No more button for Eliza-button!

Drum roll please.....We took out Elizabeth's G-tube tonight! I can't explain all the conflicting feelings in my heart. I'm SO thankful that we had the g-tube to help keep Elizabeth alive so many times when she was so sick, to help her grow when she didn't know how to drink or eat. While at first I definitely had a love/hate relationship with the "button", and all I could think of was trying to wean her so we could take it out, in the past year and a half I'd made peace with it, and was in fact, thankful for the flexibility it provided us as we tried to teach Elizabug to eat.

After talking it over with her GI, we agreed that now that she's solidly eating by mouth (still learning to chew but making steady progress), she's proven that she can eat enough to keep from loosing weight and she's stayed out of the hospital and eating by mouth despite some gnarly colds this winter. Suddenly, removing the tube became realistic. So we did it! Ironically, I shed a few tears...it's been quite a run for the little button, but otherwise it was pretty anticlimactic in light of how much her eating and tube feeding has dominated our lives for the last 3 1/3 years.

We're praising God that tonight, Elizabeth is tube free, eating and drinking by mouth and sleeping soundly at home. The next step is finding homes for all the tubing and syringes we've got in our basement...It feels good to finally be able to say, "we don't need it!" Here are some before and after pictures.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sisters, Sisters,
There were never such devoted sisters.
Never had to have a chaperone, no sir!
I'm there to keep my eye on her.

Princess Parties, Pit Bulls & Playgrounds, Oh My!

February is the month for hearts and tutus and princess parties! It's months like these when I'm really glad I have girls. All my dress up dreams come true and we can wear tights and "panty shoes" (fancy shoes) and crowns any time we want. There are 5 families in our little group of friends. The gals meet for bible study, the men meet for bible study, the families do breakfast together once a month and the kids (10 under age 4) just have a ball together. Emily (in the pink dress) threw a "Kingdom of Love" party and we all (I do mean all) dressed up as princesses and knights. Elizabeth was looking forward to going since I told her about it. Every day she asked to "go to the Valentines Party and wear a princess dress and a crown". We did a dry run over the weekend and let them play in some dress up clothes our OT brought over when she heard we were going to this party. Ruby can say "tutu" now and when she puts one on, we think she looks like one of the hippos doing ballet from fantasia...he he he. I just think a tutu makes household chores so much more fun!

After our princess Party, I had put the girls down for their quiet times and gone back to the car to finish unloading when I heard a woman screaming for help in the alley behind our house. She was being attacked by pit bulls that had escaped their yards to attack her dog! I called 911, and after another neighbor got the dogs to retreat, stayed with her until the police & EMTs came.

When the girls woke up from their quiet times, we went to the park. At the end of our time there, Elizabeth fell about 2 feet to the ground off of a cement structure and landed on her back in the wood chips. She seemed okay and after a few tears played for a bit longer before heading for the car. On our way there, she seemed dizzy, and lethargic and as soon as I buckled her in, she got white as a sheet, started babbling a bit and falling asleep! My first thought was that she'd ruptured her XL spleen and after running it by Matt, we decided to be safe and head for the ER at Children's. Fortunately, after the work-up in the ER proved she was okay, she began to perk up a bit and we were discharged in just under 2 hours. We stopped by the cafeteria for ice cream and headed home where we crashed from all the adrenaline from the day! See what happens when we leave our house??

Stanley the Snowman

I'm a California Girl at heart. I could do without winter, cold floors, hands cracking from all the dry heated air and icy streets, but I LOVE SNOW! A week or so after our first snow we got a major storm that gave us something to get excited about. Daddy helped the girls build Stanley the Snowman, ("Daddy!" she said, after kissing him, "Stanly tastes like water!") and Ruby helped herself to a snack. She's pretty much always trolling for food. It was a great family weekend.