Christmas Performance

I'm a little melancholy as I write this post this evening, for today, we attended our last preschool Christmas performance. Rachel will be in Kindergarten next year, therefore today was the last of the cute Christmas performances for our family.

Today's performance was the best one of all four that our kids have participated in.

There weren't any preschoolers with that 'deer in the headlight' look while standing in front of hundreds of parents, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and who ever else came. Everyone sang loudly and and understandably, doing the hand motions, and did a really good job. Rachel included.

Despite being in the first row,
the close up pictures always turn out so dark. Waving to her fans as she exited the stage.Gramma is always a supporter all the parades and performances, but this was the first performance Papa was able to make it, and Rachel was excited he did! Thanks Papa for adjusting your schedule to come!Great Grandma and Aunt Sandy came to see Rachel and Haylee/Their last preschool Christmas performance.Rachel had fun as well. For the rest of the day, she's been going around saying "I sang good, huh?". She sure did, and it was a great way to end our Christmas performance experience with the preschool.

Rachel Gets Hold of a Scissors!

The girls have both been needing their bangs cut for a while now, so in anticipation of Rachel's preschool performance this morning, I cut their bangs last night. Apparently that gave Rachel an idea...

This morning, I kept finding these hunks of cut hair in the hallway. Rachel had gotten hold of Hannah's craft scissors and decided to cut her hair. She took a hunk of hair on each side of her face and took about four inches off!! If I was to take her someplace to have them 'fix' it, her hair would be extremely short. So for now, I'm having to use gel to get her hair to even stay pulled up on the sides, and she currently has no say in wanting her hair to stay down.

God of All Comfort - Devotional

My Mom, wrote a devotional on her blog today that included the recent opportunity of sharing the Lord's faithfulness and goodness through Rachel's Journey. It's an excellent devotional, and I encourage you to go read it!

Visiting the Merriest Place on Earth

The blankets, jackets, mittens, and scarves were packed and we were on our way to the Merriest Place just as soon as we picked up Hannah from school. This afternoon, we were meeting long time friends, Carolyn, and her two kids, Matthew and Katie.

Carolyn, a nurse and friend long before Rachel was born, signed herself onto the work schedule after she heard of the complications of Rachel's birth and was my personal nurse the day after Rachel was born. She took very good care of me and we provided her with the experience of handling and caring for a newly born cleft affected baby.

We were meeting at Disneyland after our oldests got out of school and planned to spend the afternoon and evening enjoying the lights and magic of the Christmas season at Disneyland. While we waited for them to arrive, we hung out around the Christmas tree taking pictures and caught the last half of the Christmas parade. When are friends arrived, we strolled through some shops and enjoyed the lights on Main Street. We also found these guys, playing some Christmas music. They were excellent and always a delight to hear.We tried to get on It's A Small World, but the lines were a lot longer than we were willing to wait in. We tried to find a little nook to stand and watch the Christmas parade, but there was just way too many people and there was no place to sit and stand and have all four of the kids be able to see the parade, so made our way back into ToonTown and had some fun exploring back there. It's a Small World in the background all decked out for the holiday season. We decided we wanted to see the Holiday fireworks, therefore we grabbed a piece of the curb along Main Street and waited a little over an hour. Rachel, who was adamant about staying for the fireworks, fell asleep in her stroller shortly after 8:00 and much to my surprise, she stayed asleep through the fireworks and loud music and stayed asleep all the way to the car. Once at the car, as I was putting Rachel's jammie's on the still half asleep girl, she let it be known she wasn't ready to leave, that she wanted to see the fireworks! LOL. I told her she'd slept through them and she looked and me and went back to sleep. Silly girl.

Having Some Christmas Fun

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

Our Christmas tree went up on Friday, and after putting some ribbon and garland on it Saturday in between a movie marathon, the girls decorated the tree on Sunday.

This is the second year, whereas the girls put all the ornaments on the tree with a little bit of guiding and coaching and a few relocations of 'valuable' ornaments, they did a great job! Rachel was so excited to get the tree done and made pretty.

Sunday afternoon, we had warm and sunny skies. I'm sure to many people it looks funny to be decorating a Christmas tree in shorts and short sleeves! It was afterall, 85 degrees!So, once the tree went up, I brought out the Christmas presents I had and placed them beneath the tree. Rachel wanted her presents to open right then and there. Steven had to remind her we needed to wait until Christmas to open presents, but this is how things work...presents go under the tree, and we open on Christmas, etc. I knew she was going to have a hard time comprehending how long until Christmas, but with her, paper chains seem to work really well, so today, the girls made a paper chain countdown to Christmas. We hung it up on our hall door and everyday the girls will take turn in tearing off a ring. The other thing I started today to help in our visual countdown to Christmas was our advent snowman. I love this thing and found it a few years ago at Lowe's.There are some simple holiday candies in there and hopefully between moving the candy cane every day and tearing off a paper ring everyday, it'll help with the "how many more days until Christmas?!?!"

