Ups and downs of today......

This was Kira this morning before we left for the doctor to get her casts off!  She could.not.wait.  She was still talking about going shoe shopping and taking a shower.  I LOVE this picture!

We had absolutely NO wait when we got there.  The ortho nurse saw was and we were on our way to go back to get her cast off, then x-rays, then we'd see the doctor.  Gotta love the no waiting part!...especially since last time we had a 2 hour wait!

 Those casts are almost gone!  Kira just kept giggling and saying that she couldn't believe her casts were almost off!!

 Beautiful feet!  

 So happy to have the casts off after 15 1/ 2 weeks.  She was just giggling!

 Waiting to go have x-rays........she could not wait to see the x-rays so that she could see the screws in her feet! ;-)

 This is when things went south for a bit.  Dr N came in and said that the x-rays looked great but he wanted her to wear boots on both feet until we can get the inserts made for her shoes.  Kira instantly had a look of panic on her face and tears in her eyes.  She also quickly figured out that with the boots, shoe shopping wasn't going to happen.  I was able to think fast and told her that we would go look for some new pants that would work with her boots.....I think that she only KINDA fell for that.  I was so proud of her for keeping it together and not falling apart....and I have to say I was pretty proud of myself too! :-/  She's not happy.  I think she'll be okay but she's frustrated that it hurts to walk right now.  She's frustrated that she can't walk on her own right now.  I have no doubt it won't take long but she's one frustrated little girl right now.

Good news!  I was concerned after seeing that her stitches are still in that she might not be able to swim when we have a weekend trip planned for the last weekend of April.  Fortunately the doctor said that it would be fine since it wasn't for several days.  She just can't bear weight without the boots on so she'll need help!  She's not thrilled with that but I told her it would be fine and that she could also sit on the edge or on a step if they have one.

After a trip to Target to look for pants, I realized, duh....it's mostly summer gear!  We managed to find a couple pairs of lighter weight pj's and one pair of leggings....I think leggings will work with her boot over them.  Again, she wasn't thrilled.  Sigh......

This mommy was and still is just feeling bad about it all.  We really didn't know or expect the boots so we've been talking up getting shoes, etc.  It was just a BIG let-down for us both......especially Kira.

Fortunately we had plans to meet Jason for lunch at Kira's favorite restaurant.....Laredo's....after all, cheese dip makes it all better, right? ;-)

After lunch we stopped at the rehab center to make her appointment to get the inserts made for her shoes...she has to wear the boots until she has the inserts and I KNOW how long it can take to get appointments for this type of thing.

GOOD NEWS!  They had an appointment for MONDAY!  We took it.

BAD NEWS!  They called 20 minutes ago and had to reschedule it.  Luckily they got us in on Tuesday, April 30th.  So still not too bad.  It can take 3-6 weeks to get braces/inserts so I'm hoping that it will be closer to the 3 weeks.........

Then we had to stop at Hy-Vee and get snacks for Dylan to take to school tomorrow.  Kira was almost in tears...she was tired, in pain and just not happy.

These sure seemed to bring a smile to her face though! :-)

There was ONE pack with puppies as decorations.  We brought them home. :-)

I thought the first thing that she would want to do was take a shower when we got home but right now she is laying on the couch, reading her American Girl magazine that came in the mail, watching Good Luck Charlie and trying hard to stay awake.  I'm sure a shower will come soon though and I have a feeling that I won't be able to get her out  once she's in!

So.....it's hard right now.  It feels like we've gone backwards with her independence and she's not happy about it.  I just keep trying to reassure her that it won't be long and she'll be up walking around like she was with her casts.  I don't think she believes me right now.  She's still ticked off about not getting to go shoe shopping but believe me, that day will come and we will party! :-)

She does have some restrictions for the rest of the school year....no running and jumping even once she has the inserts.  She is happy to know that she can swing! :-)

Her next follow-up with the ortho is August 15th.  At that appointment we will find out what restrictions she will have going back to school in the fall as far as PE activities go...it's likely that she will have some even next school year.

Next week I have her transition meeting with her IEP team at school.  I feel like that meeting will go well.  The doctor made his recommendations and I've been able to share some of the things that we have learned while Kira has been doing homebound school.  I believe her 1st day back will May 1st.

Thanks for all the emails, texts, Facebook comments, etc.  It made Kira's day to see everyones support!

2 days....less than 48 hours!

In less than 48 hours Kira will have her casts off!!

