The girls were really good on the trip down (that DVD player has paid for itself many times over in the past year!). Katie fell asleep somewhere around 10:00 (very late for her), and Emily stayed awake until about 11:30 or so. That kid just never wants to fall asleep! She'll sit right there and tell you she's tired, but it just never occurs to her to go to sleep. If you tell her to close her eyes and rest, then she falls right to sleep!
Friday morning we were able to take our time getting around (appt. at 11:00), which was nice. We got to the hospital around 10:00 and our first stop was the blood bank. I like to donate while I'm there not only because I believe that donating blood is vitally important, but also because I get free parking for the entire day. It's a win-win situation!
Dr. L (and Dr. P's resident) saw Emily first, and took lots of photos. He is the plastic surgeon who did the tissue graft. He was very happy with the healing that has taken place, both in her mouth and her arm. We got talking about the mouth, and something he said triggered something I've been meaning to point out. I asked him to get her a cup so he could see how she swallows. It's really pretty funky. She opens her mouth, sorta throws back her head, and chokes the liquid down. Dr. L seemed a bit concerned about it, too. After a short time, Dr. P joined us. Dr. P was the one who, along with Dr. L, closed Emily's hard palate with the donated tissue from her forearm. She also looked at the mouth and confirmed that there were no fistulas (yippee!). I brought up the swallowing issue, and Emily demonstrated. There is a concern that Emily's soft palate, although corrected in September 2007, is still not working properly.
Dr. P wanted Emily assessed by one of the speech pathologists, as well as scheduled for a swallow study. Although we weren't on the schedule, they were able to squeeze us in for the SLP. The SLP did quite a bit of testing on Emily, and documented everything. She explained to us that some of Emily's issues are due to her tooth placement, and until they're straightened up, she simply won't be able to make certain sounds. She agreed with Dr. P that it's possible that the build up of scar tissue may be causing the muscles in the soft palate to not work correctly. The swallow study will help us determine if that is the case. I phoned before we even left that department, and got an appointment for the swallow study in July.
We all discussed the future plans for Emily. Dr. P explained that Emily will need orthodontics starting in about a year (her teeth are really crowded now - wait until the adult teeth come in!). They will widen her jaw slowly, which will prepare her for the bone graft surgery (from her hip). This will happen at approx. 8-10 years old. Once that is healed and her adult teeth start coming in, she will need extensive orthodontics. Fortunately, we have a really good relationship with a local Dr. who did braces for each of the boys. Emily's teeth can't be that much worse than theirs, right? We'll see...
Finally, both Dr's agreed that Emily needs to be seen by the entire cleft team , led by Dr. M, at this time next year. I think the only reason we haven't seen the entire team yet is because once we found Dr. M, time was of the essence, and they got Emily scheduled for surgery last year asap. We first met all 3 doctors in April 2008, and she had her surgery in July 2008. That's especially fast, believe me! After all is said and done (jaw-wise), Emily will have a lip and nose revision by Dr. M. All in all, that's a pretty minor issue compared to what she's been through.
So, all that was Friday morning. We were headed to the hospital playground (the girls had been bugging us to visit it), and they were setting up for a carnival. We stood around for a short time, and decided to get a bite to eat, and then return. When we came back, there were lots of children getting their photos taken with a dinosaur, making photo frames, painting small treasure boxes, coloring paper masks, and gettting their hands painted (instead of the face). The girls had a great time, and brought home lots of little souveniors.
After we left the hospital, and were headed back towards the hotel, we found this big water fountain that children were running through. It was in the high 80's, so we found a parking gargage and let the girls run off some steam. They had a wonderful time! We had planned on visiting the children's museum, so we started asking people how to get there. Everyone said it was pretty close by, but no one could give us directions. We decided to return to the hotel, get the girls changed, and ask at the front desk for directions. Traffic was backed up pretty bad, but we eventually made it. The front desk took about 20 minutes to figure out that their printer wasn't working, and finally wrote down the directions. We drove through McD's for dinner and back into the city we went.
We found the museum easily, and the girls had a fantastic time! 3 stories of everything imaginable, including a 3-story climbing apparatus (photo on the left). I took about 100 photos.... Before we left I asked the young man at the information desk about directions to the aquarium for Saturday. He printed them off (less than a mile away from the museum).
