Healing

Julie is healing up nicely at this point. Today is the first day that her incision didn't actively bleed, yay! We got a little scared yesterday morning when we found her covered in blood, feverish, and crying. Her bed also had quite a bit of blood on it. After cleaning her up and giving her more pain medication, we got an appointment to see her surgeon. Larry took her in and the surgeon looked her over. His conclusion? "Looks great!" He could have told us in advance that there was going to be A LOT of blood. Every night we put her in the bath and carefully work to remove large, coagulated clumps from her hair. Today we finally took the ear cup off and let the wound get some air. It's back on now to protect her ear while she sleeps. If there's not much bleeding overnight, maybe we can be done with it for good. Here's hoping! (I've decided not to post the really bloody pictures because they're just not fun. You probably don't want to see them anyway.)

We still have a life outside of medical issues, believe it or not! I've been saving up a couple of cute stories to share. Yesterday I showed Julie a picture of our family from last Christmas. Melody wasn't with us yet, of course. She was just 3 months old and living in China at the time. I asked Julie who was in the picture and she said "Julie, Mommy, Daddy," paused, and added "Meddy sweeping" (Melody sleeping). How sweet is that? In her mind, if Melody isn't present with the rest of us, she must be sleeping. It warmed my heart to realize how Julie has truly incorporated Melody into her definition of our family. Of course, today when I brought Melody down from her nap, all Julie had to say was "no Meddy, Mama, no Meddy!" I guess that's sisterhood for you!

Speaking of Melody, she is learning so much! Besides saying "uh oh," she is working on "up," "more" and "meow." She can now sign bed, cat, bird, pray, amen, wash hands and some others that I'm not thinking of right now. It is so amazing to see her sign cat while saying "ooowww" and then realize that the cat is, indeed, walking by. I will try to upload a video of it soon. Here are some pictures of Melody that I took outside today.