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Tish, how many weeks along are you? Just wondering how early she'll be if she does come sooner than later.

Cameron & Maddie started their new (cheaper) day care today. I'm already missing the nicer place we just left. A couple weeks ago when I went to this woman's house to meet her, I noticed she has an open stairway into her basement that comes off the living room where the kids play. She didn't have any type of gate on it, so I asked her about that knowing that Maddie could easily fall down the stairs without a gate. (The other kids she currently sits for are either old enough not to fall, or young enough not to be mobile.) She said she had a gate and would put it on by the time we start. So guess what I saw when I brought the kids over there today? No gate. I asked her about it again, and she assured me she'd put one on later today, then I offered to stay with Maddie to keep her away from the stairs until she got it. I think she got the hint, and went to get the gate right away. It turned out to be a spring-loaded gate, not a screw-on type, which I don't think is nearly as safe at the top of a stairway, but that's all she had. I guess she doesn't want to bore holes into her nice banister. :-( Fortunately Maddie was ignoring the whole gate, and hopefully she won't try to shake it or lean on it. She's getting better about going up & down stairs, like the ones we have outside our front door. She knows to hold the railing or one of our hands, or sit down to go down the stairs, and considering how dangerous it could be if she forces that spring-loaded gate down, I wonder if she'd be safer without any gate. Arrgghhhh, I don't know what to do. I don't want to get off on a bad foot with this person because everything else about her seems great and she had wonderful references. She was also about the only daycare provider with room for both kids, so I don't have many other choices than going back to the expensive place and blowing all our savings.

Anyway, on another subject, it looks like Cameron's hearing loss might be getting worse in his better ear. When he was two, he got a cochlear implant in his worse ear and ever since then he's done really well with the implant in that ear, and wearing a high-powered hearing aid on his other ear. But now his better ear seems to have lost more hearing to the point that the hearing aid isn't cutting it anymore. His audiologist recommended that we start thinking about getting a cochlear implant in that ear too. We agree, but it's major surgery with risks, and I don't even want to think about the money, especially if Ken loses his job and insurance and we have to put the kids on Medicaid. Usually bilateral implants aren't covered by Medicaid, so we might get in big trouble if we undergo the surgery then have no insurance for all the post-op programming that's required in the year after the surgery. It's a pretty major undertaking even when you have good insurance. We'll see....

talk to you guys later!

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