home

Yesterday morning I got to Kelly's room a little before nine and we were on our way home by 9:45! It was nice to get home and have everyone back together again. Jennifer and Mikayla had been at Grammie's house for a few days so they were happy to be home again too. I'm not sure who they were more happy to see, dad or Kelly. I guess they were happy to see me too, I just don't usually rank as high as dad or even Kelly in this case.

All packed up and ready to head home. Kelly did great on the ride home! I thought she would sleep the whole but I heard her a few times playing with her toy.

 Just a cute picture after a little sponge bath last night.

 I told you Jennifer was happy to have Kelly home again. She needed to have a little snuggle time with her before bed. Jennifer needed a few reminders that she needed to be extra gentle with her sister.

It really is good to have everyone home again. 

Nothing is better than these 3 girls! Sure do love them to pieces!

Kelly is doing well. She has her moments where she is a little fussy but who can blame her? We know it will take a little while before she is completely back to normal but it is great to see her smiling so much again!

home tomorrow

Kelly girl has had a busy morning today. She had an echo, got her iv lines out of her neck and got to go on a little field trip to have an x-ray taken. So things are moving along for this girlfriend. After a busy morning and being kind of mad about it all, she is having a nice little nap. The plan is for us to get to go home tomorrow morning. I was sort of hoping maybe we could bust out of here yet today but the doctor came in the this morning and said tomorrow. I will take that though. So we are just enjoying a quiet afternoon around here. I am enjoying one more day of snuggling before we go home and back to a busy house. I know I will not get to just sit and snuggle with my sweet girl once we get home, so I may as well take advantage of the situation. As always I am anxious to get home to see my big girls as well! Time to get back to my snugly baby!

plugging along

Today Kelly girl kept plugging along. She finally got her chest tube out, hooray! She was not very happy about it at the time but it was good to finally get it out. The nurse and I thought they were going to do an echo this morning after the drainage tube came out but no such luck. So they will do an echo and x-ray tomorrow morning. So with all of that it is looking more like we will go home Thursday and not tomorrow. Although the nurse did say there was a slight possibility we could go home late tomorrow afternoon. We will just see what tomorrow bring.

Kelly had to do a car-seat study before we can go home too. So we did that this afternoon. I thought for sure she would get in her car seat and just go to sleep, she was after all pretty tired. Yeah, no such luck. She stayed awake until she had just five minutes left, then she fell fast asleep. Here are a few cute pictures of the happy girl in her car seat.

The nurse didn't want the car seat to sit on the floor so she put her car seat in a wagon. We went for a little walk around while she was hanging out in her seat. 

 Look at this face! She was telling me how much she just wanted me to hold her and she was ready to get out of her car seat, her car seat should just be for going home at this point.

slow and steady

The saying goes slow and steady wins the race, right? Well that is kind of what our Kelly girl is going right now. She is being slow but steady about her recovery. Things are going well and she is doing well but it just seems to be taking a little bit of time.
Our hope was that Kelly would get the drainage tube out of her chest today. That did not happen. They are saying tomorrow will be the day for it to come out. Kelly is breathing room air when she is awake but when she is sleeping her O2 stats drop a little bit so they are watching that. Kelly has been eating well but she has also been spitting but a lot. It seems her acid reflex has come back with force. She spit up after almost every bottle today. So those are all things they are watching for now. We are hopeful that we will be able to go home on Wednesday, if not then Thursday. We will just have to see how tomorrow goes.
On a different note, Kelly is getting back to her happy self. When I got to her room this morning she looked at me and gave me the biggest smile! It was great to see, it did my heart good. And the rest of the day she was very happy. She was charming anyone that walked into her room. And her hair was also a topic of conversation to anyone who saw her. The hair is out of control!

Sunday afternoon we had visitors! The big sisters had been staying with mama and papa and they all came up to visit Kelly. It was good to see them. Kelly was very content while the girls were there. She watched and listened Jennifer, just like at home. Jennifer really wanted Kelly to go out to lunch with us. And she really wanted Kelly to be able to go home. Soon!

