Kendall's Splash Day!

Thursday was Kendall's last splash day at Wee Place! She had so much fun and looks forward to this all year. I came up with Calli and Cooper and it was quite the adventure with all three. :) Randy met us for a picnic lunch, and it was a lot of fun!

Kendall with Taylor

The Dolphins and the Cheetahs, getting ready for the big slide!

Kendall has never wanted to go down the big water slide, but this year she said she was going to do it! When the time came to get in line, she didn't get scared, but was so excited and ready to go! I was so, so proud of her! She loved it! I texted some pictures to Randy and he said, "It is ridiculous how happy this makes me!" We are proud of our brave girl!

 

 One more picture with Mrs. Melissa before we left! We will miss seeing her twice a week!

And a couple of videos of Kendall sliding - so, so proud!

 

Kendall's Preschool Graduation

This was Kendall's last week in preschool at Wee Place at Willow Drive Baptist Church. She has been there for four years now and we are so thankful for their program. She has grown and learned so much and we had a great time celebrating the past four years!

 Connor has been in her class all four years. These two are such good buddies and I am thankful for their friendship. We got to take him to school with us on Tuesday because his mom was having her pre-op appointment to get ready to have his baby brother the next day! It was a big week for Connor!

Jillian and Kendall have also been here all four years together and are such sweet friends. Jillian has gone to school all four days the past couple of years, so they haven't been in the same class, but they still see each other a bunch and are in the same class at church. We are thankful for Jill and her family!

The graduation ceremony was so sweet. Mrs. Stephanie had taught the graduates two songs and we loved watching them perform.  Kendall is on the end. She was the first one to walk down the aisle when they marched in and she was so brave! She has definitely grown a lot this year.

 

 

Kendall made a new friend in her class this year - Taylor!

Savannah started with her four years ago, too. And she will be at the same elementary school next year!

Sweet Emma!

 

 Calli and Cooper were proud of their big sister! Cooper is excited to get to go to this school next year - she'll be in the three year old class and loves to talk about when she gets to go to school. :)

There was a little reception for all the graduates and their families after the ceremony. Kendall spilled something on her dress before the ceremony, so she was wearing borrowed extra clothes from Katelyn. This is Mrs. Susan, the director of the preschool this year. We love Mrs. Susan! 

And we love Mrs. Stephanie! She is the chapel and music teacher and Kendall has a special relationship with her. Mrs. Stephanie has a red headed daughter of her own!

And, Mrs. Melissa! She was Kendall's teacher this year and we could not have asked for a better teacher. She was patient with Kendall, pushed her when she knew she could do something and Kendall learned a lot under her. Her class was just six kids and we loved the sweet little community they had together!

We're so proud of you Kendall and are super excited about watching you in Kindergarten next year! We love you! 

One Week Since Surgery

We have been amazed at what Dr. T was able to do with Calli's lip and with how it has healed this past week. We have had a lot of people ask us questions that we thought we would try to answer here.

 

One question we get a lot is if he had to use tissue from somewhere else or if it is all her own tissue. It is all her own lips! He just pulled each side to the middle, used stitches and glue, and then even did some stitching on her nose to open up her nostrils. Pretty amazing!

 

So, we are also asked a lot about the no-nos on her arms. These are not for any kind of wound or anything that had to do with the surgery - they are to keep her elbows from bending so that she is not able to touch her nose or mess with her wound. But as the week has gone on, she has figured out a way to touch it if she wants to even when she has them on. She is so smart! We take them off some so that she can feed herself, but we also leave them on a lot so that we don't have to worry about watching her 24/7 to make sure she's not messing with it.

 

She had a combination of glue and stitches, and the glue has fallen off and the stitches are starting to dissolve/fall out.

 

Here is a progression of pictures throughout the week. I think these first two were Thursday, day after surgery.

 

 Friday

 

Saturday

 

Sunday (and her first swim - with us!) 

Monday - also the day we had three doctors appointments in Houston.

Tuesday

We had her post-op check up on Monday and Dr. T was still very pleased with the outcome! Some of her glue was starting to come off, so he cleaned and clipped it and said the rest would fall off that night - and it did! We also started talking palate surgery and are tentatively planning on August, before Kendall starts school. This will be a much more extensive surgery, and will require three or four days in the hospital - no fun! We'll learn more about that throughout the summer and start making plans toward that!

Randy put these pictures together - before, early after surgery and then one week post surgery. Amazing!

 

We are so thankful for Dr. T and the work he has begun to do. We think he has done an amazing job. That being said, this week has not been totally easy! We have felt a lot of emotions watching her little face change from what it used to look like. We obviously know that we needed to do this for her, but we thought she was beautiful just the way she was. We want her to know that as she grows, and know that we only wanted what was best for her in terms of development, speech, and growth.

When we received Calli's referral in November of last year, we were given three pictures. We looked at those pictures many times a day, for a month. Then we got two new pictures in December. Again, we just studied and studied her sweet little face, praying over her picture and dreaming of holding her. We got two new pictures right before we traveled in April. Then we held her and knew her for the first time on April 8, brought her home and she became part of our family. Her surgery was 5 and a half weeks after we first met her, but we had already fallen in love with the way we knew she looked for all those months. Her face looks completely different to us now. We love it now, we loved it before - it's not an issue of better or worse. It's just different. And that is strange, especially when we have been working so hard on attachment. It's just a little strange and hard to look into a different face, even though we know it's our same Calli. The swelling will continue to go down, and other moms in the community of moms of cleft kids I'm in have told me they felt the same way but that you get used to it over time and just get to fall in love with them twice! :) We just weren't expecting her to look quite as different as she does, and the emotions have taken us by surprise a little. We love her so much and are so proud of how strong she has been through this whole process - it's crazy when we think back through what she has been through in less than two months! She is crazy strong, crazy resilient, and we are so very blessed to be her mom and dad.

