The Old Folks At Home

Well, this is the summer for babies! Dad and I are so thankful for the new additions coming to our family. We are also thankful for the ones who are already here. We enjoy our children and grandchildren. I may even get my new job right someday. I have decided that much of what the doctors had me do for all of you must have been the wrong thing. The new up-to-date doctors have all sorts of new ideas. For example, I used lots of sunlight to lower Billirubin (except for a couple who still needed the lights). Now they have decided that the sun really doesn’t work quickly enough. So I have revised my saying: “Now that grandma knows everything, nobody listens.” It now goes: “Now that grandma thinks she knows everything, nobody dares listen because she is

wrong.”

As you can see from her photos, Christene is a doll! We are glad she is healthy and growing. At her two-week check she had grown an inch and gained one pound.

Kirsten is still waiting, as of this writing.

What fun! I just remember that Eric went a full two weeks over due date and the doctors wouldn’t start me because he was transverse (sideways). They turned him just before delivery. At nine plus pounds, he was stuck. It has been a joke between Dad and me for years that, whenever we had a new baby, he would leave us at the hospital and go buy a new car. He has changed his tune. With the new grandchildren, he made a step up in the buying chain. He got a new trailer. It is a 29-foot long bunkhouse style. That means that, in addition to a bedroom, like our current trailer, it has a couch-bed, a table-bed, a bunk bed and a lower bed, beneath the bunk. He did this, he said, so that he will have room for his family (kids and grandkids, one family at a time, to go on a vacation with him). He used to tell me, when we had a new baby, that we now needed a bigger car. I guess this time, we needed a bigger trailer. I went with him trailer-looking but I left the dickering up to him. So now you know, Dad celebrates by buying things. Poor Rachel, she only got Grandpa to buy a new ride-on mower when she was born. We are paying for the beast (trailer) on the good old credit union payment plan. Dad tells me that it will not take the rest of my life (depending on how long I live) to pay for the new family addition.

Dad has good news to share. He got his hearing-aids (not for Father’s Day but just because). You can barely see them. There is a little thin line on the ear side and a tiny little aid on the back of theear. His ears fit closely to his head so they are barely noticeable. They are wonderful! I can actually talk to him in a normal voice and he can hear. It is so good!!!!! He is learning to adjust them. One adjustment filters out the background noise and he is learning where that works the best. The specialist who fit him said that the sooner you get help the better the hearing. Much of the hearing takes place in the brain and, if you have been without certain sounds, like “s” for a while, the harder it is for the brain to interpret that sound. So the sooner you get help the better the brain is able to decipher the sound.

I am still Myrna. Good and bad. Except, that I think I am becoming senile. When I need to be put in the rest home, remember that you all promised to take turns coming to read me children’s books. You can just read he same story over and over because I will not remember the beginning by the time you get to the end.