Zakimos

No, it's not a trendy little bistro downtown.  See, Ben has gotten seriously into the Madagascar movies.  (And Superhero Squad, but that's another post.)  His favorite is Mad 3, and his favorite character is the villain Chantal Dubois, Monte Carlo's most determined and pain-tolerant animal control officer.  And his favorite scene is this one.  He sings this song all.the.time.  In fact, if he's answering "no" to something, he usually ends up segueing into the song.  I can only imagine what his teacher thinks of this.  He does a pretty good job with the French.  He sang it over the phone to Neil's parents, and my mother-in-law recognized it.  One of these days we'll get it on video.  Anyway, he arranged his refrigerator magnet letters as above, and explained that this was the last line in the song -- "Zakimos is m cwa."  Or, in the original French, "Ca commence avec toi."  (He misheard the last word as something like "soi".)

In other news ... oh, yeah, there's that whole "I haven't blogged since WHEN????" and the impossibility of trying to get caught up again.  Ben's birthday morphed into Halloween, which then crashed quickly into Thanksgiving, a totally insane end to the semester, and a trip to Wisconsin for the holidays.  The weather's been weird all over.  Ben is doing well in school, and marvelously on the piano.  We've suddenly found ourselves in a bizarrely compliant and cooperative phase.  Yes, he can still be the Pushback King, and if he weren't I'd wonder who swapped out my kid, but out of nowhere, he's starting to be ... reasonable, almost.  In an age-appropriate way.  It won't last, of course, but we're enjoying it for now.

We've been dealing with Ear Mold Grief for about eighteen months now.  He had always been a pretty good hearing aid wearer, but right about then he developed a wax build-up which caused him pain, and we had to go without the aid until we got that cleared out.  I don't think the aid was any less comfortable after that than it had been before, but now it was on his radar screen.  And he started pushing at it all the time.  Push, push, push -- until he gets an abrasion in his ear, and then we have to go without the aid again until it heals.  I think it's part discomfort (or at least greater awareness of the aid), and part nervous habit.  He'll go through phases of pushing at it more than usual, probably due to stress.  We have gone through so many different ear molds, always hoping that the new one will solve the problem -- and at $60 a mold, not to mention the two hour round trip to the audiologist, this was getting a little tedious.  So finally, last Monday, we had a special audiology appointment devoted just to this one issue, and we picked out a (radically) different style of mold -- an in-the-canal mold, with nothing in his outer ear.  Not usually used by children, as it's harder to get in and out, but we're going to give it a try.  Maybe having something that feels this different will reboot his system, and break the habit of pushing at it.  Anyway, there'll be a lot less to push at.

And Ben and I are starting weekly ASL lessons!!!  I'll let you know how those shape up.