Halloween Decorations - Surgery Week!

This weekend we had a lot of fun decorating the house for Halloween with Lia. She is starting to really mimic our words and actions now...her favorite word? "Pumpkin!" (although, I have to admit, with her cleft, it currently comes out sounding more like "Un-In") - but we know what she means. She will find photos of pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns in magazines, advertisements, and on TV - and point and say "Pumpkin!"

On recent trips to local area stores, we were afraid she might be scared of the spooky Halloween decorations, but she is loving it all. In fact, she likes the super spooky costumes and pictures of - skulls, ghosts, jesters, etc.  So we decided to go ahead and decorate the house as we usually do at Halloween. Yesterday Steve put up the lights and hung the "friendly ghost" from our front porch arbor. Then he carved our big pumpkin with a "Terra Cotta Warrior" face - it turned out so cool! 

Lia watching thru the screen door as daddy carves our pumpkin...

Our front walkway...spooky!

Our Terra Cotta Warrior Pumpkin (good job Steve!)

Thursday we had Lia's pre-op appointment with her ENT/Plastic Surgeon. We are a GO for her palate surgery this Wednesday and have to be at the hospital at 7 am. 

Playing with the magna-doodle at the doctor's office

Please say a prayer that everything goes smoothly for Lia during surgery and also during her recovery. I know it will be hard for her to keep her hands out of her mouth, and not be able to feed herself, and only have a liquid diet for a few weeks... Our goal is to get her drinking liquids as soon as possible following surgery, so that we don't have to stay in the hospital for too long. We'll try to keep the blog and Facebook updated as we can on Wednesday!