Hip Baby Update

Today Alexandra had her cast changed, her first REAL bath in six weeks, and an x-ray of her hip.
This is her old cast. She loved putting her hands in the cast like some secret hidden pocket.

The girls and I had fun decorating her old cast. Now we will start again on her new one.

The cast is very useful when you don't want to hold your banana.

We finally found a chair that Alexandra can sit upright in at the table! Hooray!

I love her leg warmers (baby legs). We have so many pairs to choose from. She wears different ones everyday. They really make an outfit.

So proud of her new seat.

This is minutes after putting her in her new seat. She gave me the biggest smile. I think she is happier eating upright instead of lounging back like before.

Hiding in her sombrero

We now have another six weeks in the cast and then we will hopefully be cast-free! The doctor said that her hip is in place and does not click or come out. Now the cartlidge and bone just need to form around the femur more and she will have a normal working hip.

Alexandra has done remarkably well. She has not been grumpy at all about her situation. She is much better than I ever would be if I were in the same kind of cast. It looks painful but it doesn't even phase her. We have become so used to life in a cast, that I can hardly remember what it was like without the cast. I must say, my back, arms, neck and wrists do ache from carrying her. However, her new cast seems to be a bit more sleek and not as heavy. That will be a nice change. We are so proud of her for getting half way. She did much better coming off the anesthesia this time too. She settled herself fairly quickly.

One nice thing we have noticed about the cast is that she never wakes up at night. The cast does not allow her to move therefore, she never wakes herself up. She has been sleeping completely through the night since she got it on. We also get a lot of attention with a baby in a cast. Some days when I pick Abby up from school with Alexandra in the stroller, it seems like everyone I see in the neighborhood stops us to either ask how she is doing or ask about the cast. It has been a great way to get to know people. One particular day, we had a crowd of people all staring down at her asking questions about the cast and Alexandra just stared up at them all with big smiles, amused at everyone staring at her. Everyone comments on what a happy baby she is. We are lucky. Here is hoping the next six weeks go as smoothly as the first six!

Birthday Bash

Abby's birthday was at the end of April but I am just now getting around to posting the pictures of it. It was a very fun party JUST FOR GIRLS! We made purses, necklaces, bracelets and flower headbands. They had pizza for lunch and lots of sugar - pink donuts, chocolate covered pretzels and strawberries to go along with the pink and black theme. I am sorry you can't see the adorable Happy Birthday sign on the window. It was very fun to decorate and go all out for this special occasion.

Abby and Sammy couldn't wait for the party to start.

Birthday girl's throne
A chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream.

We never can get too much chocolate in this house.

Happy Birthday to my big six year old Abby!

Three Great Books, So Little Time...

May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are beautiful, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry “Gold Mountain men” who have come from Los Angeles to find brides.

But when the sisters leave China and arrive at Angel’s Island (the Ellis Island of the West)--where they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months--they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. And when May discovers she’s pregnant the situation becomes even more desperate. The sisters make a pact that no one can ever know.

As President Bush is preparing to invade Iraq, Wall Street Journal correspondent Asra Nomani embarks on a dangerous journey from Middle America to the Middle East to join more than two million fellow Muslims on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. On a journey perilous enough for any American reporter, Nomani is determined to take along her infant son, Shibli -- living proof that she, an unmarried Muslim woman, is guilty of zina, or "illegal sex." But Nomani discovers she is not alone. She is following in the four-thousand-year-old footsteps of another single mother, Hajar (known in the West as Hagar), the original pilgrim to Mecca and mother of the Islamic nation.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a mother of five, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet, Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death.

Don't ask me why I am reading three books at once (it's a long story) but I am sooo excited about each of them. Nothing beats a great book! What are you all reading these days???

Auntie Susi Visits...

We were privileged to get a visit from Auntie Susi in April. The girls had so much fun with her, as did I. Susi and I got a lot of nights out together. It was great. We saw Alice in Wonderland, went to my favorite New Orleans restaurant, shopping, lunch and last but not least, our traditional sushi pig-out.

This time we invited Abby and Sammy to their first ever sushi-tasting. Abby has been asking me for a year now (I really did want to take her sooner but never got around to it) if she could go for sushi. This was a very important event for me because Charles does not do sushi and so my only hope is that my girls will be my sushi buddies (and Susi, of course.) Negative comments about sushi is absolutely not tolerated at our house. I also made sure Susi did not say too much about what we were eating. I did not want them to refuse trying it. Everything was positive, fun and upbeat. Abby was very brave and tried some tuna rolls. She seemed to like them. I was very proud of her. Abby and Sammy loved the edamame (but that is because we have it at home all the time) and loved eating with chop sticks. The waitress rigged up their chop sticks to make it easy for them. They also ate fish eggs which we called "cake sprinkles" and they loved them! Ha!
(I could not get the sushi pictures to load-up for some reason so I have given up. Sorry no pictures of the big event.)

Abby and Sammy enjoyed one day of "Arts and Crafts Susi." They collected and painted rocks and then searched through piles of magazines and created beautiful collages. Afterward, they just piled on top of her and played so she couldn't escape them.

Susi gave the girls each some wings. Here is Sammy, the ladybug flying around the yard.

Cheese!



Thanks Susi!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABBY!