beaches of the Algarve

It was once believed that the above two photos were the locations of THE edge of the world. (I have to look up some interesting facts, in our guide book, about this place and then I'll edit this post with a better write up).

This is the classic Lagos ocean view. Amazing natural rock formations::

Simply strolling the sands of the Algarve beaches::

seeing Orange

How's this for a little splash of color to brighten a room? This was the hotel room we stayed in, in Portugal.

GROSS!

Isn't this an adorable picture of Isaac!

He looks so innocent and happy and content.

He was playing so nicely in "his office" (as the big kids call it).

While I was in the kitchen making dinner, Travis walked in to greet me after his long day at work. I asked him to please check on Isaac, who was in the other room, because he'd quieted down a few minutes ago. Much to our surprise, this is what Daddy found below this cute face...

"Welcome home honey! You're just in time to help out."

Isaac is having bowel movement problems and is now on medication to help him poop.

Looks like it's working, don't you think?

recital success

This is how we spent the evening.


"Our Team"

Beethoven's Theme from the 9th Symphony

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Holland

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michaelangelo David. The gondolas of Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?? I signed up for Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around ...and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy...and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away...because the loss of the dream is a very significant loss.

But...if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special... the very lovely things... about Holland.

~by Emily Perl Kingsley. (Her response when asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared in that unique experience to understand it. It's like Holland.)

Thanks to my beautiful, special baby, Isaac, I get to learn more about "being in Holland" than I ever thought I'd want to know. I've never even thought of visiting a place like Holland before, but now I'm getting prepared for the journey and am very curious as to what it will be like...

jet lag ramblings and updates

Hi, I'm back home in Spain now. I ran into a few bumps on the way home like missing a flight in Madrid due to the delayed departure from Philly resulting in an extra 5 hour layover before I could get to Jerez... After spending an hour to report a missing suitcase (1 of 2), I was walked over to a closet where it was waiting from the original flight arrival. BUT, Isaac was just wonderful and slept through most of the travels and my lovely family was waiting with open arms when we finally finished our travels. What a trip! I ended up staying an extra week (so 2 weeks in all) but we had all the tests done and a diagnosis and treatment/intervention started. It was a very productive journey.

He had the ABR test and our concerns have been confirmed. He has moderate hearing loss in the right ear and moderately severe loss in the left. I was given some literature on being a parent of a child with hearing loss. Here is a little blurb on his diagnosis:


Right ear: moderate hearing loss -- Without amplification, 50-100% of speech sounds may be missed which may effect speech development unless optimally amplified. Proper amplification should enable listener to hear and discriminate all sounds.


Left ear: moderately severe -- Conversation cannot be understood, unless the intensity is very loud. Age of amplification, consistency of use and intervention will determine speech intelligibility and /or language development.

Now we can deal with the reality of Isaac's life and what he needs (maybe the true hard part). Before we left for the U.S. we had earmolds made up and the hearing aides ordered, to be ready for him if necessary. (the audiologist obviously anticipated the test results to be positive). So the day after his ABR test, we went in to get the hearing aides fitted and set up for him. The problem is that he's growing at a rapid speed and has already outgrown the earmolds. They don't work well if not perfectly fitting into his ear because it causes too much interference and backgroud noise. New earmolds were made and will be mailed to Spain within a week or so. Travis and I are both feeling a little conflicted about how to feel. We're so glad to know now but sure wish it wasn't true. This is definitely a defining shift in our family as it will affect all of us on a daily basis. Just trying to keep his hearing aides in his ears this last week is not working out very well because they don't even fit correctly at this point - very challenging!


The next week he had a CAT Scan to get a good picture of his ear bone structure. This was difficult for Isaac because they didn't end up sedating him completely. Instead they gave him oral medicine to induce sleep. They had to lay him on his stomach and strap his head down to the bed for the scan and he kept waking up and squirming and crying and kicking his feet... He hates being on his stomach and I felt awful for him. After a second dose of the sleeping med, he calmed down enough to get the test done. Then in PACU, as he recovered, they needed to get 3 big viles of blood samples for some genetic testing and they were having trouble getting enough blood from his wrist so then they tried his ankle area without any success and finally got it all from his inner/upper thigh area. We were both in tears by the time that was done. Needless to say, I didn't like that day. Two days later, we were back in the Doctor's office for the test results and everything looks great and normal - no problems! I'm now wondering WHY is he hard of hearing in both ears if everything is anatomically correct and perfectly formed. (I didn't think about asking that question at the time.) It just seems odd that he can hear when everything is amplified up with the hearing aides but he can't hear without them even though his ears are perfectly formed - just not performing right. I guess I need to do more research on how sound travels through the ears and brain to get a better grasp on how ears work.

Our next plan of action is this: We are waiting for the new ear molds to arrive and then we'll get them fitted and hooked up to his hearing aides so we can start using them full time. I'm looking forward to giving Isaac this gift of hearing from both ears for the first time in his life. :-) Also, on the 31st he has an appointment with the on-base Early Intervention Department to get him set up for their therapy programs.

It sure makes me appreciate the gift of hearing that we all take for granted because it's something we will have to diligently manage for Isaac. To clarify what the audiologist told me, he is not deaf, rather hard of hearing. To be deaf, you have hearing ability at 70 decibels or more. His hearing is 50 decibels in the right and 65 in the left. We will have to repeat the ABR test a couple more times over the next couple of years to see if his hearing loss is maintaining or increasing as he grows and matures.

Travis and the kids did great on their own and got our new house all unpacked and set up quite nicely. We have a little more work to unpack and settle in the garage but everything else seems to have fallen into place while I was away. Time to go make breakfast and greet the kids. (jet lag got Isaac and I up way too early this morning ha/ha)

at five months

new plans

So, todays update is that Isaac has new doctor appointments set for the 9th, 10th and 11th in Portsmouth, Virginia. Travis and I have had to make some difficult decisions the last couple of days and we've decided that I will take Isaac to VA myself and he will stay here with the kids. Of all the weeks for me to leave my kids this will be a great one. Camryn will be at the school for the yearly standardized testing every day next week and Sloan can easily join her class for the entire week too. Ethan will continue his regular school schedule. That leaves Travis with approved flex hours at work so he can get the kids off to school each morning and be back home for the afternoon bus stop. Sounds easy, right? Isaac and I will do our best to get from point A to point B without "too many" problems. I'm just waiting for the military to get my plane tickets set up but am expecting to leave this Saturday and spend the week in English speaking USA . It will definately be out of my comfort zone to do it by myself! I'll have to dig down to pull out "the confident and independant woman" that's been hiding since we moved overseas. Eeek! I hope I don't get lost in the Madrid airport trying to find my connections! I'll have plenty to do to keep me busy and I'm actually kind of looking forward to daily hotel room service and some quiet time to myself (with the baby of course).

Italy was great! Awesome actually! I'll post pics and thoughts on my blog sometime after my life settles down a bit. Between our recent move, an impromptu family vaction and this pending trip and diaganosis, there is too much going on right now to reminise in blogsphere. More to come in the near future though.

hearing

Approximately 33 babies are born every day with a significant hearing loss in the United States. Nearly 50% of newborns with hearing loss are not diagnosed until at least the second year of life. Hearing loss among newborns is 20 times more prevalent than phenlyketonuria (PKU), a condition for which all newborns are screened for. The average age that children with hearing loss are initially diagnosed ranges from 12 to 25 months. Studies have shown that when hearing loss is detected later, an important time frame for developing speech and language skills has passed. As a result, speech and language development is delayed and academic and social skills may be adversely affected. Research has confirmed that treatment has the best results when infant hearing loss is identified and intervention is begins before the child reaches six months of age. Less than 20% of the children born in the U.S. are born in hospitals that offer universal newborn hearing screening programs.

The National Institute of Health, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Audiology, the Joint committee on Infant Hearing, and the Healthy People 2000 Report recommend that children with congenital hearing loss be identified before six months of age. A unilateral hearing loss that remains undetected will have negative consequences. Even children with a hearing loss in one ear are ten times as likely to be held back by a grade as compared to children with normal hearing in both ears. Infants identified with hearing loss may be fit with hearing amplification as young as four weeks of age. Appropriate and comprehensive early intervention helps these children develop with better language, cognitive, and social skills.

Most children with hearing loss can hear some speech, however, the speech tends to lack clarity since the hearing loss occurs in the higher frequencies that contain most of the consonant and vowel sounds necessary for understanding speech. However, since the child is able to respond to the lower frequencies, he or she will usually be identified later on. As a result of late identification, speech and language skills will have significant delays. Early identification is necessary before sixth months of age in order to catch that specific time frame in which optimal speech and language development occurs. Formal audiological evaluations are needed to rule out less severe but equally disabling degrees of hearing loss.