Making a Christmas List

It's that time of year, when television commercials constantly are grabbing the attention of our children with the latest and greatest, gotta have toys and games of the season. It's that time of year where kids are often encouraged to make a list and 'we'll send it to Santa Claus'. We don't do the Santa Claus thing in our house. But we do encourage making a list!

This afternoon, we went out for a late lunch, and then took our girls to Toys R Us to wander the aisles. We warned them ahead of time that we were there to see what things they'd possibly like for Christmas, to make a list of those things, and not buy anything!We are looking for something to get Rachel that she'll be absolutely thrilled to open and see that she got. So far, the only thing she really, really shows any big excitement for is a huge, talking dinosaur from Costco! LOL. But we're not getting that. We're not telling anyone about that, etc. We do not want another big thing that will be played with for a couple of weeks, if that, and then there it sits taking up space.

Rachel did point out quite a few things she wanted. She was so much fun to watch go up and down every aisle, looking at everything. And for the record, we did leave having bought something...Rachel got a tube of M&M's and Hannah a Snow White PEZ for being such good girls in the store and not throwing a fit when we didn't take anything off the shelves. They were good sports in a situation that could have gone sour. LOL.

Thanksgiving 'Feast'

Today at Rachel's preschool was their 'Thanksgiving Feasts'. It wasn't a true feast in the way you'd think a feast, but all four of the upper aged preschool classes came together, wearing their indian and pilgrim hats and partook of a special snack...chicken pasta soup, popcorn, corn bread, apple cake, and pumpkin pie. LOL. The kids all had so much fun! I was surprised, but Rachel ate the pumpkin pie and said she loved it! We'll see if she eats it on Thanksgiving!

Disneyland!

We made an all day trip today to The Happiest Place on Earth. Gramma and Papa came with us and we met Uncle Bart there. We had a great day with nice weather and not a lot of crowds. We walked on a lot of the bigger rides. We arrived at opening, 10:00, and stayed until the park closed at 8:00. We planned ahead and staked out a table along the Rivers of America and had prime viewing of Fantasmic, something Gramma and Papa and Uncle Bart had never seen! A perfect hat for Rachel: "Mood Subject to Change Without Notice."It surprised me when Rachel spotted Goofy and took off after him. Normally, she doesn't want to have anything to do with him because he's so tall. But not today, she literally chased after him and then posed for a picture!The Christmas season officially starts Friday, but most everything is already decorated and ready to go! This is the first year that Disneyland is using an artificial tree on Main Street. It's still pretty nonetheless.
"Take a picture of me in front of the Christmas Tree", Rachel says,
knowing full well I wouldn't complain about a picture opportunity!

Comfort After Surgery

I recently had a question left in my comment section about comforting the baby after a lip repair. This question comes from a mom who gave birth to a baby two months ago who is scheduled to have his lip repair on December 16th. Rather than respond to her question in the comment section, where the answer might not be found, I have decided to answer in a post.

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Hi Ella! Congratulations on the birth of your baby. I know it's hard having a baby with a cleft, the emotions and thoughts you are having are some that all of us with cleft affected babies have had and have dealt with.

I know how anxious and scared you are for the upcoming surgery. Please know that I'll be praying for you and for the surgery.

"Be anxious for nothing,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."
Phillippians 4:6

As for comforting the baby after surgery...

If surgery there in Indonesia is anything like it is here in the States, they will keep the baby overnight. Find out ahead of time if you can spend the night with your baby in the hospital. He'll be on pain medications. Be sure to find out how often he can have them and then be on the nurses to make sure they administer them like clockwork. If you can stay on top of getting the pain medicine regularly, it keeps the pain at a minimum.

I know he's still tiny, but bring any toys or stuffed animals or blankie that he might be attached to, with you to the hospital. Having things he finds comfort in will keep him distracted from having his arms in arm restraints.

But more importantly, you are his biggest source of comfort. Hold him, rock him, walk him, sing to him. Just be there for him. The nurses and caretakers will be strangers to him and he'll find comfort in you just being with him.

Once you are home, stay on top of giving the pain medications every 4-6 hours or however they are prescribed. If you can keep the pain medication in him for a few days, it really does make a difference in keeping his pain at bay.

As for feeding, we were able to go right back to using Rachel's special bottle, the Haberman. Try feeding him about 20-30 minutes after you've given him his pain medication. Depending on what type of medicine he comes home with, sometimes a side effect is suppressing the appetite. So he might not want to eat. Just keep pushing the liquids as often and as much as you can if that's the case.

