Maybe Not

I think I'm giving up on my blog makeover for now. There's just too much else going on at the moment. Maybe someday I'll have the time to figure it out.

Melody has her first appointment with the plastic surgeon tomorrow. (Incidentally, this means Larry will have to pick Julie up from preschool on his motorcycle! No, he isn't going to drive her home on it...they will hang out at the school until Melody and I can get there with the car.) We should find out more about the doctor's plans to repair Melody's palate, including a surgery time frame. Both girls see the ENT in Sept. They will both need surgery to place tubes in their ears. Melody's palate surgery and ear tube surgery will take place at the same time. Julie will just go in for tube replacement. Her current tubes have fallen out. She will also need a CT scan of her head and neck to make sure that last year's tumor (cholesteatoma) has not grown back. If it has, she will need surgery to remove it again. There's a lot of medical stuff coming up for us this fall.

Melody also had all her Early Intervention evaluations. The most exciting news is that she tests age-appropriate to slightly advanced in her fine motor skills! Her weakest areas are speech and gross motor, so we'll be starting therapy for both of those next month. We are happy to have Julie's former speech therapist coming to work with Melody. She was great and we get along well.

Julie went to preschool again today, but this time Larry did not walk her into class. Instead, we said goodbye at the curb and let the aide walk her in. It nearly broke my heart to drive away as she was crying, but she must have settled down because I never got a phone call. She seemed fine the rest of the day, which reassures me as well. We weren't able to leave her in Sunday School at church this past weekend, but I guess it's really quite a different scenario. I can see now how her preschool is really set up to address the challenges of special needs children. At this point, she needs the extra support to function.

And now for a few pictures...







Julie helping Daddy give Melody a bottle:


Giving Melody a sweet kiss:


Shopping at Costco after church, wearing nearly matching dresses. Unlike most of the girls' matching clothes, these dresses came to us from two different sources at two separate times. They look like they belong together though!


Julie's new favorite place to sleep: on the floor with her pillow directly over the floor vent.


New look: headband! I'm not sure why her hair looks so high in this picture; it didn't seem that way at the time.