Bringing Up Bates"A Newlywed Nest & Trace Put to the Test"
- Gil and Kelly take Addallee to audiologist Samantha Wallenstein and pediatric otolaryngologist Dr. John Little.
- Addee was born premature with the cord wrapped around her neck, causing her to stop breathing for a period of time. “…Yet she had no problems,” says Carlin, who helps Addee with schoolwork and piano. “It literally was a miracle. But when she started school, we started realizing she couldn’t really hear what we were saying.”
- “Addee was struggling to hear, but Gil would talk to her, and she seemed to hear fine, and when we ended up making an audiology appointment, we realized she could hear the male lower range voices better than she could hear the higher range female voices, so they prescribed her hearing aids,” explains Kelly.
- Addee’s previous hearing aids were uncomfortable and caused a lot of feedback, but the new digital ones work much better. The hearing test determines that she has normal hearing in the low frequency sounds and significant hearing loss in the mid to high frequency sounds, and the new hearing aids help balance those out. Thankfully, the doctor says that her hearing loss is stable.
- “I’ve noticed an improvement all around, her hearing, her speech, everything,” says Kelly. “… I don’t have to worry about her confidence level. She feels good about herself right now.”
- “The biggest difference in the new hearing aids is probably that I don’t pick up so much background noise, which is kind of nice when I’m here,” says Addallee. “Ya ‘cause there’s a lot of noise going on here all the time,” agrees Kelly. “There’s always background noise.”
- Josie’s church friend Samantha comes over to help her decorate her new apartment. Whitney stops by to see the progress. “I’ve always been more drawn to the bohemian type of decorations,” says Josie. “I wanted to have something that was a little bit modern but still different from everything else.” Josie likes more muted colors, versus brighter colors.
- Later, Gil and Kelly surprise Judson and Jeb by taking them to an indoor rock-climbing gym. “Let me just say this,” Kelly tells the boys. “You have never seen your mama do this before.”
- “Because we have such a big family, we really want to make sure that we make ourselves put something on the calendar so that some of the younger kids don’t get lost in the shuffle of things,” says Kelly. “There’s something about little outings and to say, ‘You are special, and we’re going to take time to have fun with you.’”
- Kelly makes an attempt at the rock wall, but she doesn’t get very far before she climbs down. “The problem is, from the ground, these walls look not very high,” says the mom of 19. “But I’m going to tell you, when you get up there…I couldn’t have been more scared. I just froze. It was terrifying.”
- Judson makes it to the top of a really tall wall. When he’s halfway up, he starts freaking out, but Gil and Kelly encourage him to finish, and he does! Like Kelly, he doesn’t trust the belay and climbs all the way down to the bottom.
- “I really think, I’ve got a good tree worker for at least the next twenty years,” says Gil. “I’ve got me a new replacement.”
- At the end of the episode, Trace, who just joined the deputy reserve as a volunteer, goes on a ride-along with Zach. “I’m super excited to be kind of a mentor for my younger brother,” says Zach. “He’s really looking at making a career out of this…”
- "I really would love to go full-time deputy, but right now I've got something very good for me working with Chad, learning a little bit of construction, but I'm just trying to figure out which one do I do