EARS! Emma's surgery.

Well, it's been one major ear drama around these parts! First Clara's ear drum completely burst - more information to come on that after our follow up pediatrician appointment - and then Emma had her adenoids removed and tubes put in her ears. 

Clara had a sleep over with Lulu the night before Emma's surgery so that she wouldn't have to get up at 5am. Thank you Lulu! I think Clara enjoyed the sleep over :) And thank you Lulu for taking Clara to her doctor's appointment about her ear. 

 

Bryan and I took Emma to the Conroe Surgery Center bright and EARLY on Friday morning. She was a little irritated with us for waking her up, but some crayons and playing with Mommy & Daddy helped.

She was admired by all of the staff, especially her little Pebbles hair 'do.

Getting hooked up and checking oxygen levels

Not sure what she thinks about it

The tiniest blood pressure cuff ever

And then Emma drank some happy juice and started getting pretty silly :)

Loves her Daddy

I can't resist including this photo:

Sorry to my future grown up Emma ;)

 This painting was a major win because we counted the trees over and over and over!

The happy juice also makes babies a little sleepy:

Pretty soon she was very unsteady, so she laid down on the bed and played peek-a-boo with her blanket:

And admired her ankle bracelet (ID) 

Hello little bear

There goes Emma with her nurses, tiny feet in the air. She was extremely loopy at this point.

Bryan and I waited outside for about 30 minutes and then they called us back to help Emma come out of anesthesia. She was NOT happy with us at all. She was so angry at first that I pulled her into a tight bear hug and they draped a warm blanket on top of us, and I just rocked and sang to her until she fell asleep again. She slept for another good 20+ minutes.

She was still upset when she woke up, but we had Baby Einstein cued on the iPhone (her favorite show), which helped calm her down too.

She threw her sippy cup overboard repeatedly, and so we hesitantly tried a big girl cup, which thankfully did the trick! The kids can't leave until after they've had a certain amount of fluids.

The IV really made her angry, so we were all relieved when they came to remove it.

Unfortunately the rest of the day was a big disaster too. We played a tinnny bit, but she was so unsteady on her feet and everything made her sad. She ultimately ended up taking a nap and then crying the rest of the day.

Some more Baby Einstein for our sake as much as her's.

 When Clara came home she brought Emma a picture she drew her to make her feel better. It's an angel - complete with wings and a halo! And you can see how good she's getting at writing her name!

We were ALL relieved when bed time came around. More on the rest of the rest of the weekend soon :)

Emma's Ears

This week found Emma and me at Texas ENT taking a look at our littlest lady's ears.

Bad news first: we found out through the audio screening process that due to the lengthy exposure Emma has had to excess fluid in her ears that she's suffered some mild hearing loss. 

Good news: our ENT is hopeful that with careful monitoring of fluid levels and staying on top of it she will not experience any further hearing loss, and it's possible - though we won't know until she's much older - that her hearing can resolve itself. 

We will be putting tubes in Emma's ears and taking out her adenoids on March 4th. 

To make myself feel better after some difficult news, we then treated ourselves to Freebirds with Daddy, Lulu, and Clara! yum :) 

Allergy Testing & Paint Nails: All About Clara!

Today was a BIG day for Clara. First, she went to The Woodlands Wellness Center with us to become a new patient and get tested for allergies. I was rather nervous about the entire experience, and decided that even though they are super anti sugar I'd take a lollipop anyway, just in case I needed a bribe. 

This place is so far from being child friendly, let alone child proof, that it's outrageous! I was thankful when Clara stopped pretend feeding the ceramic birds with the glittery breakable pumpkins and started playing peekaboo with the curtains instead. Yes. THAT'S how un-child-friendly this place is! I'm so thankful we didn't end up needing to pay for anything broken.

 

To give herself a little extra dose of bravery this morning Clara decided to wear her Elsa dress. It wasn't until we were there that she told me the REAL reason she decided to wear it: "See Mama? My arms is all full so no one can poke with me shots." Excellent thinking kid! I'm sorry it didn't work for you.

Playing with the muscles and fatty tissue models:

She was also given a sticky note and "Elsa" gloves to keep her out of mischief 

In order to help the process, Clara was given a ton of numbing cream and then wrapped up in cling wrap to keep it working. She was baffled and not super happy about the process. She was better once we pulled her sleeve over the wrap.

After taking her weight (32lbs) and her height (37") and her temperature and blood pressure, we met briefly with the doctor which resulted in being given some recommended supplements that will hopefully help with the serious sleeping problems she has plus the asthma and eczema. Then she was ready to get those shots. Okay, not really. She was terrified and not at all happy :( But it was time anyway!

Okay.... fast forward 30 minutes or so, after 11 pokes, so. many. tears., and a lollipop (ha! mommy knows best) Clara was doing better. It was about as awful as I expected, and my arm and ab muscles got an excellent workout holding her steady while they did the testing. 

It turns out that she's allergic to lot of weeds and grasses, as well has having severe allergies to mold and dust mites, and an extremely severe allergy to eggs! I'm so glad we did the testing. I knew there had to be something causing her flare ups, and I just didn't pin down eggs as the culprit. No more scrambled eggs for her on Sunday apparently. I feel pretty awful about that. They did tell us to not just abruptly eliminate ALL eggs because her system would go into shock and that's what the allergy drops are for anyway. Yes, DROPS. Not weekly shots, but a daily drop under the tongue. I know, I know. WHERE have these been my entire life!? Anyway, so very small amounts of eggs are ok, but no more than that. 

