A bad idea

There are lots of costs of having kids. Diapers, clothes, food, daycare, college funds - eventually it all adds up. But one cost that has always bugged me is associated with Teddy's haircuts. He hasn't had many, but to get him one, I tend to take him to the barber with me. When we're lucky, the barber charges him the half-price "kid rate". But most of the time, we end up paying the same amount for him as for me - around $25 with tip. (One could quibble that $25 is cheap for a men's haircut in DC, but that's not the point of this post.)

Part of me thinks that this is a good father-son bonding experience. While our barbershop isn't completely old-school, which would make it a real male bonding event, Teddy seems to enjoy it enough that I have figured that it's worth the cost. Still, I've always wondered whether we could figure out a better arrangement.

Back in December, Teddy and I spent some time wandering around the mall in Tyson's Corner while Mama and Margaret went to a performance of the Nutcracker. As we were walking through Macy's, I noticed a haircut set for around $30. (You can probably see where this will end up.) "Hmmm," I thought, "$30 for a razor.... that's almost as much as one haircut for the boy." I ended up buying it, in the process telling the checkout lady that it was for Teddy. "Does his mom know about this?," she asked. "Not really," I responded, "But maybe we'll make it a Christmas present."

Which we did. So, on Xmas day in Chicago, Mama and Teddy opened the haircut kit as a joint present. It has spent the last month sitting around our house as Teddy's hair has gotten longer and longer. We debated whether to take it back, but never got around to doing so. I read the guide included with the kit a few times and figured that it can't be that hard. After all, I've seen lots of barbers run their shears over my head without much subtlety. And my mom cut my hair until I was around 12, at which point my vanity necessitated heading to an actual salon.

To sum up: It's just absurdly expensive to get a 3-year-old's hair cut in DC, and it can't be that hard to cut his hair in any event. This past Saturday, Teddy was the guinea pig on which these various theories were tested. You can judge the results in the following pictures. Notably, his mom has been pretty tolerant about the whole situation, both the underlying theory and the actual implementation. I do, however, blame her for the ultimate length of his hair, as she kept saying, "It's too long in that spot" which led me to keep cutting more to even it out. And he was a squirmy little dude, making it even harder. Not sure if we'll give it another try, but I figure that every kid needs to have a crew-cut at some point.

WHAT?!?!?!

Good grief, has it really been almost three months since I last posted something? Well, those of you who are looking for pictures will be disappointed as our picture-taking has been about as lax as my blog-posting over the last few months. And those of you who are here for other reasons, like the stellar writing and deep insights about parenthood, will undoubtedly be disappointed too.

Margaret has some hearing issues. We first noticed them around a year and a half ago. At that point, we took her into the pediatrician who checked her a bit by whispering behind her before declaring her sound. Ok, we thought - unless there was some clear evidence, which her daycare teachers at the time also didn't seem to notice, we were fine with the diagnosis. And the problem seemed to diminish for a while too.

But earlier this fall, we started to notice some symptoms of hearing issues again. "What!!!," Margaret would bellow in response to question from us. We started to get a bit concerned, which was reinforced when Ms. B, Margaret's teacher at school, asked us whether Margaret had hearing issues. She was then tested, along with another kid in her class, by the nurse at school, and failed both hearing tests. At which point, we decided that something must be done.

Now, it's a bit difficult to determine whether a four-year-old has hearing issues. On the one hand, there are hereditary issues at play. My grandfather and mom both have some hearing issues, as does my mother-in-law (sorry Grandma B., but it's true). With my mom, I typically won't interact with her in the morning before she's put in her hearing aids. Following the first sign that she's not hearing me, I'll ask "Mom, do you have your hearing aids in?" After the inevitable negative response, there's no point in continuing, at least in my view. Even Abby has started to exhibit some symptoms of hearing loss, so we figured that there's a possibility that Margaret had some hearing issues that were hereditary, albeit a bit unusual for a four-year-old.

But at the same time, she's four. So perhaps she's just suffering from the same hearing deficiency that I experience - she just doesn't listen when people talk to her. When I yell "What?" in response to a question, it's not that I don't hear, rather I'm just not listening. In Margaret's case, she's may be busy in her own little world, fiddling with her four-year-old stuff, which prevents her from hearing what's being said to her.

After our experience plus her teacher's comments plus the tests at school, however, we took her to a hearing specialist. Margaret was a little trooper - she and I went into a little room where Margaret sat with headphones while the technician checked her with various sounds, asking her to raise her hand when she heard them, which Margaret did wonderfully. After the tests, the doctor told us that there was bad news and good news. The bad news was that Margaret isn't hearing very well. The good news was that she could, in principle, hear fine, but that she had fluid built up in her middle ear. He showed us two lines, one which descibed Margaret's current hearing (through the headphones) and the other her potential hearing (when the middle ear is bypassed). "This line (the headphone one) isn't very good. She's basically hearing as if she has her fingers in her ears," he said. "But she could hear perfectly if she just got the junk out of her ears."

So next week, little Maggie will go in to get tubes put in her ears. Not a big deal, I don't think, except that they have to put her under to get her still enough to do it. I don't think that's a big deal either, and it will be nice for her to actually hear things, but it'll be an interesting experience. Not like the kids that I remember from childhood who had big tubes running out of their ears, and it's nice to know that she doesn't have some deeper problem, but it will still be "exciting" to have the doctors put her to sleep and stick some stuff in her ears.

I can't say that I'll miss the hearing issues. During the weeks around Christmas, we dosed her with antibiotics to see if that would help clear up any ear infection issues before going ahead with the procedure. But it didn't seem to work. Instead, we had almost more episodes of "Margaret, what did you do at school today?" "What?!?!" "WHAT DID YOU DO AT SCHOOL TODAY?" "WHAT?!?!?!" She really can bellow to emphasize that she doesn't hear what you say. (Whether the procedure will lower her overall volume control is another matter.) The doctor said that it can make an incredible difference, which will not only require me to cut back on my cursing, but will also allow us to have "peaceful" dinner discussions without having Margaret constantly yell "WHAT?!?!?" in response to everything said to her.