Home Again

Lookin' good! Showered, dressed and waiting for discharge papers.

 

We're bustin' outta here!

Home!

Yum! Dinner, courtesy of our friend A!

Christmas Countdown: Candy Caning

Peeper won't actually be opening her drawer on the advent calendar tree until we get back home, but I brought along a stash of candy canes for her to share with some of the hospital staff. 

I'd envisioned her passing them out in the surgical waiting area, but she wasn't at the hospital until Shrike was in her room, so she just gave some to the nurses and told them, "Thanks for taking care of my Mommy!" 

Shrike's Surgery

No photos, but Shrike is doing well. Here's a quick summary of the day, via my Facebook posts:

7:45 am Shrike is now in surgery. Should be finished around 10 am.

8:58 am Status updated to "doing fine, surgery still in progress" about 10 min ago. Checked in with Peeper and Shrike's parents and all's well there too. 9:25 am All done. Went well. In recovery.

10:35 am Waiting for room assignment.

11:52 am Awake and feeling pretty good. Waiting for room to open up.

12:18 pm I've had lunch, waiting to go back in with her. Room is assigned but still occupied.

7:19 pm Finally got into room 2ish, her parents and Peeper came up to hospital shortly after. Had some nausea but not much pain, and very alert, doing well. Peeper and I are back at hotel for the night. She's not to keen on "hurty Mommy" ("when will she be plain old Mommy again?") but did well at hospital and no problems with having her in room. Hoping Shrike will be discharged tomorrow.

Christmas Countdown: There's an App For That

In anticipation of a lot of waiting around and hanging out during and after Shrike's surgery, I loaded up the iPad with several new Christmasy apps for Peeper.

Not the most exciting advent "activity" but they might come in very handy over the next couple of days.

Snugging with Mommy

Shrike's going to be having some surgery bright and early tomorrow morning, about an hour from home, so we're at a hotel tonight.

How sweet are my girls?

Christmas Countdown: Visit With Santa

Today's advent activity was a trip to the mall to drop off the donations for our Salvation Army family to some of Santa's helpers, and then over to see the Big Man himself, for a visit and some photos.

As usual, Peeper rocked the photos, if I do say so myself.

Honesty is the Best Policy?

Last year, I bought materials to make a wreath for Peeper's bedroom door, to match the colors of the room, but I never got around to making it.

Last night, I spent two or three hours putting it together, and I couldn't wait to show her.

She hates it.

She actually cried, because she doesn't like the colors. She wants it to be more fun colors, like pink and green and purple. (Or some shit like that. I don't know.)

I promised we'd buy some more stuff and make her a wreath in those colors.

Oh, and later this morning, she looked at me and said, "Mama, your hair looks awful!"

I do suppose she made it for it later, when she walked into the kitchen as I was putting some leftovers in the microwave and said, "Oh, that looks delicious! And it smells so good, it makes my mouth get ready to eat it!" (We had been talking about foods "making your mouth water" and what that means.

Then she walked into the sunroom and saw that I'd picked up all her toys and said, "Mama! You did a FABULOUS job in here!"

So, I suppose it all evens out.

Well Child Check

Peeper had her check up today, and as usual, she was a model patient.

Well, except for clamming up a bit on the vision test, but they said she was okay on that. They wrote her down as 20/50, but the doctor said that's normal for her age and it will improve over time. They tested her hearing for the first time, and she did fine on it, too.

She's 41" tall (18th percentile) and weighs 41.4 lb (59th percentile). The doctor says that at age five, they "expect" them to be one pound per inch, so she's pretty much right on target there. Her BMI is a bit on the high side, but it's gone down since a year ago (or since her last visit?) so the doctor wasn't concerned about that.

He was impressed that she's grown 4 inches in the past year and her height percentile is the highest that it's ever been. (All whopping 18 of it!)

We discussed her issues with potty accidents, both day and night. He's more concerned about the daytime accidents than the bed wetting, because bed wetting is more of a sleep issue than a pee issue.

He suggested that we get an ultrasound of her kidneys and bladder, just to rule out anything anatomical that might be going on (Does she have a super tiny bladder?) and then go from there.

He seemed to think that it's mostly about being distracted and not noticing that she has to go until it's too late, but "yeah, she's five years old, so she shouldn't be have this many accidents by now," so it's worth checking out.

That's schedule for December 16, but I need to call and change it because she'll be at school and I'll be at work at the time of the appointment.

Christmas Countdown: Peeper's Got Mail

Once again, we kicked off December with Peeper receiving a very special video email from the Big Man Himself.

She was pretty excited about it, as you might imagine.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Christopher is Back!

That's how I was awoken this morning, by one very excited little girl.