Fall is Upon Us

We are coming up on a big season for our family. For us, this includes Halloween, Lia's Birthday, Thanksgiving, and of course Christmas and New Year's...all within the span of two months...Zoinks!

It seems like it's been forever since I found the time to blog. Things have been super busy at work and lately many days I feel like - although I'm only paid to work part-time - I'm really not doing a good job at either my job or being a mommy. I guess all moms feel this way. If I could only clone myself...or have more hours in the day. *sigh*

As I mentioned, Lia's 3rd birthday is quickly coming upon us and people have been asking me whats she's currently "into"... Let me tell you, she's very opinionated! We still have three purple tutu dresses in high rotation, now joined by a pair of purple fairy wings, and a purple princess tiara (which are usually paired with purple rubber rainboots!) She goes around the house collecting purple items and carrying them around together in her purple Halloween candy basket. We go to restaurants and she pulls the purple crayon out of every kids cup or box of crayons and asks me to put it in the diaperbag for safekeeping. She only wants a purple blanket on her bed, and picks the purple Fruit Loops out of her cereal and hands the rest to me. Do you see a theme here?

She has specifically requested a "Purple Pony Princess Party" for her birthday. In addition to the color purple, My Pretty Pony and Disney Princesses are her favorite things on earth (even better when they come in purple!). Unicorns are also high on her list. It seems Mickey and Tinkerbell are now considered "for babies" and she has moved on from those previously beloved characters... Lia also has developed an affinity for "kitties". She likes to crawl around on the floor and play kitty and "meow" to us. She loves visiting grandma's kitty (when it will cooperate and let itself be seen!)

All this said, she shocked the heck out of me when we started talking about Halloween and she said she wanted to be "Belle" from Beauty & the Beast. WHAT??? She's never seen "Beauty and the Beast"...but more importantly, Belle wears a yellow dress, not purple!!! But over and over again she has confirmed that Belle is who she wants to be. I asked her if she wanted to be Belle because Belle has brown hair like Lia. She said, "no, brown hair like mama." That made this mama's heart sing! So Belle she will be...

We've made several visits to Seattle Children's Hospital over the past month to get Lia set up with all her new specialists on this side of the mountains. All the providers we've visited have been wonderful. We learned that our girl currently weighs a whoppin 28 lbs. and is now 3 feet tall! Long and thin for sure, but healthy and while still picky with food, she is eating more now than she was in the past. Her blood and liver tests all came back with the normal range.

We had a six-hour marathon "cleft team" evaluation last Monday. The majority of the news we received was good, and it was great to get a second opinion on what we'd already heard from our providers in Spokane. Lia's hearing checked out the same, with very minor conductive hearing loss in her left ear, and normal hearing in her right ear. We were disappointed to learn that her palate does have tiny hole in it again, at the very top of the arch (right where it happened last time), but this one is much smaller, it's barely the size of a tip of a pen, so the doctors aren't going to worry about repairing it for now. The ENT does have some concern about the amount of air coming out of her nose when she talks, and believes an endoscopy and possible p-flap surgery may be required in the future to close the gap at the back of her throat, but we all agreed to let her work through speech therapy for another year before we decide whether that is really necessary. So as long as her ear tubes stay put, we *should* be able to go surgery-free this year! YAY.

After eight weeks in transition, we finally got Lia started in speech therapy again, and I couldn't be happier. We saw a speech therapist at the hospital, who was terrific, but we were really hoping to find someone closer to home (since it's at least an hour commute for us each way to the hospital). I was so pleased to find out that our local elementary school has a great speech therapist we can see 2x/week right now while Lia is still 2, and then once she turns 3 next month, she will qualify for the school's early preschool 3x/week and her speech sessions will be built-in to her mornings at preschool! As it turns out, the speech therapist recently moved back to Washington from the Denver area too and we had actually worked in some of the same professional circles there, so that was a great "sign" for me that I was making the right decision about all of this. Another YAY.

We were able to visit the preschool classroom one day when the students weren't there. Lia got to look around the room, meet the teacher, and play with some of the toys. Since then we've been going to the school for her speech sessions (in the therapy office), she has been exposed to all the kids running around, the school bell, and all the other action a K-5 school has going on a daily basis. One thing I love about the small town where we live, is that there is a dad (or teacher?) that stands out front of the school while the kids are arriving, playing bluegrass on his banjo and greeting everyone. It makes for such a happy, welcoming atmosphere. You can't help but smile. Again, all this just makes me feel really good about the decision we made to move and to live in this town.

In other news, my sister Tracy finished up chemo a few weeks ago, and her tests have come back clear from cancer, so that is awesome news! As you can see from the photo at left, Lia loves her Aunt Tracy.

Also, Steve and I celebrated our 5th Anniversary together last weekend. Time flies...sort of? In some ways it feels like we've known each other much longer than five years. Same with Lia. She's only been home 13 months, but it's hard to remember life before she was in our lives. I feel so lucky to have both of these amazing people in my life. Very blessed.

I almost forgot to mention...Lia had a blast going on her very first carousel ride last month! My friend Megan came to town and we all trekked to the Western Washington State Fair for a few hours of fun. Lia got to see real horses and ponies, and visit the animals in the petting zoo... She had her first cotton candy, and took a ride on a mini choo-choo train - but the merry-go-round was definitely the biggest hit! Each time she picked out a white horse (with a purple saddle of course!) She rode it six times in all. Thank goodness Steve was willing to go round and round in circles over and over again in the heat of the day, because just going on it once made this motion-sick mama kind of dizzy.  :)