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!

The Cast

Here is Alexandra in her spica cast. This is the second cast. The first one had to be replaced because her hip wasn't exactly in the right position. This one is bulkier than the first because the doctor thought he would leave more room for me to be able to reach down and wash her chest area. It was very kind of him however, that also means the cast sticks out more and she is more dificult to handle. But a clean baby is also important. I can basically reach all her baby parts from her waist up (as well as her diaper area of course). I cannot get hardly a finger down to her legs though. So far the cast has not been as bad as I expected. We have already discovered a "new normal." I have gotten down diapering her which is not that big of a deal. She has had no poop blowouts (the poop fairy has been good to us). She is happy and sleeps very well, just like she did before. She already seems unphased by it. I was able to take her out to lunch with us last week as well as to the library and even to church. I am feeling good about life since I can take her out. She fits in our stroller very well. I think I will get through this and still be sane! Hooray!

Here is her first cast. Her legs were much straighter. She was easier to hold but less room in the chest area to wash her.

Here is just a cute picture of her holding her favorite hippo that Auntie Susi took.

Surgery is a Success!

Yesterday, Alexandra had her closed reduction surgery on her right hip. This consisted of making an incision and snipping her groin muscle. Then positioning the femur in the socket and putting her in a cast for the next 6-12 weeks. We went to the hospital at 6am and she was in surgery by 7am (it took about two hours). Around 9am, I was feeling peckish since I hadn't eaten since 5am. So I headed down to the cafeteria. Of course, seconds after I left, the doctor came in to say that Alex was in the recovery room and that the surgery went well. She was screaming bloody murder while I was munching a lovely breakfast sandwich. Charles tried my cell phone multiple times but I guess I had no reception. Anyway, I returned to the waiting room after 10-15 minutes and found the doctor and Charles in the consultation room. The doctor hurried me into recovery where Alex was inconsolable. The nurses were frantically trying to give her a bottle of water and singing to her. Her little face was completely red and there was no denying that she was MAD. I tried everything (but I am happy to report, remained calm) but nothing worked. The nurse finally asked if I just wanted to give her some morphine. I responded in the affirmative. The morphine kicked in quickly and Alex settled down to just staring at me or the ceiling. Much better. Can we take some of that home?

The doctor said he was very pleased with the way the surgery went. He felt she has a 95% chance that this will work. I was very pleased to hear that because I have been preparing myself for the worst if it doesn't work (open hip surgery and more time in the cast). However, after her CAT scan, he informed us that he was not pleased with the position that her hip was in. So he has made us an appointment to re-cast her on Tuesday. She will not have surgery again but she will still have to be put under anesthesia.

Her cast definitely makes things awkward. You would think I had never held a baby before. I wasn't sure what to do. Breastfeeding takes some serious bicep muscle, twisting and maneuvering.



She seemed to be in a lot of pain and discomfort while we were in the hospital. However, we got her home and immediately put her down for a nap and afterward she seemed to be doing much better. Upon seeing her beloved sisters, she gave us the smiles we had been lacking all day. After a second nap and more pain meds, she really seemed to be back to her old self. I put her in her swing and she was as happy as can be for about an hour. Of course, getting her in her swing was quite a trick. I was almost afraid the thing would fall over due to the weight. I had to pile up blanket after blanket so that she could rest hovering over it since her legs make it so she can't fit in it. If anyone knocked her she would have been on the floor like a rock. But I will do whatever it takes to bring her some measure of happiness.

Charles and I were both worried and preparing for a miserable night. However, we were pleasantly surprised. She slept most of the night and only woke up happy, twice. We were happy that she woke up so that we could change her. However, I am not sure if that will be necessary. We'll have to see. This morning she was cooing and giggling and watching her sisters.

Diapering her is probably the hardest part of the whole thing but even that I am getting the hang of already. We have to use adult incontinence pads stuck to a size one diaper at night or a maxi pad stuck to the diaper during the day. You shove those up in the hole of the cast. Then you wrap a size five diaper around it and the cast. I have had to "petal" the cast with waterproof tape to stop it from getting soiled and thus stinking. I also have to line her potty area with moleskin and keep everything as dry as possible. That means using a hair dryer set on cool to air it out as much as possible. I did this step this morning and she seemed to think it was pretty funny.

Poop however is the thing that scares me the most. An online friend put it this way on her blog:


"As I've forewarned in the past, poop-talk, poop-anticipation, poop-theories and poop-fears are all a common part of the early Mothering process. However, since the dawn of the Spica Cast it is certainly something that brings much greater uncertainty and fear than ever before. The whole poop schedule is watched significantly more closely and the longer between movements, the greater the anticipation and fear of what may lie ahead."

The deed is done, now "the fear of the clean up. The questioning of how bad it would be. The damage? The likelihood of cast contamination seems inevitable. We were certain we were to be haunted by the poop stink for the remaining weeks in this cast.

Well, it seems the angels were watching down on us or something miraculous of sorts. There's no denying that this movement arrived in great style and volume, but incredibly as far as we can tell, thus far - no contamination!!!

This is cause for dancing in the streets as far as I'm concerned. Hooray for the poop fairy for watching over us. Here's hoping things become a tad more regular and significantly more solid in the days to come."

We were visited by the poop fairy with our first poop this morning. Fortunately, they were little nuggets with very easy clean-up. (My apologies go out to those with sensitive stomachs for all the poop talk.)

As sad as it is that she has to go under anesthesia again on Tuesday, I am kind of glad because I feel like I can experiment on this first cast and put it through a good test-run to get the hang of everything. Then I will be all the more prepared when it comes to the more permanent one.

Baby Girls

Alexandra is now six months old and I was thinking that I haven't done any picture comparisons of the girls. So here they all are around six months old. See what you think...

Abby six months old in France

Abby six months old



Sammy six months old

Alexandra six months old

Alexandra six months old

Sammy at six months

Here is Alex at 5 months really but close enough

Alex 5 (almost 6) months old

This is Abby at 9 months in the same swing. I was trying to find pictures of all of them in the swing but I only have video of Sammy in it and no pictures. I am too lazy to download video. Oh well...

Abby 9 mos.

Abby at six months on the train in France

Sammy six months old in Spain

Abby six months old in the cemetary at Normandy, France.

Sammy six months old in Gibraltar



So there you have it, those are my little girls. Two of them seem so grown up now but one of them is still my little baby. I am so glad to have three adorable little girls!