Good riddance, last week.

Yesterday afternoon, I napped with Camden and woke up to find a big, red circle on my forehead. I was confused for half a second, until I looked down at my still sleeping son to find a matching circle on his forehead.

The after-effect of sleeping forehead to forehead for an hour:

Last week was a tough week. Matt had some things going on at work that were less than pleasant. And I'll admit that I took Camden's speech therapist using the A-word (apraxia) harder than I initially thought I was going to. At the end of an already less than stellar week, I took Camden to his hearing evaluation that was recommended by EI. The results were inconclusive. He didn't respond to the high pitched sounds at all, but the audiologist wasn't sure if that's because he was just not interested in them or if he really wasn't hearing them. My gut instinct tells me the latter is probably the case because the poor kid looked like he was about to fall asleep in the dark room. Still, we have to follow up on it. Our options were either to sedate him for a more in depth hearing test (yeah, no thanks), or to drive him around in the car until he falls asleep and then have the audiologist meet us in his parking lot and perform the more in depth test while Camden is sleeping. (It's necessary for the child to be absolutely quiet and still while the testing device is in the ear, which basically means that it's nearly impossible to perform on a toddler who isn't sleeping or sedated.) So, we've got that test to look forward to next week.

On a more pleasant note, Camden's signing has really taken off over the last week. He's been more interested in learning new signs, and uses the ones he knows regularly now. His most favorite sign right now? Outside. He wakes up the morning, runs to the back door, and signs outside. I absolutely love baby sign language; it's such an awesome tool to help toddlers communicate and is particularly helpful for non-verbal kiddos like mine.

Speaking of non-verbal kids, I took Camden to the pediatrician this afternoon due to a request by the audiologist. He wanted Camden's ears checked to be sure there was no ear wax build up or any other visible issues that might affect his hearing. There were no issues, thankfully. While I was there, I filled the doctor (not our regular pediatrician) in on exactly why I was getting his hearing evaluated. She asked me how Camden communicates with me and I gave her several examples of his non-verbal communication, plus all of his sign language. She said that, while she was glad I was being proactive and working with EI, she felt that he just has a language delay and will catch up eventually. "It's just not his time right now," she told me, "He's probably working on other skills, and will focus on his language later."

Honestly, I was a tiny bit reassured by her assessment, but I'm still so glad that we've taken all of the steps that we have thus far.

Know what else I'm glad about? That last week is over. Because it sucked, big time. Here's to a much better week this week!