 Jennifer also wanted to see where we were staying. She was pretty convinced that she should be able to stay. We are at the Ronald McDonald House and our room has bunk beds in it. Jennifer really wanted to stay so she could sleep on the top bunk. 

 Both girls thought this was pretty great!

 And here is my happy girl today! She had a little sponge bath and was so very happy so I tried to get a few pictures. This was as close as I got to her big smile.

 It is hard to see but after the sponge bath the hair just got crazier! So glad to have my happy girl back!

I spent most of the day snuggling with my baby girl and my hope tomorrow is to do much of the same. So an update will probably not come until late tomorrow night as well. I will try to keep posted on how Kelly is doing and when we may get to come home.

Better today

Kelly has had a much better day today than yesterday. She has been eating well and sleeping more comfortably today. It really is amazing to see the difference in her today compared to last night. She just looked uncomfortable last night and today to look at her sleeping she looks much more peaceful. It makes Bill and I feel a ton better to see her this way. Kelly has had her fussy moments today but who can blame her? She has been through a lot in the past few days. So for now we are just taking things one step at a time and day by day.

 Kelly decided that she wanted to give the nurses a bit of a helping hand and pull at some the cords and lines that are connected to her body. So she had to have socks put on her little hands to keep her from being a little less helpful. She did look pretty cute. 

 Having some snuggle time with dad tonight. That always makes everything seem a little better.

rough night

Good morning! I started to write a post last night and it never got finished. Kelly had a pretty rough evening yesterday. She was very uncomfortable and we could not get her calmed down. She cried for about three hours straight. If you know Kelly you know that is very not like her. She was off the vent so we were able to hold her and that did not even help. It was pretty hard on us as parents. Usually a little snuggling and Kelly calms down. We finally got her calmed down but only for about twenty minutes. After some more pain meds she finally calmed down again. When we left shortly after ten she had calmed down enough to go to sleep. This morning shortly after we got to Kelly's room we were able to finally feed her. This was such a good thing, she calmed down and went to sleep for a while. Girlfriend was hungry! We were really hoping they would take the drainage tube out of her chest today but they will be waiting another day. They are thinking that may be causing some of her pain. So today she will get to eat, which will hopefully make her a little happier and they will try to get on top of her pain. I will try to update later today and let you all know how her day went. Continue to pray that Kelly would have a restful day, that she would be comfortable and that we would be able to comfort her when she is fussy. As always thank so much for praying for our sweet girl!

out of surgery

Kelly was out of surgery and to her room shortly after noon. Bill and I were finally able to see her about one this afternoon. We talked with her surgeon and he said everything went well. We had to laugh a little bit because he commented 3 times about how large her VSD was. That was the hole between the bottom chambers of her heart. They also closed an ASD, which was small and closed her PDA value. Kelly is doing well right now. The goal is to have her off the vent by the end of the day. She was a little bit uncomfortable a while ago so they gave her some more medicine to make her sleepy again. So we are waiting for what the doctor says next. Hopefully by the end of the day we are able to hold our sweet girl!

She looks so sweet. It is so hard to not just pick her up and snuggle her but we can't, at least while she is on the vent. It was kind of hard to watch her wiggle around and cry with no sound. But soon we will be snuggling with our sweet, sweet girl. Hopefully the next pictures I post of Kelly will be without the vent coming out of her mouth.

off to surgery

We were up bright and early again this morning. Kelly girl has really been amazing! She had nothing to eat since mid-night and I woke her up at 5:45 and girlfriend was full of smiles. She was a happy girl in the pre-op room and eventually snuggled up on Bill and went to sleep. They came and got her about 7:30 and surgery officially started at 9:08. Surgery will be about 3 hours so it will be about 12 before she is done. I will try to post later today about how everything went and how Kelly girl is doing. Thanks again to everyone for praying for our sweet girl. I opened my Bible a few minutes to the Psalm's and started flipping through pages. This was what my eyes landed on first: Psalm 28:7- The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song. And then I flipped a pages and read this: Psalm 62:5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. v. 8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. I love how God put those words in front of me this morning! In days like this we expect and hope for everything to go well it is far more important for me to remember that God is my refuge and strength and my heat trusts in the One who formed and created sweet Kelly.