After about 3-4 days, he should be back close to normal. Pain will pretty much be subsided. You'll just have the annoyance of the arm restraints for 2-3 weeks.

I hope these ideas and suggestions have helped. If you go to the left hand side of this blog, there are posts specific to all Rachel's cleft issues. Check out the posts regarding her lip repair. There might be something else there you might find helpful.

Please feel free to ask any other questions you may think of in the coming weeks prior to surgery. If you sign Rachel's Guestbook and leave me your email address, I can email you directly in the future.

To Disneyland We Go...

Yesterday was the beginning of Hannah being off track for the next three weeks. What better thing to do on the first day of vacation than to go to Disneyland with friends! We literally spent all day there, and were joined by Daddy and some other friends in the evening when they were off work. We had a great day with great weather and pretty manageable crowds.Rachel tried Star Tours again, this time giving it two thumbs up!Rachel in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for the first time.
This ride DID NOT get any thumbs up. A long day of playing, she fell asleep in her stroller before 8:00.

3 Years!

I can't believe it, but it's been three years today since Rachel's palate repair. Three Years!

Boy, those were some stressful times, and I'm sure glad we have that behind us. Especially when we have cleft affected friends whom we've met online having just recently had palate repairs and you kinda relive all you went through when you read their blogs, etc.

If you're interested in reading about that experience, simply click on the "Palate Repair" posts over on my sidebar.

4 Year Well Check

This morning Rachel had her 4 year well check, a little late, but better than never.

She is 40.5 lbs (90th percentile) and 40 1/2 inches tall (just below the 50th percentile).

When I looked in her ears a month ago, the tube in her left ear was out and laying in the ear canal. When Dr Berry looked, it's not even laying in the canal anymore, it's gone. However, the tube in her right ear is still in place. Weird how one is out and the other still in. Dr Berry thought it best to have a hearing test, which I agree with. A few weeks ago I called Rachel's ENT and asked about a hearing test since her tubes were out, they said it was needed once a year, or if there were any problems. She had her last hearing test in August 2007, so it's time to have one. The nurse scheduled it at their facility but I think I'm going to cancel it at reschedule it at Loma Linda where all of Rachel's other hearing tests have been done, and can be compared to, etc. Her ENT who does her tubes is there, etc. Rachel is also familiar with that place, so in the long run I think that'll be better.

The nurse also tested Rachel's vision with one of those charts you cover one eye and then the other, etc. Rachel struggled with the last two lines, but truthfully, I was standing right next to her at her level and there was such a glare on the chart, it was hard to see. And by then Rachel just wasn't in the mood for cooperating.

All in all, a great visit. She's all caught up on her immunizations until her kindergarten check up next year!

Halloween Happenings

The beauty of having girls who love to play dress up is that it gives you options, lots of options. Rachel decided this morning that she didn't want to be Tinkerbell for today's festivities, but that she wanted to be Dorothy instead. Okay, not a problem, we have the complete costume. I thought being Dorothy was a good option because I thought with the new release of the Tinkerbell movie this week, there could be a lot of Tinkerbells at Hannah's school. I was wrong. It seems it was the year for a lot of Dorothy's and I counted at least 12! Rachel was cute and even carried a little basket with a dog. She had a lot of fun walking the parade with Hannah and got a kick out of seeing what all the big kids dressed up as.

Dorothy meets Captain Jack Sparrow, aka Miles. Rachel got to accompany me in helping with festivities in Hannah's class today and she loved it! After dinner, we headed to the same church we went to last year for Trunk or Treating. We had a great time with our friends and it was a lot of fun seeing cute costumes and the creativeness that went into decorating some of the cars. These two were the best in my opinion, the Wizard of Oz theme, complete with a yellow brick road. And Pocahontas passing out candy from her teepee! The local police and sheriff's departments were part of the festivities this year, handing out stickers and safety information. McGruff the Crime Dog was there and walking about, Rachel thought he was silly. Rachel had a lot of fun trunk or treating. Last year, she had a cold and had been given some Dimetapp before going and she was groggy and tired and didn't want to trunk or treat, this year, she had fun and loved seeing all the dogs people brought that had costumes of their own on!

Halloween Parade

Today was Rachel's Halloween party and parade. The preschool parade is always so much fun to watch because the dressed up preschoolers are always so adorably cute! This is the last of the preschool Halloween parades for our family. Next year, Rachel and Haylee will join Hannah and McKenzie at their "big girl schools". Today, McKenzie sat between me and Gramma, and it was kinda sad that another (in addition to Hannah) has grown older and is out of preschool!