Bathing with a Cast & More Snow!

I have to give two special Mommy's a lot of credit for creative bathing when their own children were in casts recovering from surgeries. Robbie and Verna, thanks for all the prayers and tips.

Let's just say that bathing isn't nearly as fun for Miss Josie when you can't get your arm wet. Instead of a 20-30 minute bath of splashing fun, it's a quick dip and hair scrubbing and then we're out again. During bath time we're protecting her cast first with a bread bag and then covering it with a long sock. Emma has been amazing with all the help that she's provided as a big sister. She's been super at assisting me with Josie's dressing, bathing and feeding duties. You are an awesome BIG sister. We love you so much!!



In other news, the snow and wind continues in West Michigan. Here are a few shots taken this morning of the drifts on our deck and out the front door and around the bird bath. The shot on the deck really doesn't reflect the one drift that is nearly 3 1/2 feet tall.







In addition to a sore hand, Josie continues to battle her chest cold and a slight fever, which makes for some very fussy moments. Her awful sleeping reminds me of our time together prior to her heart surgery (lots of thrashing and crying throughout the night). Despite our unhappy tantrum moments, she still a trooper and we're seeing improvement.

Stay warm everybody. Only 4 days until Christmas!!

Feeling a little yucky, but loving the snow day

After breakfast, Josie had a harder day on Friday. She was battling an ongoing fever, yucky cough and a hand that hurt like the dickens. I actually peeled back the mesh cover on her sling to make sure her fingers weren't swollen and forgot all about the pin that was sticking right out of her new thumb. It kinda scared me for a second.



She's one tough little girl. We've put her through so much in just nine short months with open-heart surgery and now corrective hand surgery. Chris and I both said she has a high pain tolerance that we will never have. God love our sweet little girl.

After the snow storm finally stopped, we had just a little over 11 inches of new snow. It's lovely and puts us even more in the Christmas spirit. It doesn't hurt that Chris and Emma got to start their Christmas break early. I'm glad Chris doesn't mind shoveling or snow blowing snow. The news is predicting another whopper of a snow storm for West Michigan on Sunday. Bring it on!!





While Josie was napping this afternoon, Emma and I managed to squeeze in one more Christmas craft. Do you remember wooden clothes pin angels from elementary school? We a made a variation of these cute little angels using wooden cutouts that I found at Meijers.

You'll need the following items to make this craft: wooden clothes pins or wooden cutouts, paper doilies, a fine tip marker, glue, paint, small brushes, pipe cleaners and any other embellishments like sequins or glitter.



Step 1: Paint the hair on the clothes pin top and allow to dry. We used yellow, brown and black hair to make three different styles of little girl angels.





Step 2: Use a fine tip maker to create eyes and a mouth. I used the end of one of our paint brushes and dipped it in pink paint to make tiny pink rouged cheeks.

Step 3: Take the paper doily and fashion a dress around the wooden clothes pin. We folded the paper around our cutout and then used Elmer's glue to keep it in place. To create a belt, we used a sparkly pipe cleaner around the waist of the angel.

Step 4: Embellish the angel with more glue, glitter and sequins. We even used some of my left over silk flowers from the Chinese ornament project.



Aren't they cute?



Here's to hoping that our Saturday is a fever-free day for Miss Josie. Please continue to keep her in your prayers.

Day after Surgery & Snow Storm Updates

Josie was a very sleepy little girl last night. She slept on either my lap or Chris's lap most of the night. When she wasn't sleeping, she was eating.

Chris slept with her last night and he did get up a couple of times through the night to give her pain medication, but she actually did much better than we expected.

This morning, she's insisted on feeding herself and has requested chicken rice soup and a green Popsicle for breakfast.



In other news, we have had a wonderful start to our Christmas break. West Michigan is under a major snow storm and both Chris and Emma have had their schools closed for the day. Their Christmas break officially started today. Woo hoo!

Post-Surgery Updates

Our day really couldn't have gone any better. She was evaluated by several hospital staff before they cleared her for surgery.





Once in surgery, her procedure only took an hour and 15 minutes. The longest part of our day, was her waking up from her sleeping medication and being alert enough to come home.





We're now home from the hospital and Josie is safely tucked with Emma in a chair enjoying a movie and eating a green Popsicle.



Josie keeps telling us her arm is "stuck". She hates the sling, but overall is doing much better than we expected. Thank goodness for pain medication.

Our next appointment with the surgeon is scheduled for December 29th. She will be in her cast for at least five weeks. I'm hopeful that she will sleep tonight, but we definitely are planning on sleeping on the floor next to her for several days.

Keep those prayers coming and thank you for all the comments and personal email.

Surgery (it's a GO)

Josie just went into surgery (10am). She'll be in surgery for at least 2.5 hours. She was annoyed about being at the hospital, but was much better behaved than our last experience at UofM with her heart operation. We'll probably be at the hospital until late afternoon with her recovery. She'll be in a full cast with a sling for 5 weeks. Keep the prayers coming. I'll post pictures later.