Sweet girl sleeping this morning. I had to take a picture of her sleeping so soundly, no idea of what the day is about to bring her way.

We had to take one last picture of her pre-heart surgery.

Last night Kelly was so smiling so much. So of course I was trying to capture some of her big, sweet smiles. However every time I got the camera ready she would look at me as if to say, "Seriously mom that thing again, I will not smile for you now!" So here was as close as I got, plus the picture on top, which I love- you just have to ignore the black corner, which probably my finger I won't lie.

preparing for surgery

For the past few months we have been anticipating Kelly's heart surgery. We have been waiting and knowing it was coming. And now that day is upon us. Today we were up bright and early ready to head off to all of Kelly's appointments. I usually dread this day, almost more than surgery. It is a long day with lots going on. Today, however, could not have gone better! Kelly was amazing, seriously she did great! And our doctor moved all of our appointments to pretty much the same time, so we were done with everything much earlier than we would have been, which was so nice for us.
The only hard part was the first thing of the day. Kelly had to have her blood drawn and it was hard and oh how she cried. Girlfriend does not have good veins, they had a hard time finding one that was going to work. When they finally tried Kelly wiggled and moved the needle just enough that they lost it. So we had to switch arms, she was not happy again. This mom felt horrible for her baby girl. She quickly recovered and was then a champ the rest of the day! It is hard to see in this picture but she looked pretty tough with both her arms wrapped up. Those white things on her arms are not sleeves to her shirt!

 After a blood draw and a chest x-ray it was time for an echo. The plan was to sedate Kelly for the echo so that she would sleep. Because she was going to be sedated she had not eaten since 5:30 this morning. It was about 10:00 by the time we were getting for the echo. We had to wait a while, we were waiting for a doctor to come before the nurse could give her the sedation meds. While we waited Kelly girl fell asleep. So the nurse quickly grabbed the tech doing the echo and I just held Kelly while the lady did her thing. It worked out so well! I hate having my kids sedated, it makes them funky the rest of the day. Kelly slept the whole time the lady worked, she did amazing! After she woke up we gave her a bottle and she was so happy! And we were happy we never had to give her the icky medicine to sedate her. She had to have an ECG after her echo and does she not look so cute- she was smiling at the nurse the whole time. Look at this cute baby being such a good girl!

All is set for surgery tomorrow morning. We check in at 6 in the morning, it will take about two hours to prep Kelly for surgery and then surgery will take about three hours. We will try to update throughout the day tomorrow. Thanks to everyone for praying for our sweet girl. As I was holding Kelly today during her echo I just kept thanking God for the people who were praying for her, I know that today Kelly did so great because her Heavenly Father was holding her!

growing baby

So once again I find myself not keeping up here in blog land. To be honest I have no real good excuse. I guess just laziness. We were so busy for the first part of summer that once things slowed down I think I slowed down in every part of life. And now sadly summer is winding down. Kelly has surgery next week and that marks the unofficial end to our summer. And speaking of Kelly girl, I though I would show off some pictures of the baby girl.

We got Kelly a bumbo seat a few weeks ago. Here she is trying it out for the first time. At first she was not a big fan of her new seat but she is doing much better. I think she is realizing she can see the world when she is sitting here.

 Usually when Kelly is on her tummy she just puts her head down and takes a little snooze. In the past few weeks however, her head has started coming up more and more. It is kind of funny watching her. She gets her little feet up in the air and she kind of gets her little body moving!

 This picture is an action photo of Kelly rolling over! She has only done it a few times but we cheer for her every time she does it. I was pretty excited to capture the moment on camera.

 "I did it! Wow, that was a lot of work."

 And here is big sister, no doubt she is Kelly's biggest cheerleader. Jennifer is usually close by to Kelly and of course she thought Kelly needed a hug for rolling over! Kelly got a fist full of Jennifer's hair, which right now Jennifer thinks is funny.

As summer winds down everyone in our house is looking forward to one last adventure, to the state fair of course! Hope you all are enjoying some last lazy days of summer.