it was never a loss

​We got to meet up with other fulltime families, thanks to a facebook group.  One family will hit their one year mark this October and another just got into their 4th month. We swapped Instagram accounts and had productive small talks (yes, it’s possible). 
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It was a good experience, especially when none of them could sign. My boys played with their kids (tag) for an impressive amount of time. I say impressive because they would normally flee into opposite directions when encountering nonsigning children. 

oisin running away from one of the kids while playing tag

one of the kids that played tag with my boys, he was so adorable

meet jack, the kid who wanted to learn ASL (and he learned some) as well as borrow my camera for a bit.

one of the most adorable husky i've ever met, whenever you pet it, the head would immediately throw back in happiness.

Naturally, I had to labor a bit with lipreading to try and keep track of what was being said. With my amazing imagination and verbatim skills, I think I was able to understand 50% of what was said between the other families’ parents and to me. I occasionally turned to my camera to take candid photos of their kids, also to ease the awkwardness of not understanding what was being said. 
 
One of the parents asked me if we lost all of our hearing or if we have some hearing.  I responded, “we didn’t lose any hearing. Just born that way. So, in a way, it was never a loss.” I wonder what he thought afterwards.
 
After a little past half hour, a record for my boys, they disappeared (like, really snuck away) and I found myself happily chatting/filling-in-the-blanks and then slowly pause and say, “where did my boys go?”
 
Despite them not knowing signs, it was a good meet up and I’m not surprised by it at all. I think fulltimers have a different mindset when it comes to meeting other people, especially fulltime families.
 
I thanked them for a nice playdate and I found my boys in the Media Center waiting for me to proceed with homeschooling. Instead of going straight to work, we played Guesstures, Jenga and shared stories with each other.

aidan impressed me with his ability to act!!

oisin loved it and wants me to buy this game set, definitely plan to.

aidan had such an animated response to it all

it wobbled....

just before his tiny move toppled the tower

​I asked them how did they like the experience of meeting other families. “It was good.” “I guess it was good.” “Fine, I wish they could sign though.”
 
Yes. How I wish everyone could sign. For me, not signing is the true loss here. 

a signing family