Parker's new cochlear implant settings seem to be working very well and he is clearly responding to voices. The first few days after our arrival we spent organizing medical visits while also spending time with family and friends.
Both he and Penelope came down with a respiratory infection, but both seem to have come through it after some American antibiotics and a neighborhood family friend/pediatrician's quick & loving attention.
We have had two visits to the John Tracy Clinic in downtown Los Angeles which is a private group that helps children with severe hearing loss to integrate into speaking society. Our visit is in something called "Demo Home" where you bring your children for therapy in what is set up to look like a studio apartment complete with kitchenette, loveseat and overstuffed chair. Erin is our counselor and I am not sure what she is trained or licensed as but she works with Parker on speech therapy and recognizing sounds. She works with us by teaching us activities and songs to play with him, showing us practical things like how to test his equipment and introducing us to other resources that we may want to consider. Renee will continue to take Parker there over the next weeks but they also have a correspondence course which we will sign up for which should allow us to continue to progress even after we leave. They have a three week summer program for kids aged 2-3 which we hope to enroll him in next year and they have a sibling program that the girls can participate in which will help them while interacting with Parker, but also allows them a different forum of interaction with other children who have hearing deficient siblings. The clinic does not charge anything for it's services which are funded by private donations.
We also paid a visit to the Pediatric Therapy Network which specializes in Physical and Occupational Therapy for children. We have had only one session but, again, it was focused on helping us learn how to work with Parker. Joan, the therapist, is English and her accent vocabulary is comforting as it reminds us of dear English friends in Paris. We focused on sitting during the first visit and we have noted a significant improvement following that visit to the point where Parker is sitting up an-aided for several minutes now. Though a bit pricey we are trying to get a second appointment per week in hopes that it will help him progress even faster.
The flight from Europe was not fun. I had booked tickets in early February (before Parker got sick) and the best prices I found included one stop in London and then a direct flight to Los Angeles. While the older girls did admirably well, Parker and Penelope are at the age where they do not want to be restrained in a car seat or sit in one place for five minutes...11 hours ticks on laboriously slow. Having established that, it is good to be here.
We spent the first few days in San Diego and visited the place where Renee and I were married. I think Abby had visited there previously but I don't know that she remembered it. The San Diego Temple is still a breathtakingly beautiful building perched right off of I-5 in the La Jolla neighborhood. While there we saw couple after couple emerging from the back stairwell where we had emerged 15 years ago. We were incredibly young, mostly naïve, but filled with a hugely optimistic sense of hope. Going there again, now, reminded us of the promises of eternity for our family, and that sense of hope was reinforced.
In San Diego most of the other people (family--especially loads of cousins--1st, 2nd & 3rd) travelling with us were taking advantage of the long mornings to catch up on their sleep. We were still adjusting to time changes with very early rising children. The first Sunday in San Diego we had not adequately prepared to attend church but we found the closest meetinghouse on the internet and decided to pull ourselves together in whatever clothes we could and attend the 9AM service. We snuck into the back just in time for the opening song and both Renee and I were immediately reminded that there is little that is truly random in this life; the services were being translated into sign language. This specific congregation that we had haphazardly chosen to attend included a specific branch which was dedicated to members of our church who are deaf. I think the girls are getting used to seeing their parents spontaneously erupt into tears as Axelle did not insist on us to stop crying and Abby and Hannah tried to mimic the movements of the chorister who signed the hymns.
The visit also gave us a chance to thank a lot of people in person for their thoughts and prayers. We were a little bit overwhelmed by the number of people who came out of their way to tell us they were still praying for Parker. Some people we had never met or perhaps just in passing before at a family event or party became a lot more endeared to our hearts as they spoke of the love they have for our little boy. Others loving family & longtime friends. Young children who wanted to see Parker, touch him and hold him-- something tangible after they had mustered their mighty prayers for the boy they had never before met.
Since the cherished years we spent there, I have always been an ardent fan of San Francisco. However I never fully warmed to Southern California. The weather is fantastic, but there was always something about the flashy, celebrity-crazed, densely populated, theme-park atmosphere sprawl that, while entertaining, felt far too superficial to be endearing to me. My perception has changed over the last weeks. While I still get emotional when I hear Tony Bennett sing about the city by the bay, I currently prefer the more upbeat "We Love LA."