If you happen to see her between now and then I am willing to bet that this is what she will tell you......

"It's 2 days until I get my casts off.  I'm going to shoe shopping and then home to take a long shower!"

That's what she's told everyone we've seen today and we saw more people than normal since we had to fun up to her school to turn a project in!

We just finished a long conversation about what it MIGHT feel like when she tries to walk for the first. Obviously we really don't know.  I can't tell that with all her excitement she is also starting to get a little nervous.  

I have to admit that I do share her nervous feelings.  I know what I'm hoping for but there's no way to know if this surgery was 100% successful? 90% successful?  We just don't know and we won't know for awhile.

BUT I do know that she is excited!  She's excited to get her casts off.  She's excited to go shoe shopping.  She's excited to meet Daddy for lunch.  And she's excited to take a real shower....a long shower. :-)

So I'll tuck those nervous feelings I have deep down for now and celebrate with her!

It's been awhile....

And rest assured, it's not because anything "major" has happened...it's just us being really, really, really busy!

Things are going well.  Kira's recovering really well and has amazed us and her therapists with how well she is doing with walking.  It was a ROUGH start and so when things turned around so quickly, we were all surprised....very happy though!   Kira walks most of the time WITHOUT her walker.  She mostly uses it outside and if we are in public and she is walking.  Her balance isn't the best so it's mostly a safety precaution.  She was little put out with me the 1st time I made her use it outside after she had been walking without it inside but once she was outside, she realized why it was a good idea. :-)

Kira's therapy schedule has changed a little over the past few weeks.  She has gone from 3 OT sessions a week to 2 sessions and her PT has increased from 1 session to 2 sessions a week.  She has a long way to go with her endurance after sitting around for so many weeks.  She continues to work hard in therapy which makes it a lot easier on all of us.

She is still doing homebound school and will be through the end of April.  Her 1st day back to school with be May 1st.  We have a meeting in a couple of weeks with her IEP team to get all of that set up.  We are hoping for a couple of weeks of all 1/2 days and then going back to her schedule as it was before her surgery which is 2 short days and 3 full days.  

She's doing soooo well with her homebound teacher....I'm a LITTLE sad that it will be coming to an end.  She's made such great strides all around but especially in math.  She is picking things up so much faster with the one-on-one and just isn't getting is frustrated.  It's been a good time for us to find ways to teach her more effectively so I am hoping to incorporate some of what we've learned into her IEP...actually, let me rephrase that...we WILL be incorporating it into her IEP. :-)

Her casts come off on April 18th!  We are all so ready to be done with casts and Kira is most excited about 2 things....shoe shopping and a REAL shower.  I'm pretty sure getting her OUT of the shower will be a challenge.

Dylan's doing great.  His IEP meeting is coming up and even though he has done remarkably well this year, everyone agrees that the IEP needs to stay in place.  He's very excited that he's getting ready to test for his green belt in martial arts....what could be better than getting a belt that is your favorite color!

I've learned this winter that having a child who is very active on the playground means a few things....lots of lost gloves/mittens/hats, lots of mud coming home on every clothes/outer gear piece and most of the time, he has "no idea how any of it happened!"

Dylan has been willing "helper" since Kira has been out of school....he's been happy to bring things home from her teacher/class, take things back for her, return library books and check out new ones and MOST of the time, the papers even make it back and forth without falling out of his unzipped backpack!  I've appreciated his teacher and aides willingness to let him help out with this.

Eva is still loving school and is already talking about being in 4K next fall....she's ready but I'm not quite ready to admit that she is old enough for that yet.  It really doesn't seem possible. Not at all.

We had a great Spring Break spending lots of time with Eva's best friend, Lorelei.  All 4 of the kids get along great so we had LOTS of fun getting ready for Easter.  It was nice to be busy but we did manage to have a good amount of down time too.  It would have been nice to actually have SPRING WEATHER for our spring break but the kids had fun in the snow too! :-/

The girls I spend the morning today taking down all of our Easter decorations and replaced them with lots of spring-type decorations.  The girls had soooo much fun crafting the morning away.  We're all ready for the last piles of snow to be gone and spring to be here to stay!  They are talking about all the "stuff" we can do when the weather is nice.....Kira of course, can't wait to experience playing outside, running, jumping, etc with her, as she calls them, "new straight feet!"  We ALL agree!

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

And can I say it one.more.time!

