Labor Day, First day of School and an ABR!

Whew!!! All that in 3 days!!!!! The kids and I celebrated our first Labor day in the U.S together at the beach! We had a blast! We played in the park near the beach and the kids played in the water and made sand castles. I love watching them and they are getting big enough that I actually got to just kinda sit in the sun and watch them! How FUN!!!!!

Jaryse spent most of the day running around, chasing waves and building sand castles, While Ecrissa hung out near Momma posing for pictures!!! :)

Then, Wed. Sept. 9th was the first day of school! Both kids are in kindergarten and they are both at the school for the deaf. Ecrissa is in the deaf classroom with a deaf teacher and deaf classmates. Jaryse is in the hearing classroom with a hearing teacher and hearing classmates. They incorporate sign language into that curriculum for those kids. Both classes play together at recess and have lunch together and do field trips and such together! I think it's wonderful for Jaryse and the others in his class to learn ASL along side their hearing impaired peers!

AS I drove them to school, I couldn't help realize how happy I am! How amazing life is. How wonderful our opportunities are. If you were to look at the statistics of children born in Haiti, how many of them get to eat three meals a day??? How many of them get new clothes??? How many of them even get the opportunity to go to school, let alone a good school in the US that teaches not only English but American Sign Language. It made me want to cry! I was so overwhelmed with gratitude to the Lord for the blessings that were sitting in the back seat of my car! Jaryse and Ecrissa are truly my little angels and I am so overjoyed that they get this wonderful opportunity for education that in all reality, many of their Haitian peers do not get the chance to experience.

Along those same lines, I became sad. I became sad that education is so undervalued here in the US. That our American children have no idea what a privilege it is to go to school and how many Haitian (and many other children around the world) would give anything to have the opportunity to go to school.

Today was a whole new experience for me and my little princess. Today she underwent sedation for the first time and she had a sedated hearing test that is called an ABR. Please don't ask me to fully explain this test, because, well, it's a bit complicated. But, basically, it is part of the Cochlear Implant evaluation process and it was quite an experience!

She was treated like a princess in the pre-op room getting balloons and stickers and getting to put on all sorts of "Doctor Garb!". They game her a medicine that made her go to sleep and off she went!

She was all hooked up to all sorts of electrodes and wires and masked and everything else. I knew in my brain that this was a painless and simple procedure, but seeing my little girl like that was a bit distressing!!!!!

An hour and a half later the nurse came to get me to tell me that she was a super star!!! Ecrissa was already awake, doing well and they had completed the test with no complications!

Ecrissa did not seem so happy!!! She was super uncomfortable and even a bit combative! This did not surprise me with the little fighter that I have on my hands! She eventually calmed down after basically yelling at me multiple times and each and every one of the nurses, doctors, and assistants!! She let us all know that she was not to happy about the way she was feeling! She was not in any pain, just waking up from that medicine is no fun!

After I got her home and in some comfy PJ's and turned on a movie and gave her a small snack, she finally looked at me and smiled and gave me her notorious "thumbs up!"

We will wait for the Cochlear Implant team to review these results and then go from there in our decision making process to continue to try to determine if this surgery is the right thing for Ecrissa.

Well, that there is a small update on the last few days here in the life of the Sessions' clan! I'd say, we are pretty blessed!