The Ears of Sir Thousand Hands

I mentioned a while ago that my two year old just wasn’t getting better. Yesterday, I think we fixed the problem, at least I hope we have.

My two year old, if he wasn’t the world’s most angry baby, he was certainly an honorable mention. It didn’t matter what we did, he just wasn’t happy. He began to calm down when we taught him some sign language, the most effective sign was “help.” (right hand grasps the left wrist) When he mastered this, it was like someone flipped a lightswitch and he began to mellow out. The poor kid just hated being trapped in a baby’s body and was frustrated. Once he could ask us to help him do the things he wanted he improved.

Over the past year, we had watched him blossom into an amazing kid. His personality changed and as his vocabulary exploded he was on top of the world. The tantrums practically disappeared. Over the past two months I watched this in reverse. I couldn’t understand what was happening to my son. His pronunciation became garbled and he began pitching fits, constantly. This was on top of being sick, so at first I chalked it up to illness. When he began to get better and the tantrums just increased, I became more worried.

I would ask acquaintences and would hear, “He speaks so well for a two year old.” Well, that may have been true, but he was speaking terribly compared to just a month or so ago. Thankfully, we have a great family doctor. He didn’t just chalk my concerns up to paranoia and referred us to an ENT. We saw the ENT within the week and were scheduled for tubes.

Aidan had the surgery, yesterday. He was absolutely miserable coming out of the anesthesia, but once he shook that his old self came back. The doctor told us that there was a large amount of fluid trapped in his ears and it was very thick and they’d had to suction it out; it probably would not have resolved on its own. His hearing had probably suffered greatly with the fluid. The doctor had said we should see immediate improvement. He wasn’t kidding.

My little man zoomed all over yesterday. He went with my husband on several errands and behaved better than he has in a long time. He came home and just played his little heart out. The whining disappeared. We had one tantrum while I was preparing dinner, but hey, he’s two! He attacked his dinner and slept through the night.

Look our world; Sir Thousand Hands is back.