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Today Kira had her casts changed.  She had her pink and purple ones since January 8th, the day of her surgery, so about 7 weeks.  She's really had fun having people sign her casts but was pretty convinced that she didn't want another dark color since she said it was too hard to see the writing on them!

Soooo....today she picked some lighter colors.  She was soooo happy with how they turned out!!

They gave her boots today to wear with her casts so that she can start bearing some weight and walking.  She tried to stand up today but her legs gave out.  It scared her a little but we talked about it and decided that we would try a few times each day using a chair or couch to hold onto.  Hopefully we'll have her walker soon.......as in not 3 weeks after we take the order for it in! :-)

But here is the AMAZING part.  This is what her feet looked like when she was standing pre-surgery.  And even when would be sitting, they would "flop" to the side.  It was just how they were.

This is some serious pronating which is what eventually made even braces not be effective for her.  She would actually pronate with braces on. (not the best picture but it makes the point)

And here is today!

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!

When Kira saw her feet the first words out of her mouth, before I had said a word, were "Mommy!  I have never seen my feet this straight.  WOW!"  She just kept going on and on.  I was sitting behind her with tears in my eyes!  WOW is right Kira.

 It's so strange to see her feet like this and not see her ankles "sticking" a lot.  AMAZING!

This is just, yep, amazing to me!   She also has incisions on the back of her legs.  I didn't see them today because I was too busy being amazed.  I didn't even think about it.  The incision on her left foot definitely shows that side was the "worse" side.  The incision is bigger and has a lot more stitches in it.

So....she's in this set of casts until April 19th and then she'll be cast-free!  She's already talking about sparkly shoes. :-)  We don't know yet and if she'll need any kind of braces or not but even if she would, they would be much smaller than what she has been wearing.

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

What I am missing the most......

Things are going really well as far as I can tell with Kira's recovery.

She seems to be getting over the nasty virus that she got hit with a couple of weeks ago and she's doing well with her restrictions.

We're finding lots of things that she can do sitting in the chairs with her little tables.  We've spent a lot of times putting Legos together and she loves sitting and playing with them for quite awhile.

She read lots and lots and lots of books.  I'm so glad that she loves to read.  She like to read to herself and she likes for us to read chapter books together.  She loves the American Girl "choose your own adventure" series.

She's been LOVING doing Facetime with her class 3x a week.  It's been a good way to keep her connected to her friends and vice versa.  It's fun for me to see what they do during their "morning meeting" since I hear about it all.the.time.

We're working on getting back into the schedule that we have set up with her therapists and homebound teacher.  It's all an adjustment but we're getting there.

But even with all these good things happening, there's one thing that I miss....that I really, really, really miss.....

I REALLY MISS SNUGGLING WITH HER.  I MEAN REALLY SNUGGLING WITH HER.....SITTING IN A CHAIR WITH HER CURLED UP IN MY LAP.

I really miss it.  We've tried but we just haven't found a way that we are both comfortable....most her because at this point, I'd go with not being comfortable if she was sitting snuggled up with me.

We have quite a bit of time left before she'll be cast-free and you can bet that I will keep trying to find a comfortable way for us to snuggle.  I think we BOTH need some good snuggle time!

Monster truck fun!

Consider yourselves warned!  It's a lot of pictures but this is the easiest way for Dylan to look at them over and over again!

Dylan was so excited to go see the monster trucks when they were in town.  He woke up ready to go.  He and Daddy went downtown and had breakfast!  Dylan said it was a great breakfast sandwich and has browns!

 He was happy to have to a monster truck hat to wear!  The driver of High Maintenance sent this one to him!

 At the Alliant Energy Center waiting to go to the Pit Party!

 Showing off his Pit Pass.....

 First looks.......does he look excited???

 He enjoyed seeing the remote control monster trucks too!

 Up close to Raminator!!  Dylan thought Raminator was "really big!"

 This "little" monster truck is in one of Dylan's favorite monster truck book....Monster Bear.  It's driven by a 9 year old!  Dylan was thrilled to see one that is in his book!

 Stealth.....

 Chalkboard Chuck....super cool that he got to write his name on this monster truck!!

 Sir Crush-A-Lot

 Dylan got to pick on thing to buy while he was there and he picked a toy Raminator.  The driver signed the package for him........again, he doesn't look excited at all, does he??? :-)

 Getting ready for the show to start.....

 Dylan's awesome OT gave us noise-reducing headphones for him to use!