled her ear with blue goo to make a mold! The hearing aids they prescribed are CROS aids and are designed for hearing loss on one side. Rather than amplifying the sound, the aid on the right (bad) ear transmits the sound to the aid on the left (good) ear. So her left ear does all the hearing for both sides, it can now just better hear the sounds that were being missed by the right side before. The right side would also be plugged, so no sound can go in, because with her condition, sound does travel through that ear, it just gets jumbled, mixed up, or dropped in the brain. So to create less confusion, it's best to just plug that ear. More to come on Abigail's hearing aids, but not until next spring! With everything that's happened the past few weeks, the doctors have decided to wait until then to check her hearing again and possibly move forward with hearing aids. We didn't know that at this point in October, though (obviously). We were told about 1 - 2 weeks for her hearing aids to be ready. She chose purple ones, of course!

Also on October 25th, Eve's 1st grade class went on a field trip to the corn maze! Her teacher sent some pictures, and so did a friend of Andrew's (from school) who has a son in Eve's class. Looks like they had a blast!

For Halloween, Eve had a school project to create a haunted house room out of a shoe box - we got creative and she did a great job! (This is what her sisters wanted to duplicate on Halloween.)

The library had a fall craft fair that we attended with Naomi and Eve after school one afternoon. Eve and Naomi were in their pajamas because it was wear your pj's to school day. The girls did little crafts and played a couple of games to win a prize!