Every Picture Tells a Story

Wynn's favorite thing about her doll bed is that she is small enough to fit in it too - usually on top of her baby doll. Sometimes she moves the doll out of the way first, picking her up by the hair and thunking her on to the floor.


No one eats ice cream alone at our house anymore.


Along with wanting to pick up every leaf in the yard by hand, she also wants to pick up all the sticks. Most of the time she stacks them under her picnic table, but on this day she was helping Baba out, so the sticks ended up in the fire pit.


Welcome to the snot factory. Wynn caught her very first genuine American cold. We're sure that her coming down with the crud the same week she started daycare is purely coincidental. Who ever heard of a child getting sick at daycare?

Doing Just Fine

We realize we haven't posted for quite some time. Here are some new pictures so you can check out how our girl is growing.

She loves the leaves and desperately wants to pick them up one by one and put them in a pile under her picnic table. We can't wait to see how she reacts when Scott gets out the rake.

Her obsessions with all things Curious George has expanded to include monkeys of all kinds. She picked out a monkey hat and mitten set at Target today, and Grandma bought her a pair of leather slippers with monkey faces on them.

Her Old Self

Wynn had her follow-up appointment with the surgeon on Tuesday, and all is well. She has healed very well and got to jump straight into a "no dietary restrictions" lifestyle. We had anticipated that she'd need to be on mushy-but-not-quite-solid foods for awhile, but the doctor said she can have it all.

After I fed her a graham cracker or two Tuesday evening, she got this look on her face that said Hey! You're feeding me FOOD again! Then the begging started. She pointed for more graham crackers. She pointed for goldfish. She got progressively happier as each snack she asked for was given. Within an hour, she'd turned back into her old self. She was rolling on the floor, giggling, and kicking her feet in the air. Suddenly, she understood the concept of "giving five" and handed out five with great generosity to Scott and I. (She gave Ranger five too - but on the nose, which he wasn't too happy about.)

While we managed to maintain her weight through the hard times of the liquid diet, our girl still wants to grow. She's packing away the food - after what I'd describe as a lumberjack's breakfast yesterday, she pretty much passed out in her bed for over three hours. With a full tummy, she could finally sleep soundly.

We feel like we have our daughter back again - cheerful and funny (with moments of toddler stubbornness thrown in to keep us from getting too complacent).


Ann

New Skills

Hiking at the Nature Center with Baba

Lookin' Cute in Footie Pajamas

Flipping Through Curious George, Of Course

Wynn's recovery has been going smoothly ... for the most part. We had a couple crabby days at first; she hated that she wasn't allowed to feed herself, figured out how to ditch the no-no sleeves in her sleep, and had an upset stomach from the antibiotics. It was during these trying times that Scott and I discovered why footie pajamas were invented: They make your child look so darn cute, you can almost forget the stress of taking care of them.

There were times those first few days home when Wynn was only happy when she was either a) asleep or b) being held. She'd insist that she was hungry but not allow me to set her down for even a second to make her some food. She's settled down about that now, but I'd say she's still more clingy than she was before surgery.

We're already noticing that she's making new sounds. :-) She suddenly came out with a "Gamma" when my mom arrived one morning, and this morning she tried to say Ranger's name for the first time. (It came out "Rahrah", but at least she's trying.) Sometimes she'll sit in her carseat or the stroller and seem to be practicing making new sounds. She'll repeat vocalizations over and over again; it's as if she's trying out her new mouth to see how it works.

She has also figured out that she can drink from a cup, which comes in handy with her being on a liquid diet for two weeks. Liquids used to come out her nose when she tried to drink, but now she's got the moves down and LOVES it. Yoplait makes drinkable yogurt for kids, and she grabs one of those little bottles every now and then and gulps it down. Today she drank an entire carton of chocolate milk at IKEA. Yes, drinking from a cup is such a simple thing, but it really does make us beam with joy to see her do something she couldn't do before.

I've gotten quite good at making liquid meals for her. Some of the stuff she'll drink turns my stomach (chicken, peas, and macaroni pureed with chicken broth - served cold. Ugh.) Here's the recipe for her absolute favorite, which is tasty enough for us to drink too...

Mix the follwing ingredients in the blender:
a dollop of canned pumpkin
about 2 T. of pasteurized egg stuff
a splash of milk
one graham cracker
cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves
It's especially good if you warm it up in the microwave and put a little whipped cream on top. Yummy!

