Avery's Adventure: February 2019

Not much has been going on except we got a ton of snow one day and then really really cold weather. Thank you to our neighbors for letting us borrow their snow blower because of course ours was not working when we needed it. We are going to have to buy a new one because it wouldn’t start and we think mice have chewed parts of the lines inside of it. We got some much snow the drifts at the front door were up to my waist. It was nuts. Tim was able to make a snow chute for the girls to sled down. Reagan was too scared to try it but Avery had a blast. It took my 20 minutes to get Reagan dressed in two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two shirts, snow pants, gloves, a hat and coat. She was outside for 3 minutes and wanted to come back inside ..lol.

Then came the cold. One day the high for the day was in the negatives and the wind chill was negative 30. Every time it gets cold or we get a lot of snow, I wonder why we live here in Ohio. Luckily the chickens seemed to be ok. We took the chickens that hung out in the small coop and combined them with the ones in the big coop. We had a small heat lamp in the little coop and moved it to the big coop. We also ordered a heat panel that is made for chicken coops. It’s not meant to heat the coop, just take the edge off. We also gave them cracked corn and meal worms. Our two older chickens we got from craigslist finally started laying a few weeks ago and just this week we started getting a really small egg some days so one of the new chicks we got in September is starting to lay. We also realized we have a rooster in our mix. Tim noticed that the chicken’s tail is like a plume and I put a picture on a chicken group on facebook (yes, there are backyard chicken groups on facebook) and everyone confirmed it was a rooster. The same day Tim heard him crow for the first time. We paid extra to have all female chickens but we will see how it goes with the rooster. I am actually a little excited to have a rooster. Hopefully he wont be mean like some roosters are. He seems pretty timid so far so hopefully he will continue to be nice.

Avery had an appointment with an audiologist to discuss bone conduction hearing aids. Instead of the hearing aid sitting inside her ear, the bone conduction hearing aid attaches to a headband and sits behind the ear on the bone. When sound comes in, it vibrates the bone and alerts the nerve. The sound doesn’t have to travel through the ear drum which is a good thing for Avery because there is something that is preventing the sound from traveling through her ear canal to the nerve. They don’t know if its fluid or if her ear is formed incorrectly. That is why this type of hearing aid is a great option for Avery. They put the new hearing aid on Avery and performed some testing. They gave Avery a book with pictures in it and they sat in a different room. They then called out instructions through the speakers in the room such as “Point to the duck, where is the boat, etc”. When Avery got a command when wearing the headband device, she responded immediately. Then they tested her without the band/device and the difference in the results was outstanding. They said “Avery, show me the dog” and she just sat there. They then gave out another command and the same thing happened. She either didn’t hear what they were saying or she was being stubborn and not responding. If she really didn’t hear, it is amazing how much the headband device helped. We let Avery choose which color headband and which color device she would want. She surprised us and choose a red headband and white device. The audiologist wanted us to speak with Avery’s ENT doctor before ordering to get his opinion. He said that he agrees that it would be good for her so we are going to go ahead and order it. The audiologist did warn us that many times my insurance will only pay for half of the cost. I asked how much it is if we didn’t have insurance and she said its around $6000. Typically Avery’s secondary insurance covers whatever the primary insurance doesn’t and I am hoping that will also be the case for this. Either way, I think this would really help her and if we have to pay $6000 to help Avery with her speech, we will. I am excited that this can really help her, I just hope she actually wears it.

We finally took Avery to get her hair cut a few weeks ago. She really needed it. We ended up getting 5 inches cut off. She had to stand while they cut her hair because she is so little.

Mommy came upstairs from the basement and saw that Joe had been in the garbage. Joe knew he did something bad and walked right into his cage