Calli's First Surgery

We went to see the cleft doctor we chose for Calli on Monday, May 6th. We really liked him! He is very experienced and has a great personality. He is part of a team that will see Calli all the way through her many surgeries as she grows: plastics, craniofacial surgeon, orthodontists, speech therapists, etc. We were excited about her first appointment, just to begin learning about the process and to see what he thought about her lip and palate.

He said we would repair her lip first, and then do the palate closure in about three months. He said there was no reason to wait and he wanted to get started as soon as possible so we could begin working on speech. When his nurse came in to schedule us, she asked us how soon we were thinking we wanted to do surgery. We told her he said as soon as possible, and she said, well how about next Wednesday, the 15th? Pretty crazy, but we didn't see any reason not to go ahead and get started, so we planned on that!

Last Wednesday we had to leave Lake Jackson at 4:30 am because we were supposed to be at Hermann in Houston at 5:30. Her surgery was scheduled for 7:30. We were so thankful that Kathy and Greg let the big girls have a sleep over at their house - and the girls were pretty excited, too! So much fun. Erin Martin also came to our house that day to keep the girls when Kathy had to go to work, and they had a blast.

We have been so impressed with Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital. All morning, everyone that would be involved in Calli's surgery came in to meet us, explain the part they would be doing, and see if we had any questions. We felt very well-taken care of!

Here are a few pictures we took pre-surgery. We were soaking up all we could of her sweet cleft face!

One of my most favorite pictures!

After waiting in the waiting room, we were taken back to the room where they got her ready for surgery. This is where we met all the nurses, anesthesiologists, Dr. T came and saw us, and we put her gown on for surgery. She started getting a little cranky back here because she had been awake for so long with no food, but the t.v. and being goofy with Dad helped distract her.

 

Dr. T's nurse that came to get Calli to actually take her back for surgery was so sweet and great with Calli. Even though she had been starting to fuss some, she was really liking this nurse and went to her easily. She went and got Calli a toy to hold and then just carried her back to the operating room! Calli didn't even cry at all when they left us. I loved that they just carried her back instead of wheeling her on the bed. They had given her some kind of mild medication to chill her out, but whatever it was helped!

Dr. T had told us to expect about 2.5 to 3 hours total surgery time. We got updates as they got her under the anesthesia and then as they started surgery. An hour and a half later, Dr. T came in the waiting room! I was reading and Randy was sleeping on a bench out in the hall. I stuck my head out and woke him up and he was so startled! He was a little out of it during our meeting with Dr. T.

I told him I was a little concerned to be seeing him so soon. He said if he is ever late to start worrying, but that if he is early it means things went well. He told us he was very pleased with how well the repair went. He didn't have to pull her nose down as much as he thought and he said it was just a really clean repair. He said he thought we would be very pleased. About 15 minutes later we were able to go back to see her in recovery.

She was in and out of sleep as she came out of the anesthesia. Her nose was pretty bloody, and when she was awake she was sad. She let Randy hold her.

 

The nurse there in recovery was with us the whole time. She was great. She told us kind of what to expect over the next few days, and told us what to worry about and what not to worry about. After about 45 minutes, Calli was awake and we felt fine about taking her home. The nurse took care of our discharge orders and we were free to go!

She did great on the car ride home. She slept on and off, still because of the anesthesia, and the drive went by quickly. We were home by 11:30 that morning! Crazy!

I took this picture on the way home. All our family was sad they weren't able to be with us, but I loved that she was covered by the quilt that had all their fabrics on it. They were praying for her and covering her even though they weren't physically there. We are so thankful for them, as well as for sweet friends that helped us with Kendall, Cooper, and even dinner that night. We are so blessed!

 

Check back soon for pictures of her lip as it has healed this past week!

"School Buses are so Speshul to Me!"

I think I have mentioned on the blog before that Cooper loves school buses. I think it started one day when we saw one while we were driving and Kendall told her what it was. When she heard "school," she associated that with Granny and asked if Granny was on that school bus. :) So now every time we see school buses when we are driving, she gets excited. Randy took the girls shopping one day and Cooper found a little school bus toy that she loves.

Our friend at church, Mrs. Rosie, drives a school bus. When she heard how much Cooper loves school buses, she asked Randy if she could buy the girls a school bus tent. Randy said, of course - that they would love it - and she said, "Oh good - because I already bought it!" Then she said that when it comes in she wanted to deliver it to the house in her school bus! We knew the girls would be so excited.

Yesterday was the day she came! Her husband Thomas met us at the house, too, and he pulled up in front of the bus in his truck. I had to wake the girls up from their naps a little early, and then they watched at the kitchen window for "Mrs. Rosie's school bus." There was so much excitement when she pulled up!

 They knew she was coming in her bus, but they didn't know anything about the tent. So much fun! Cooper had just woken up, so she wanted me to hold her most of the time - that's why she's hardly in any pictures. She was pretty much in awe of the school bus though!

 Holding her little school bus!

 Cooper's other "speshul thing" is Stop signs. I don't even know where this came from, but she loves them and notices every one we pass. So, a stop sign ON a school bus was pretty exciting. :)

Driving the bus!

 Waving good-bye as the bus drove away!

Then we went straight in the house and opened the bus tent! It is so cool! There are little handles along the bottom, so the girls can stand up in it and "drive" it around the house. They LOVE it! Kendall and Cooper went to spend the night at Greg and Kathy's last night because we had to be at the hospital so early this morning for Calli's surgery and they just had to bring their bus with them. So cute!

 Thank you for the special treat, Mrs. Rosie! The girls just loved it and had so much fun!