Saturday morning we got around, packed up the room, and again headed into the city towards the aquarium. There wasn't anyone at the ticket booth for the whale watch, and we wanted to check that out, too. Once we did, we decided to purchase combo tickets for the aquarium/whale watch. Our WW wasn't scheduled until 2:00, so we headed into the aquarium. Because we'd already purchased our tickets, we were able to bypass approximately 100 people in line waiting to purchase aquarium tickets! We had a terrific time there! We saw penguins swimming and standing around, a huge spiral tank in the middle where untold numbers of different types of fish were swimming, and tanks throughout to view many other species. The girls were able to touch starfish; I think that might have been the highlight of the trip! We saw a huge sea turtle in the main tank, swimming along with 3 sharks and tons of other fish. Again, I took a ton of photos! We had lunch at the cafe there, and then headed outside to get in line for the Whale Watch. Before we did, we found a display of harbor seals (a favorite of Katie's!), and watched them for a short time. We joined a very long line of folks for the whale watch. Our boat eventually showed up, unloaded the folks from the earlier tour, and loaded us on. There wasn't room for everyone to have outside seats, so we settled for seats mid-deck inside. After a while Katie was getting upset because "you promised we'd be outside". I eventually took her and Emily outside and we stood near the rail as the boat was making it's way out of the harbor. It was very windy and pretty cold, but it felt great! We quickly went back inside to get Marty to join us. Emily and Marty went back in after about 45 minutes, but Katie wanted to stay out longer. Eventually, we also went inside, and stayed there for about the next hour. I got just a touch of sea-sickness, and needed some fresh air. Once back on deck I felt much better. After we'd been going for nearly 2 hours, some whales were spotted! As we got closer, we found some room near the railing and we were given quite a show! Several humpback whales were about 25 yards away from us. They did quite a bit of showing us their tails, and once one of them bobbed up and stuck it's head out of the water quite a ways. I took more photos... We didn't see any of those big leaps that we were hoping for, but no one was complaining!
The ride back to shore took around 1 hour, and was much smoother than the one out to sea. We got back to the aquarium around 5:45, ran in and used the facilities (again, happy that we'd bought combo tickets!), and headed to our car. We got on the road towards home around 6:30, I think. We stopped around 8:00 for a potty break, and Emily was hungry. No one else wanted to eat, so we got her a burger and got back in the car. Marty got pulled over for going 79 MPH in a 65 zone. The officer said that when he walked up he saw that Marty was not wearing a seat belt. Marty said he'd just taken it off to get his wallet out. The officer said that he could ticket him for speeding which would put 4 points on his license, or ticket him for the seat belt, which wouldn't add any points. Marty said thank you very much, and went on our way! At 10:00 we stopped again, and the rest of us ate. Although we were very tired, Marty said he was fine and drove all the way home. I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I wasn't much help to him! We got home at 12:30 (again, really good timing), and were in bed minutes later (the girls didn't even change out of their jeans!).
Sunday we spent the day mowing lawn, having a picnic lunch, opening up the pool (we jumped in for a short time to make it official & begin the cleaning process), having a picnic dinner, and making s'mores around a bonfire. All in all, it was a very nice day. Denise M. came over to enjoy s'mores with us. We were sharing photos, and my lovely new garden swing that Marty & the kids got me for mother's day broke! That put a damper on things, but Marty is going to try to fix it. He doesn't have the receipt any more, and we had used the box it came in to help build the fire that day!
Monday (Memorial Day) was spent at home. We went outside to take the solar cover off the pool, and were shocked at how dirty it looked! Yesterday we were pleasantly surprised at how clean it was, and today it was nasty! We started the filter, added some chlorine, and went to the store for some shock and other chemicals. When we returned about an hour later, we were again surprised at how clean it was! We tested the pH, added the shock and chemicals, and I scooped up tons of stuff that was falling from the trees. I've never noticed how much stuff there is falling out of trees at this time of year, but then again, I've never had a pool in my back yard. Marty worked on installing the solar cover reel. Jared came home from Kari's house, stripped down to his shorts, and did a flip into the pool! He realized very quickly that it's going to take some time for that solar cover to do it's job and warm up the water! We spoke to Adam on the phone, and he told us about his adventures in Puerto Rico. He's been having a wonderful time visiting Ingrid's family, not to mention the snorkeling, fishing, drinking, etc. that's been happening.Sorry this has been so long. It was a long weekend, and I wanted to get it all down before I forgot it.
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