She refused to put her sleeve back on the rest of the morning.

Back to smiling thank goodness. Look at all of those pokes :(

 As we were about to leave she started bawling all over again - I'm guessing the numbing cream was wearing off. I asked her what would make her feel better and she told me "candy and breaf-ix" between sobs. I thought, "why not?" so Daddy, Clara and I all ate at Olive Garden for lunch. And in case you were wondering, yes, that's all she ate - 3.5 breadsticks, one bite of salad, and 2 Andes Mints. Superior parenting, people. Oh well.

We thought about it later, trying to figure out why on earth she thought of bread sticks, but realized the last time she got a shot at the doctor's office (a steroid shot for a particularly bad infection) we went to Olive Garden afterward. Shots = breadsticks. Who knew!? We started our own tradition. This child remembers everything!

After a few ROUGH hours at home involving no nap and many tears, I decided we needed to do something extra special and fun to turn our day around. Thus, Clara's first manicure and pedicure happened! The place near us has a small room off to the side that's rather well ventilated and has these adorable little pink chairs with butterfly wings on them for little people to use, plus an adult sized chair right next to it. 

Clara was in HEAVEN. She picked her color, and the gentleman trimmed her nails, filed, buffed, painted them and then even put these cute little flowers on her thumbs! She kept telling him, "wow! you do a good job!" - I'm not sure if that's an indirect criticism on my usual nail painting job or if she just truly was impressed, haha. 

She was floored when he rubbed her feet, clipped, filed, etc. and painted her toe nails and added little white flowers to her big toe nails too! At this point she said, "Wow. You paint my paint nails next time, not mommy, ok?" Ha! You'll get regular purple polish and like it, little dude :) Maybe I'll add glitter or something next time to up my mommy game. 

Getting a close up on her toes

Waiting very carefully for mommy to finish 

She was too scared to put her shoes back up and cover up her flowers, so she walked barefoot back to the car, happy as a clam.

Showing off her flowers - too bad they don't show up very well here

 CB: "Look Mommy! This leaf is prettier next to my paint nails too! Don'tcha think?" hehehe

The perfect photo to represent the juxtaposition of the happy/sad experiences from today.

Pre-July 4th

"Pre-July 4th" is really what July 3rd is. Everyone is pumped about the celebrations to come, flags are waving, patriotic posts are being made across the internet, briskets are being prepared... it's what folks do. 

Of course, July 3rd or 4th really doesn't matter to our girls. They just do their thing like always. In fact, at Clara and Emma's school today was the Independence Day Parade, where all the classes sing songs, wave flags and make special hats to wear. We ended up missing it because poor Emma was up most of the night vomiting. She was one sick little dude :( It continued on into this morning. I took Clara to swim lessons and left Emma with Bryan (it's not his Friday off, but he gets it off anyway because of the 4th) and Clara was too upset about Emma and didn't want to go to the parade without her, so the entire family just skipped it. I'm kind of sad about it because Clara loves to sing and I like to watch her :)

Anyway, from last night when this poor tyke couldn't sleep because her tummy was so torn up. I couldn't rest easy about her sleeping in her crib because I was afraid I wouldn't hear if she started throwing up again (we'd been up most of the night and I was exhausted), so we put her in the pack'n'play in our room for a while. She actually slept great in there until Clara woke up ready for the day (nooooo!!!) Then Emma woke up too, so Bryan went upstairs to hang out with fall back asleep with Clara while I rocked Emma back to sleep in our bed. I finally got her to fall back asleep (success!) but she was passed out on my lap, which made it very hard for me to get comfortable to go back to sleep.

in my lap

But then I finally got brave enough to try to transfer her over on the bed next to me in hopes that we could both get some more sleep.

Success!!!! (should have done it sooner)

so pooped out 

 But it didn't last long because the girls are early risers, even when they don't sleep much. While I was getting Clara ready for swim lessons, I solved the mystery of who has been stealing and hiding toilet paper rolls all over the house (including under her crib!!)

Caught in the act

Obsessed

Making off with yet another one. Crazy kiddo.

 The girls found the pack'n'play in our room fun & usual and wanted to play together:

so much giggling

 Then we were off!! Following another outfit change for me because Emma's tummy still wasn't settled.

Video:

Floating on her back

 When we got home we convinced Emma to nibble on a cracker while Clara swept up the crumbs.

And then this tired baby took a nap while Mommy and Daddy did too (Lulu came to the rescue to watch the girls while we snoozed. THANK YOU. We were so tired after being up most of the night).

not even in her usual sleeping position she's so tired

 Then after reading lots of books, naps, and some play time, we went over to Lulu and Papa's house for some swimming and some ribs.

Love her sense of style

 The girls (and Maverick) were happy :)

really sweet

 Don't worry, Clara did this on purpose and wasn't harmed (just lucky action shot):

Time to dry off and have some dinner!

Thank you again for your help Mom! And thanks for the ribs Dad! Please pray for Emma - we don't know if it's another allergy forming or if it's a tummy bug or what it is, but it's still going as of bedtime and we want the little one to feel better. Thank you!

Also, a bonus video of Clara pretending to eat gold fish or raisins or something at bedtime:
(you may have to turn up the sound to hear what Bryan and Clara are saying)

What a little nut.