EASTER 2011

the day before Easter :) ~dying Easter eggs!

Easter morning!
Biruk's first Easter with us ~he was pretty excited to get all dressed up. :)

our family

my "baby" -she's getting too big!

We hosted the family Easter gathering at our house this year.

After lunch we let the kids swim, slip -n-slide, and jump on the trampoline!

yes -it was warm enough for water fun ~but it was breezy so made being out of the water pretty cold!

10 of the 13 cousins in the pool!

baby Joshua chose to nap instead of play in the water :)

getting ready for the Easter egg hunt

we hid an egg in Ginger's cage...she didn't seem too happy about it.

ALL BETTER NOW!

Elizabeth is all better now ~swelling is gone, pain is gone and she's back to normal.

Praise God!

but things did get worse before they got better.

Thursday evening she was the most swollen ~she just kept crying "my cheek hurts mama. my cheek really hurts!".
Then she brought me the thermometer ~sure enough, she was running a fever too.

We put her to bed with medicine and I got up in the middle of the night to give her more meds.

my poor baby Thursday night.


THANK GOD Friday morning we woke up and Elizabeth bounced into our room.
John and I both noticed her cheek didn't seem as swollen.
She declared "I feel good today ~I don't hurt".


I still gave her pain meds throughout the day, but instead of every 4 hours, I stretched it to 6 hours or so.

this was taken on Sunday -she was completely off pain meds by Sunday!
she was still a bit swollen and still having some trouble eating regular food ~but we were definitely encouraged by her progress.

and this morning -totally back to normal!


now we wait for the bone to grow into the space vacated by the tooth (3-5months) and then we get prepared for a very difficult surgery ~jaw distraction.

A quick synopsis of "jaw distraction" ~metal plates will be placed into her jaw with a type of screwing device. We will have to turn the screw 2 times/day for about 30 days -slowly breaking her jaw. Then we wait for the bone to re-grow ~about 2 months...then the plates are removed and we wait for Elizabeth to fully heal from this set of surgeries.

THEN -on to outer ear reconstruction.

LOTS OF SWELLING & PAIN MANAGEMENT

partly to document and partly to answer questions we're getting, I wanted to post a few pics of Elizabeth from today. she slept through the night (praise God!!)

but.....she woke up really swollen.

and in pain. the doc had said to give pain meds as needed, but I've decided to give her a low dose of the Rx pain meds every 4 hours (as the bottle says) ~she doesn't seem to recognize the pain as pain until it's really bad. We'd rather keep the pain to a minimum so she isn't hating life!

here she is this morning ~you can tell the left jaw and cheek area is swollen, though it's actually making her face look more symmetrical now.

here she is about 30 minutes ago (3:30pm). The swelling is about the same, if not worse.

poor baby. we're keeping ice on it as much as we can.....it's just not helping!

she's up playing W*ii ~so at least she's feeling better. :)

SURGERY DAY IN PICTURES

I had every intention to get these posted last night ~or to at least update and let everyone know Elizabeth was home and doing well ~but time slipped away from me so I'm doing it this morning. :)

getting ready to head into the hospital

all decked out in our hospital pj's!

we had about 75 minutes to kill between checking in and the surgery starting, so the nurses brought Elizabeth a little sticker craft to do......she also got to decorate her "sleepy mask" with stickers AND pick out a flavor to have swabbed on the inside of the mask. Apparently the sleep medicine doesn't smell good, so they let the kids pick out a flavor so they smell the flavor they picked out over the stinky sleepy gas!

kids get to choose to go back to the ER in a car or a wagon. Miss Elizabeth chose the wagon. When it arrived at our door she just hopped right in ~all smiles!

there she goes!

the hospital has a new system -every surgery patient is given a number -with that number, the nurses can update a screen that alllows waiting family to see where the patient is. This screen is telling us Elizabeth is in the OR

Here she is in PACU -recovery. By the time we saw this, the doc had already come out to let us know she had done wonderfully and he was able to get the whole tooth quickly.

our first glimpse- she's trying to hard to smile but she was dopey from the anesthesia AND they had locally numbed the left side of her face too. :)

ready to go!

at home

she's holding the ice bag up to her face with one hand and has the timer in the other.

