3 Months Post-Surgery

Can't believe we've already been home from China for five months...time is flying by. But in other ways, it seems that Lia has been with us forever. I guess she has been, in our hearts.

This week was filled with doctor appointments as she is now three months post palate surgery. Unfortunately, her ENT/Surgeon found a tiny hole (fistula) in the very top of her palate, which will need to be corrected, likely in April, with another surgery. While we weren't thrilled to hear this news, we know that this will be a more minor surgery and we are glad that no other holes have appeared.  According to the surgeon, Lia has a very highly arched palate, and it looks like the repair just didn't hold at the very top of the arch.

We visited the audiology lab today to see how her ears have improved since she received her ear tubes (at the same time she had her palate surgery in October). Before surgery, she was experiencing about 85% hearing loss. We were pleased to learn today that it looks like she is now hearing all tones within the "normal" range, with the possibly exception of some of the lower tones. As the technician pointed out, it's hard to tell with a 2 year old, whether they can't hear the tones or whether they are just tired of cooperating with the tests! Also, the tubes themselves can cause the testing equipment to become confused when measuring the responses of the eardrum. So we will be going back for some additional testing in February.

Lia is a champ and is always so cooperative with the doctors. She lets them stick things in her ears and mouth and really doesn't put up much of a fuss. Here are some photos from the past week:

Letting the doc take a look at her palate

Panda glasses!

Bath time (still afraid of the big tub!)

Hanging out with friends...

Her Heart's Desire...Strawberry Jello... (video)

Lately Lia has become very picky with her food. I guess having access to so many kinds of tastes and textures has made her a more finicky eater...or maybe she's just being a normal two year old. What she LOVES one day, is often completely off limits the next time we try to feed it to her.

We have found that the best way to get her to eat more than a couple of bites is to take her to buffet restaurants, where we can put several different foods on her plate and see what strikes her fancy (another nice thing about these places, is that most times kids under 3 eat free). The other night while at one of these buffets, she decided that strawberry jello was her heart's desire...which was funny because we've offered her jello at home several times over the past four months and she was never very interested in it. But this time she proceeded to eat two full bowls of it...with her hands...Steve captured some video with his iPhone:



...and then came time for the clean-up...



LOVE THAT GIGGLE!

Rough Couple of Weeks!

Not a lot to report. The first two weeks of January have kicked our butts this far. As mentioned in the previous post, we dealt with the furnace issue on New Year's Day, and the hot water heater going out just before Christmas. It's been since the week before Christmas and we have yet to receive our replacement dishwasher (now they are saying Monday...fingers crossed!), and the roof sprung a new leak last week as well. Luckily the leak is over the "formal" living room (which we don't use and don't even have much furniture in), but we've had a parade of fix-it guys coming to the house to do estimates. Thankfully, we don't own this house! The upside of that is that we don't have to pay for the repairs. The downside of that is that WE have to live in it while all this is going on...the landlord doesn't. 

On top of all that, Steve and I caught some kind of intense stomach virus last week that had us each in bed for a few days. Well, we took turns being in bed because someone had to watch Lil Miss and make sure she didn't get into trouble. Thankfully, the stomach virus seems to have alluded Lia. However, she is dealing with a lot of congestion and coughing, which is keeping us ALL up during the night (as we listen to her on the monitor). If it doesn't improve soon, I think we'll be making a trip to her doctor...

On the brightside, she had her monthly weight and height check on the 5th, and she is now in the 25th percentile for kids her age in the U.S.!  This is huge, because when we first came home, she was only in the 5th percentile. Given the fact that she had palate surgery also since then, everyone is very pleased with her growth progress.

So not a lot of new photos this week. Just one good one of our girl rediscovering the joys of strawberry jello on Monday night.

Happy New Year 2011

The last couple of weeks have been interesting around our house. The Monday before Christmas, our hot water heater went on the fritz...then on Wednesday (the day were supposed to leave for Seattle) I loaded the dishwasher, and lo and behold, the "start" button wouldn't work! Then last night, on New Year's Eve, our furnace brokedown. Keep in mind, the low temp here last night was -3 degrees. Not good.

The hot water heater was a (seemingly) easy fix by a handyman. The appliance repairman informed us that the motherboard on the dishwasher was "fried", so we will be getting a new dishwasher in the coming week. Thankfully the furnace man was able to arrive by 10 am this morning, and it was just the blower/motor that had gone kaput, not the entire furnace, so he was able to fix it (but not before our house reached a low temp of 52 degrees inside - brrrrr!) So we are hoping that, as usual, things happen in "threes" and we have now completed our "three" household maintenance problems for awhile!

While going through pictures from the past couple of weeks, it occured to me that some of the best pictures I capture of Lia are usually while she is strapped into a high chair or a shopping cart! I think this child was photographed so much at Starfish, that she holds no interest in being photographed. Period. But, when she is strapped in, particularly while she is eating, she is usually entertaining herself and at her happiest! Here are a few photos from the past couple of weeks that prove my point:

Enjoying her "5 Guys" fries...

A Pre-Christmas shopping trip to Target...

Loved the old-fashioned high chairs at this restaurant!

Coloring to pass the time - waiting on her mac'n'cheese...

First haircut by herself (not sitting on mama's lap!)

Scanning the menu at The Spaghetti Factory

Showing off her new Christmas hat - thanks cousin Scott!

Logging in some blog time - just like mama...

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!