ears

A few days ago, Riah was not hearing anything. He would "Huh?" almost every statement, if he answered at all. We've had his hearing checked before, and the mechanics are all fine. After a day or two of this, I got off my procrastinator and looked in his ears.

Oh.

My.

They were so full of hard, thick wax that it looked like he'd broken off the tip of a crayon in there! I started digging, carefully but persistently. I worked out a couple of chunks, then poured in the peroxide and let it work awhile. And the next day I did it all again. I finally made some headway, and thought I'd got to the bottom of the problem one evening.

The next morning, Riah knocked on my bedroom door (it was 7am and we'd just got up) and said, "My ear hurts." I was immediately awash with guilt - what if I'd gone too far and poked something that isn't meant to be touched? So I answered that we HAD been doing a lot of poking around in there... When we got up we learned it wasn't my fault at all.

He had a small cut on the top of his ear, and the whole top half was a big ugly bruise! Ella said she heard Riah yell in the middle of the night, but Riah didn't remember doing so. We still don't know what happened, but the clues so far are: Riah was sharing Cedwryck's bed (maybe they were fighting in their sleep?),
There was a wind-up flashlight in the bed (the handle folds down, and he could have pinched his ear in there),
There was a "Bobby" hat in the bed (that Bob bought when he was in London for his sleep study) and it has a crack that could have pinched the ear.

The cut is heeled now, but the ear is still bruised and therefore I cannot dig any more. His hearing has improved somewhat, but is not back 100% yet.

Boys!!!!