Why am I blogging about this, you may ask? Well, Isaac is taking us down this path right now. He's had three hearing tests since his birth and has failed all of them. So in about two weeks, we are heading to Naples, Italy for further testing. They'll be doing an auditory brainstem response test. We just recieved our flight itinerary yesterday and are now planning out our "trip". Since we'll be in Italy, at the Naval Hospital, we were able to extend our time a few days so we can do some sightseeing. I wish we were going under better circumstances though.

We moved to our new house this week and don't have internet at home at this point so my time is very limited at this cyber cafe. In fact, I've got to go soon so I'll have to stop here. Just wanted to pop onto my blog and let my blogger friends and family know what we are doing this month. Prayers for my baby's hearing, testing and future are welcomed and encouraged. We are trusting the Lord in this and resting in the fact that He won't give us more than we can handle. In fact, we are grateful to have this early testing and diagnosis at the beginning of his life. I'll for sure post about what the next testing reveals.

2/14 UPDATE: Friday, one hour before close of business, the beginning of a three day holiday weekend, and four days before we take off, we recieved the news that our Italy doctor appointments have been canceled and our travel plans have been pulled! The pediatric audiologist went into labor herself, (almost 4 weeks early) so now she's on maternity leave for the next 10 weeks or so! After much frustration and a few tears, we've decided to buy two more plane tickets for Travis and me to join the kids tickets (that we bought as nonrefundable tickets) and take a big family vacation to Italy for10 days. Travis already has the days off arranged and it's a vacation spot we want to tour while we're in Europe so we're just going to make the best of the time and the money already spent on the trip. So, no medical diagnosis for Isaac this month! It will probably take 3-4 weeks for new medical plans to work out for his hearing tests. Who knows where they will send us now. ARGH!

It's out!

Packing up again

We're at it again! Packing up, that is. Travis and I seem to have a nomadic side to our personalities that we just can't stay put for too long! (Well, having the Navy tell us to move every few years adds to this lifestyle too!) Over the last 20 years, we've moved into 14 different homes, in 7 different states, and in 2 different countries. That's a lot of packing up time. Next week we'll be adding one more move to the tally to make #15 within 20 years.

Travis has been anxious to discover a bigger, newer and better house since he was promoted to Lieutenant. After Isaac joined our family and then our one year lease expired, we decided to explore our options. For numerous reasons, we've "outgrown" this casa. (I won't bore you with our complaints and whining.) After touring about 10 different homes in this same neighborhood, we were almost convinced that we had a pretty nice size house after all and we really couldn't do much better within our housing budget. BUT ALAS, three weeks ago we found THIS place and after touring it Camryn asked, "Now what are we going to do today?" With big grins, Travis and I both responded with, "We're going to start packing up!"

Needless to say, we are quite excited about our new home and getting the keys next weekend to start moving in. It's just down the road, about a mile closer to the beach, which should make a nice walking destination. It is much newer than this home so we're hoping that means better electrical wiring, better insulation and no cold drafts around the windows. We'll still have five bedrooms, but now now each of the kids will have their own room. We'll also have a couple extra closets for storage (almost unheard of in Spanish houses), a big garage for all our garage type stuff (currently overflowing in our enclosed patio, and bedroom/storage room) and an extra room w/o a closet for a home office and crafty pursuits, a huge loft above the living room with "homeschool room" written all over it, a huge yard with tons of fruit bearing trees and our own private swimming pool to boot! It has everything plus a few extra features that we were hoping to find so we are thrilled. We'll be in that house for almost two years before we move back to the U.S. so I think it will be worth the trouble of packing up and settling in. Pictures will be coming after we are in and set up with Internet and all that jazz.

Class is in session

Taking Homeschooling Out of Your Home
By Mary Pride

Names are funny things. Take the word "homeschooling." What does that make you think of?
If you said, "School at home," I'm not surprised. Home + school seems to equal school at home.

Only two things are wrong with this definition:
(1) Homeschooling isn't "school." It's a whole different approach to education.
(2) Homeschooling does not have to all take place at home.

If Homeschooling is Not School, Then What Is It?
Homeschooling, properly understood, is education designed by parents. This automatically makes it a whole different animal from "public" education, which is education designed by government bureaucrats. It also differs sharply from "private" schooling. Regardless of their talk about parental authority, in practice private schools reserve curriculum design for teachers, administrators, and textbook designers.
Even those who think the child should direct his own education must admit this type of "un" schooling is only possible if the parent has the authority to let the child choose his own educational pursuits and projects.

