A little hearing can go a long way

“Mom I can’t hear."  

What?!?!?  Not this again.  

When my Little Man was 3 we realized that he was pretty much deaf.  He was toddling through life reading lips.  You know when a little kid gets on your lap, grabs your cheeks and looks you in the eye and you think, isn’t that cute he loves me?  Well, my baby boy was doing that all of the time and I just sat there thinking he loved me so much.  Turns out, he couldn’t hear and was doing that to read my lips.  (Insert tear and heartbreak here)

Fast forward a few years, a few ear surgeries and a lot of Dr. appointments later and I think we are all in the clear.  Then I come home to “I can’t hear."

Crap, Crap and double Crap! 

I immediately go into super mommy mode.  I call the surgeon and insist on the very next appointment.  I call the pediatrician and book a backup appointment; I rearrange my work schedule and get Little Man out school in time for the appointment. 

Yep, ears are blocked, partly infected, partly gooey buildup and a whole lot of who knows what?  The Dr. was able to get the left ear clear and gave us meds for the right.  Little Man is now seemingly back to normal (or as normal as you can be on 50% hearing) and we proceed through our days – me being Supermom and him being Awesomekid!

Until he becomes the pitcher at the baseball game.  We are at the fields, I’m in the bleachers sporting my mommy gear talking to the baseball mommies, Little Man enters the field and takes the pitcher’s mound.   Not to brag, but my Little Man is a good baseball player, like naturally good, he can basically catch anything thrown at him and has really great hand/eye coordination.  I look at him and he is so excited to be playing Pitcher.

Then it happened… the first ball gets hit right at him and he can’t find it.  Next ball, hit towards him and it goes under his legs, then the next he catches but misthrows to first, and on and on.  It was like watching a person who had never played ball before.  I started shrinking down and trying to hide between the mommies.  The coaches were yelling, the dads were yelling, heck even the kids were yelling!  No matter what was hit towards him, he just couldn’t get the ball. 

Then I overhear a mommy from the 2^nd row bleacher “I don’t think that kid can hear” she says.

Oh CRAP!  That is right!  They put this big helmet over my little guy’s head to protect him from the balls, but it also must be blocking out all of the sound. I forgot to tell the coach that my Little Man was only playing with about 50% hearing.  I now shrink even further down into the cold bleachers.  How did SuperMom overlook the one thing I had been focused on all week?!?!?!

Somehow we made it out of the inning and my Little Man got relieved as pitcher.  He had a great rest of the game and the team won.

When I asked him about being pitcher, he told me it was “Awesome!”   I’m glad to see that my Little Man didn’t let all of the yelling from the fans and the coaches get to him. 

Wait, who am I kidding?  He couldn’t HEAR them!