Life as a Leach

Patching has actually been easier than I thought!  Abby has only pulled it off once, and that was while she was in the car and not so distracted.   Surprisingly, she pulled all of the stickers off on the first day and announced she didn't want them.  So, she's just sporting the flesh-colored patch right now.  But her lovely glasses covers are going to be here in just a few days, since they've already been shipped! You know what she said to me when I put the first one on her?  "Thank you, Mommy.  This is going to help me see better."  Love that girl!!

Abby went to the eye doctor today, and he was able to actually get her eye measurements through reading the eye chart!!!  He started out by having a list of all of the letters in front of her so that she could point to the one she saw on the wall (only one at a time was shown), but then she just started calling out the letters herself--even better!  The eye doctor said that it's pretty good if he can get 4 and 5 year olds to consistently identify letters, but it's pretty amazing for a 2 1/2 year old!! This made me smile big time...after all, not too many "vegetables" have their letters down by 2 1/2.  :) As far as her eyes go, she is 20-50 and 20-70.  We don't need to do bifocals yet, but we may have to patch the good eye if the discrepancy gets any bigger.  Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things! I love sharing these little stories of the everyday miracles.  God has been so gracious to us, and Abby is most definitely living up to her ...

We got Abby's doll some glasses from Build-a-Bear, but they ended up fitting Abby perfectly! Is she cute, or what? They have actually been really good for getting her used to glasses without having to worry about her breaking an expensive pair.  If something happens to these, we're just out $4!  She is really starting to like them though, and actually hands them to me to put on her.  (Of course, they certainly aren't helping with the eye turning in!)   I'm seriously considering taking these to an eye care place and asking if they can put lenses in them.   We are just about at our wit's end after going to about a million stores looking for glasses!  We have one more promising place to go to on Friday.  After that, we're pretty much out of options and will begin the process of ordering online!  I'm really hoping that we find something, because the idea of ordering glasses without trying them on her bothers me.

After a week of being trach free, here are some new things about Abby: *  She took her first bath with water in the tub on Wednesday.  The girl LOVED it!  She splashed and laughed the entire time, giving me quite a mess to clean up!  It was so worth it to see her so happy.  It's exciting that she can do that now that the hole is closed up! *  Abby sings  all of the time now!  She never did any singing when she had her trach, but she started singing just a few hours after getting it out.  That evening, I asked if she wanted to sing a song and she la-la-ed something very close to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!  She now la-las all of the time, and I LOVE IT.  LOVE it.  This was one of the things I was most looking forward to with her decannulation.  It is so sweet! *  We went to the ophthalmologist today and he confirmed that she needs glasses.  Her eye has started drifting and she's nearsighted. ...

Abby went to the opthomologist today and it went really well!  We are going to return for another appointment in June, but he thinks that her optic nerves are within the normal range!  He has no reason to believe that she'll have any major issues (besides glasses, but welcome to the family!)  In fact, he said that the eyes are on page two of her long list of concerns.  :) I really liked this doctor and learned from a newsletter in the waiting room that he is world renowned for pediatric opthomology.  He was direct, but not brisk.  He was very friendly and good with Abby too! We did learn to always bring the back-up battery into the building with us (it was in the car) because we had to hustle it out of there in order to switch the battery.  It wasn't an emergency because the vent has an internal battery of about 45 minutes, but it would have been much easier if we'd just brought it in.  Lesson learned!  Other than that and a bit of troubl...