Cleaning her Plate

I served Rachel's dinner on a sectioned Winnie the Pooh plate tonight. After clearing out the majority of the mashed potatoes, she realized there were characters under her food. So rather than clean her plate by eating everything, she cleaned her plate by removing everything from it and putting it on her tray in order to see the other characters that awaited her beneath her food!

Craniofacial Team Appointment

Rachel had her appointment with the Crainiofacial Team this afternoon. This is an annual appointment, one in which we originally had scheduled for September, but got cancelled and moved to today. The last time Rachel saw the team was when she was just 4 weeks old, so long ago, at the very beginning of this journey.

Wearing her new "My Surgeon Gave Me This Smile" shirt from Plotkindesigns. Everyone loved it! The appointment went well, once we were finally seen. We knew we would have to wait, in fact they called on Friday and moved our appointment from 1:00pm to 3:00pm, but it was well after 5:30pm before we were placed into a room. It was after 7:00pm before we even left the building. We saw a total of four doctors, the pediatrician, the speech therapist, the dentist, and the ENT. After already waiting for hours in the waiting room, and the waiting in between doctors coming into the room, Rachel had had enough. She kept pointing to her clothes and to the door, meaning she wanted to put her clothes on and leave. After daddy showing her how to use paper towels to create makeshift pants, LOL, she was trying to recreate what he had done. Unlike at our last team appointment, our questions were few. And those resolved around her speech. For being 17 1/2 months old, Rachel's words are few. Granted she's only had a palate for a few short months now, but the words are still few. Our concerns were valid. The Speech Therapist felt she needed a full speech evaluation and more than likely therapy to follow. She will also have a hearing evaluation to make sure her speech hasn't been delayed due to any hearing loss. That's not really a concern of ours, but it is pretty routine to do a hearing test right about now. She's pretty behind in her speech development, but it's nothing that can't be corrected with therapy. The pediatrician and ENT were pretty uneventful, both confirmed her ears look great and the tubes are still in place. The pediatrician got a good look at her palate repair, and so did we! Dr Martin did an awesome job on her palate repair. You would never know that her mouth was once a dark, deep, endless hole. Her palate looks perfectly normal except a straight line down the middle. The dentist took a look at her teeth (all 7 of them) and suggested that we get her established with a dentist to get her in the routine of being seen, etc.

They were passing out pieces of Valentine Cake to the patients and families, Rachel is enjoying her cake using a tongue depresser rather than the fork. Other than the issues with her speech and the recommendation to get established with a dentist, the appointment was pretty uneventful. I'm so glad to have been at today's appointment, at this point of having three surgeries behind us, than where we were at on September 27, 2004, at our very first appointment, just at the beginning of this journey.

First Time to the Movies...

We went to see the new movie, Curious George, today. It was Rachel's first time to the movie theater! And she did pretty good. She got a little squirrely here and there, but for the most part she sat well for the hour and a half movie, not to mention all the previews and before movie slides. The movie was pretty good in my opinion.

FOUND: Missing Wiseman!

About a month or so ago, I mentioned how one of our wiseman from our Little People Natvity Set had gone missing. It was Rachel who I suspected in the reason for his dissappearence. As she has a habit of distributing things all about the house.

I'm so happy to say that the wiseman was found this morning!!! Apparently it was decided that the compartments within our recliner was a better home for him than with the other two wiseman and with Baby Jesus. LOL.

Messy Eater

Knowing it would be a messy dinner, seeing how it was spaghetti, Rachel ate dinner with her shirt off. LOL.

To The Park...

We went to the park today for lunch and for feeding the ducks. Rachel just loves the play structures that she can freely climb about. She loved going down the big slides too. As for the ducks, she was fascinated at first, put once I put her down, at the ducks level, she wasn't fascinated anymore. LOL.

Some Neat Shirts!

My friend Theresa had a posting on her blog today, about a website that makes shirts for children with disabilities. They recently started offereing shirts for cleft affected children. They are adorable!!!

I think my favorite shirt is this one, followed by this one! Rachel has her yearly Craniofacial Team appointment on February 13th, it would be cute if she wearing one of these shirts that day!