-Ann

Home Again :-)

The pictures show Wynn the day of surgery - not at all happy - and right before they took out the IV and sent her on her way - tired, but so much more content.

Wynn was discharged from the hospital around 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon. She'd made a big leap in her recovery in the afternoon - eventually, she was parading around the nurses' station in her diaper, pulling a toy stroller and baby doll behind her. The nurses coming on duty for the afternoon all said, "Well, she seems to be feeling a lot better." We had to carry her back to her room when she started insisting on going into the rooms of neighboring patients.

She slept pretty well last night - mostly just flopping around like a penguin because of her no-no sleeves. She slept most of the night on the air mattress, using one or both of us as pillows the majority of the time.

She put up quite the struggle about not being able to feed herself her cereal this morning, but after she watched Scott make a show of feeding me my bowl of Cheerios (not our normal procedure, by the way), she decided that it was okay for him to feed her too.

I made a trip to the grocery store to find easily mushable food; for the next few weeks her diet will consist of nothing thicker than mashed potatoes. We worked so hard to get her to gain all that "good" weight since we got home from China; we really don't want her losing any of it now that she's on this liquid diet. (Fortunately, milkshakes are not only allowed but encouraged by her doctor.)

The pain seems to have subsided substantially; she had plain old infant Tylenol at 7 o'clock this morning and hasn't shown any indication of pain since.

We're all so happy that she's bouncing back so quickly ... and that we're not eating hospital cafeteria food anymore.

Ann

Breaking News!

Just got off the phone with Ann ... Wynn did eat a serving of sherbet for lunch and it has stayed down -- she is playful and laughing -- the nurses have gotten Tylenol into her without using the IV line and not orally (trying to keep a clean blog here) -- and papers are being written up with the assumption that she will be coming home later tonight!

The lounge chair that transforms into a single bed was actually OK for sleeping on (kudos to Gillette), but I'd just as soon get the inflatable mattress out and set it up next to Wynn's bed here at home. Looks like that's what will happen. :)

--Scott

A long night, indeed

I stayed in the hospital room with Wynn overnight, and yes, both of us are completely wiped out. Our little pumpkin just could not stay asleep - while I could tell she was getting better about the pain in her mouth and throat as the night went on, that only meant more blood and saliva was getting into her tummy and giving her discomfort there. And, as Ann mentioned, many soggy diapers. So I would say we were up every 45 minutes or so. (A hospital is a strange place at 4 AM...)

It wasn't until about 6:30 this morning that she really achieved a deep sleep state. I went down and got some breakfast - looking like heck, but they're used to it.

She was up by 7:30. We played a little bit of "Where's Wynn?", watched some Chinese animation I'd brought along (she actually paid attention for about 15 minutes), and had a bit of Jello they'd brought up for her and some yogurt from my breakfast. She was initially uncertain about eating (shake of the head "no") but once she had a bite of gelatin, she really got pleasure from eating again. Seeing her *want* to eat more brought a few tears to my eyes, of exhaustion and joy.

She fell asleep until about 9:00. The duty nurse and I got her up and disconnected her sensors and IV line, and took off her no-no sleeves, so that I could take her for a little stroll around the floor. We also tried to give her an oral dose of Tylenol -- getting her on semi-solid foods and being able to take oral pain meds are our necessary goals to reach before she can be discharged -- but then she barfed up everything she'd swallowed that morning, all over me.

While that was disappointing, it wasn't entirely unexpected -- there was a lot of blood and saliva in her stomach, and toddlers seem to have a tough time handling that. The silver linings to the incident are: 1) she is not having much trouble with swallowing anymore, and 2) getting the accumulated gunk out of her tummy may actually help her keep food down the next time we try giving her something. (And I'd packed extra clothes. Bonus -- it all washed out!)

I've come home to get a real shower, catch a few winks, and update all of you. Mama has the fort covered down at Gillette. We have not heard anything yet about if or when Wynn will be discharged; obviously we will have to take that as it comes.

As promised, here are a couple of pictures. --Scott

Wynn in her surgical gown before the operation, looking very much like a little yellow duck...


Being comforted by her mama yesterday afternoon. The no-no sleeves are just Velcroed around the arm, but are rigid enough to keep the elbow from flexing. She of course figured out how to get out of them at about midnight last night.