So, homeschool is not "school" when it comes to who is in charge of curriculum design. Having parents choose or design the curriculum is radically different from what happens in any school.
Amazing as it may seem, parent-designed and parent-chosen curriculum yields better results than school-designed-and-chosen curriculum, as many research studies have shown. Then again, how amazing is it that curriculum chosen from the entire universe of options (rather than the small list "approved" by the state or school board) and targeted to the exact child for which it is intended, should result in more learning taking place faster? Especially when the parents in question have the ability to hobnob with other parents and find out what's working for them . . . and when they can easily obtain detailed reviews of all their curriculum options through homeschool magazines and books.

Homeschool also is not "school" when it comes to scheduling and priorities. We do not have "announcements," ringing bells to mark the end of a class period, football teams that soak up the budget that would otherwise go to art and music lessons, or endless classes geared to the latest politically correct fads. Unless we want to, that is!

This means that homeschooled children in general have a much greater attention span and ability to "focus" than children who attend school, where they are continually interrupted in the middle of their projects, math papers, writing assignments, and so forth.

Most Parents Homeschool
But man does not live by focusing power alone. This is why our neighbors keep asking us that old question, "What about socialization?" What they really mean is, "Can your child grow into a strong adult just sitting around your house doing lessons and projects?"
Alas for our poor neighbors. They are mistaking homeschooling for schooling that happens at home, when it's really education under the authority of the home.
What a wild thought: all those parents who pay for art, music, and ballet lessons . . . who chauffeur their kids to soccer team and karate class . . . who sign them up for a YMCA course or who join the local Jewish community center . . . are homeschoolers, too! To the extent that they provide educational opportunities for their children solely because they want to, not because any authority "makes" them, these are homeschool parents. All that we "real" homeschoolers do in addition to what most parents do, is add academic lessons at home. Or via a tutor. Or an online academy. We just exercise that additional dollop of choice.

Homeschool Away from Home
Since we now realize that homeschool is not "school at home," this leaves us free to look for educational adventures anywhere in the real world that we can find them.
With summer just around the corner, now is the time to plan some out-of-the-ordinary family excursions and some independent learning adventures for your older children.

The world is our home. And class is in session.

Sarah said,

"God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."
Genesis 21:6

:-) Ahh, I love my babies!

As for another bit of noteworthy news, Travis left again. He's in San Diego for 10 days. Another training conference. I can't believe I'm in a foriegn country by myself (with four kids) again. However, I'm counting my blessing that he's in picture perfect southern California and not in the Iraq war zone. Before he left, we captured this precious memory on video. Isaac started laughing just before Christmas. After several months of him just looking back at us and falling asleep, it is so rewarding to see reactions and delight. I live for these moments!

Nochevieja

In all Spanish city squares, big and small, one can see a similar scene on New Year's Eve (Nochevieja) and it will undoubtedly include church bells and grapes. When the clock strikes 12, everybody has to have twelve grapes ready to eat while the church bells sound 12 times, and at this moment, all Spaniards eat 12 grapes, one for each toll of the bell. Eating the grapes is very funny because everybody starts the New Year with a big mouth full of grapes. It's almost impossible to finish eating the grapes by the time the clock finishes chiming. According to tradition, those who can eat the grapes will have 12 months of prosperity in the New Year. Families and friends stay together for this celebration, which marks the end of one year and the beginning of a new one. In the case of most Spaniards this means a lively celebration until the wee hours of the morning. This tradition started in Spain in 1909 when there was an abundant grape harvest and the king of Spain decided to give grapes to everybody to eat on New Year's Eve.

Feliz Navidad

Ahh, look what Camryn made for me, for Christmas. We each recieved our own card from her. She is such a sweetheart and I just love that she is maturing so beautifully.

eeeeeeeeee

Sloan got her first loose tooth on Christmas Eve! She's been excited learning more about teeth and how to carefully eat without hurting it. It's a little scary for her at this point but she's seen the magic of the toothfairy at our house so she's excited too. A toothless grin will be posted soon.

eeeeeeeeee

A big thanks to Nancy for her sewing project gifts. She is so talented and we love being on the recieving end of her sewing skills. Everyone wore their new clothes all day. :-) Travis' shirt was a sentimental tribute to a familiar childhood memory and Ethan happened to be wearing a sports shirt with the same color and number! Couldn't pass up a photo shot like that.

eeeeeeeeee

Hey, that's my sister! If you'd like to watch a really cool holiday chime choir performance, here is the link. Scroll down to the side video links, select the second link from the bottom and click the "play" arrow. I'm related to the chime director and the highest pitch chimer on the left :-) Way to go, Janeal and Stefanie!!

eeeeeeeeee

Isaac didn't stay awake for much of the holiday, but he sure looked cute all day!