The entire collection of shirts can be viewed on the website, Plotkindesigns. Like Theresa said on her blog, these shirts would be great for any child who is special in some way or another. It's a way of keeping attitudes and self esteem high!

Another Chubby Bunny Pic

It's the middle of winter, so you don't get to see baby chub very often...here's a picture in her onesie before putting her jammies on.

"Mommy, Rachel fell into the Bathtub"

Those are the words I heard coming from the girls' bathroom this evening.

Hannah was already in the bathtub, I was putting a few things from our trip away, and Rachel was standing outside the tub throwing toys into the bath water. Next thing I heard was Hannah hollaring. Quickly making my way to the bathroom, there was Rachel, fully clothed, including her shoes, in the bathtub. I pulled her out and she started laughing. She thought what she had done was funny!

She's been trying to climb into the bathtub for a couple of weeks now, so it really doesn't suprise me that she did this. Thank goodness I had bought her another pair of shoes last week, cause the ones she had on, are still soaked!

First "Fun" Sleepover

If you don't count the nights she's spent in the hospital, Rachel has never slept anywhere except for home. That changed last night when she had her first official "fun" sleepover, and how exciting for it to have been at a Disneyland Resort hotel!!
My friend Karen came from Maryland this weekend for a special trip to Disneyland with her son, Joe. We were going to spend time with them before we knew Steven would be out of the country, but to help pass our time with Steven gone, Karen and Joe invited us for the night!! Rachel did great! She fell asleep watching the fireworks, and then woke back up when I tried to lay her down in the stroller, so she was awake when we got back to our room. But after a little winding down, she was fast asleep on the bed and stayed asleep for the transfer into her Pack n Play. She slept her usual night through and woke raring to get going!

We stood in line so Rachel could see Pooh, she loves Pooh, but sure didn't want to see him all by herself. So the three of us girls posed for the picture with Pooh.

Lunch and a Movie

Rachel has this fascination with climbing onto the kitchen chairs. So today I decided to bring out the little folding table and chairs for the girls to eat lunch at. Rachel enjoyed sitting at the table like a big girl and together they enjoyed watching a movie.

A Saturday Trip to our Happy Place

Steven had a church project to work on that was going to require most of his time today, so I decided to pack up the girls and head for Disneyland. It was Hannah's idea to invite Gramma and Papa, and they accepted the invitation. I was happy to get this next picture, it's a running joke in our family that my mom is the Fairy Godmother, as that's what she has told the granddaughters. LOL. I've never seen the Fairy Godmother, except only in parades, so it was exciting to see her out and about. We had a good day. Not going on any rides, but just enjoying our time at Disneyland. Rachel is always so happy to go to Disneyland. She was so happy just sitting on these rocks for the longest time.

She's a Cutie!

Proud of herself for once again climbing onto the chair. Mommy tried a new recipe for dinner tonight, didn't exactly turn out as expected, but Rachel loved it nonetheless.

She's a Busy One!

Rachel is such an active baby/toddler. When Hannah was this age, she wasn't even walking yet, so all the busyness of Rachel is a totally new experience...a very tiring one. LOL.

A week or two ago, I posted a picture of how she has mastered climbing up into the kitchen chair. Apparently that was too boring, as she has mastered yet another skill...climbing onto the kitchen table! She is a climber! She's even tried to climb the baby gate I have in the kitchen doorway.

Climbing isn't the only thing she does well, she's into EVERYTHING. I can't tell you how many times a day I pick up Tupperware that has been distributed all over the house. The only reason I pick it up several times a day instead of once at the end of the day, is that I fear pieces will become missing. Such as the two Wisemen from our Little People Nativity Set. The wisemen have to be here somewhere, I've already discoverd the Wisemen aren't visiting Noah on the Ark, nor are they at the zoo, where they were last seen.

Fun on the Stairs

Our church holds it church services in a school auditorium. For some reason, Rachel was having a blast just sitting on the steps of the stage today as the teardown crew was tearing things down.