Can you hear me now?

Nicolas had his hearing checked on his Tuesday follow-up visit to the pediatrician. The doctor confirmed all the fluid was gone, but one of the tests came back questionable.

So today Mary took him to a specialist today to conduct a more in-depth hearing test. Mary said he was great the whole time - very patient and well-mannered. And after the new test the specialist confirmed that Nicolas' hearing is completely fine. yay!

The bad news is he still has some pressure on his eardrum, so something's going on in there. The specialist is recommending tubes because he thinks Nicolas will continue to have issues with fluid in his ears and subsequent infections, and he thinks it's being caused in part by allergies. He's also suggesting we give Nicolas Zyrtec or Claritin an hour before bedtime for now to help alleviate some of the discomfort.

Despite all this, Nicolas was in high spirits today, which is great considering when I picked him up from school yesterday he seemed kind of out of it - he kept asking for water and drank almost an entire bottle of Ozarka in the car. On the way home he was completely lethargic. Around dinner time he was crying and asking us to hold him. We checked his temperature and it was just under 102º. So we comforted him and then gave him some motrin, which seemed to help a lot. By the time he went to bed last night his fever had broken and he seemed a lot more comfortable.

And today, except for a little rash he has covering his whole body, he was fine. and funnier than ever. Mary said he listened to paul simon's "me and julio down by the schoolyard" at least 20 times tonight - most of those were in his room with the door closed while sitting on his bed (the speakers and ipod are across the room on his dresser, so he'd get up to hit the rewind button on his ipod every time it ended and then go sit back down across the room). he had it turned up pretty loud and every time Mary came in the room he told her to go away. "go away mommy, don't turn it down" were his exact words.

he told me about it tonight when we were reading bedtime stories, then he got into bed and used the thermometer to take the temperature of his stuffed lamb, Dixie, to make sure she "didn't have any fevers." sorry i don't have a video clip of that here for you - it was really sweet and funny.