Of Baseball and Car Fires

Nolan's earmolds are Dodger Blue

It's never a good sign to have your car start spewing out smoke as you're waiting in a thick line of traffic, attempting to enter the stadium. On the other hand, it allows for great language lessons: Car Fire, Overheating, Clutch, Nasty-Burning-Smell, and OMG-Are-We-Ever-Going-To-Park were discussed heavily.

Fortunately, we were able to find a parking spot soon after getting through the parking booths. Unfortunately, the car was still smoking and we were quite far from our "pavillion" (though we didn't know this at the time). Dennis popped the hood and we all agreed that we saw smoke. I'm pretty sure there were car parts in there, too- I know as much about cars as I do about the inner workings of the space shuttle. All I know was that smoke was coming off the stuff under the hood, and that is generally not good.

We decided to let the car sit there and cool down a little, so we headed up to the stands. The other two families were already there, and we ate some free Dodger Dogs, popcorn, and peanuts while watching the game. We stayed just until after the "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" song. Matt was extremely tired and we were a wee bit concerned about the car spontaneously igniting on the way home. Luckily, it seemed to drive well (despite the horrid burning smell) and we arrived safely home.


Today, we have our support team meetings, then a lecture on experience books and a Scholastic Book Fair. My bookcases at home may never forgive me- I have a ridiculous love for books, so I am sure a few will come home with us. We have a lecture on speech assessments, then a lecture on literacy and the hard of hearing or deaf child. I also have an appointment with Miss C., Nolan's SLT. She has completed his language and articulation tests, so I am interested to see his scores (I understand he did very well, so that is always exciting news)!

I do have to say, I love John Tracy. While we got completely different information about Nolan's hearing loss yesterday, we are not left high and dry. We are going to discuss the discrepancies with Nolan's SLT, we have other parents to talk to, and his audiologist is going to try to get him in for more booth testing so we can get a better handle on the situation. We'd also like to get an aided audiogram, but like at home, his changing hearing loss characteristics usually means that we spend too much time in the booth trying to get his unaided levels to ever get around to aided levels. We're trying for a third audiology session (he has a second session on the 28th of July). If we can get consistent information here, we'll have to take it to our audiologist and ENT at home, to discuss the situation. Adapting to such radically different information about your child's "condition" can be difficult. If true, it is exciting if it can be "fixed," though Nolan's sensorineural component can never be fixed. I'm not so thrilled about the possibility of going from air-conduction aids to a BAHA system (an implanted system for permanent conductive losses). We'll have to see what the repeated testing shows, and we have learn about all of the options, pros, and cons before making any decisions.

I'm off to brew some coffee before Nolan wakes up- it is going to be a busy day today!

Dennis left for Oxnard at 5:30am today, taking a very tired Matt and Smokey the Car with him. I'm not sure when he'll be back- probably on Friday afternoon to pick Nolan and me up.