She doesn't like having ice on her face!

She did pretty well yesterday. We had to give her pain meds a few times, but that is to be expected.

She camped on the couch for most of the afternoon, but by evening time she was up walking around and playing on the computer.

She was tolerating soft foods well -which is a huge blessing. She went to bed a little swollen ~but woke up this morning alot swollen and in pain. :(

We're going to lay low again today, keep ice on her cheek/jaw, and hope to keep her pain under control. Thank you so much to everyone who's been praying for her.

She has at least 6 more surgeries to go ~so we're hoping for a quick recovery on this one!

SURGERY DAY

It's just after 6am and all the kids are still asleep....in just a few minutes I'll go wake everyone up. Elizabeth cannot have anything to eat or drink this morning, so all the kids will just put their clothes on, make their beds and then we head to grandma and grandpa's. The 3 oldest will just eat breakfast there to make it easier on Elizabeth. :) On Saturday, Elizabeth, Becca, and I took a little pre-surgery class and tour. They had a little video explaining the general process of surgery so a kid could understand, showed them what the IV will look like, what the anesthesia mask will look and feel like, etc etc. This hospital has really gone the extra mile in making this as good an experience as possible. The kids get to pick out what flavor they want their "sleepy medicine" to smell like, what mode of transportation they will use to get back to the OR (wagon, little car, or just walk), they get to choose 1 toy (or blankie) to have with them in the OR, etc etc. Since Elizabeth will be on a soft food diet for at least a day, we already ran to the store to get go-gurts, pudding, and jell-o! She went to bed last night declaring "tomorrow is my special day!" I hope she's in as cheerful a spirit in about 5 hours! :) off to wake up 4 sleeping kiddos and get our day underway.

CATCHING UP ~AGAIN!

I'm trying to play catch up again. March was a tough month for our family. One of these days I'll blog about it....but God used that time to continue to show His faithfulness and His provision to us. I have several posts I'm working on putting up so keep scrolling down to catch up. I'm hoping to be caught up over the weekend, because on Tuesday, April 12th, we take Elizabeth in for her first surgery. We're excited to get her reconstructive process under-way...but this mommy IS nervous about sending her baby in for surgery!

BIRUK

Biruk asked to play soccer this Spring instead of football with Andrew.

his first game was 3 weeks ago. He is really good at playing soccer here at home, but surprised us with how tentative he is in "real" games. We think it's just because he's not used to playing with rules...in Ethiopia he probably just played street soccer -not organized games. By last week, after 1 game and a few practices, he seemed to be getting the hang of it.

We're hoping by the end of the season he'll be more comfortable with the rules and nuances of the game and he'll show off his skills a bit more. :)

playing goalie

and - I couldn't let this milestone slip by without bragging on him!

Biruk finished up his Kindergaren Math program!!!

We are so proud of him ~he hasn't been home a year yet...and I didn't start the math program until he'd been home a few months.

We think this is such a huge accomplishment!!!

BECCA'S BIRTHDAY WEEKEND

Rebecca declared this birthday as "the best birthday EVER"....not because of all the great gifts or outpouring of love. :)

The evening of her birthday we picked up my sister's chihuahua, Mia, and her youngest, baby Joshua to baby sit for the weekend.

My sis and her husband were going out of town for 3 days and we had volunteered for babysitting duty (my mom took on the 8 older kids!)

he's such a happy little guy!

if you saw the previous post about Becca getting a puppy in a purse for her birthday-you'll get how perfect that was ~instead of her stuffed puppy, she was able to carry around Mia in her purse. :)

we took her out for Ethiopian food on her birthday, the 24th, and got home too late to do cake....so we did her cake on the 25th. :) she asked for a fun-fetti cake with green frosting -sounded odd to me but I made it anyway.:)

My sister sent clothes for Joshua, but I dug out our box of favorites from when Andrew was a baby ~found this Ohio State onesie that Joshua just HAD to wear. :)

nothing cuter than watching a baby watch himself in the mirror!