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Grammie came over to watch Nadia (which she LOVED) and we headed over to Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children to have the cast removed and see Amelie’s hand. I didn’t sleep well at all the night before. At one point I was up for 45 minutes wondering how it was going to look and if it was going to hurt and so on. I wasn’t worried, it was really more like how excited I get before we go somewhere on vacation.

Once again we were impressed by the staff and volunteers of Scottish Rite and their love for the kiddos. They are also very efficient!

Amelie in the waiting area. Click the photo to see the entire album.

I think this is so cute.

Waiting for the nurse to come take the cast off.

Here is the video. It’s just under 6 minutes and I really made this for Amelie when she grows up. I want her to be able to see the reaction she had when it was being removed and when she first saw her hand. I hope no one gets jeebed out.

Here I am being jeebed out at her picking the scabs off. Amelie DOES NOT like her hands to be dirty.

Sweet girl!

We couldn’t be happier or more impressed with what they accomplished at Texas Scottish Rite. They do have the best hand surgeons in the world! I was overwhelmed by emotion and gratefulness to God seeing those little fingers flex and move independently.

She has been in quite a bit of pain whenever she accidentally bangs it or puts pressure on it. The first night she would pick something up or climb on the couch then whimper, show me her hand and want a kiss. It was clearly catching her off guard that the stuff she wanted to do was causing her pain. She got used to the cast banging around and she has been carrying her arm a bit like it still has the cast, but that will fade more and more. She has no official occupational or physical therapy – she only needs to play.

We will take her in for a check up in about six weeks. Here is what we understand might happen in the future (but we don’t know any of this for sure, or when it would happen): another surgery on her left pinky finger to free it up from the base. A bone graft on the left middle finger. A touch up to the left hand fingers when she is older – plastic surgery type to make them look smoother. Also surgery on her right hand to separate the three partial fingers.

Thanks for all the many prayers and encouragement we received through all of this.

We are oh so thankful and grateful to God for how amazing Amelie’s hand looks after getting the cast off yesterday! We will have photos and video to follow, but I wanted to let our readers know how it went. The staff at Texas Scottish Rite is so amazing and awesome!!

Ahhhhhhhhh! I am so happy with how my tulips and daffodils turned out this year. After last years coming up all kinds of crazy colors (they were not what the package said), this years made me smile every time I looked at them. I know their life is so short here in Texas, but there is something amazing about finally seeing them. God’s majesty in my front yard.

Look at the 2 tone daffodil bulbs I bought.

Happy, happy, happy!

Last week we did a lot of goofing off and playing with friends. Which Nadia really needed! She is still getting used to being the big sister to a toddler and what that means. So having some fun with friends who could pretend play and speak in sentences was great for her.

On Monday my friend Tricia brought Elliott and Jude over and the 2 big kids immediately headed upstairs. Amelie was following Jude around unsure of what to do with this little baby. She was also busy trying to get food from Tricia Tuesday was our first visit with the social worker to see how Amelie is doing so we didn’t do any school that day. Mike took Nadia with him to the gym Wednesday morning so she could play with her buddies there. Thursday Linda and Reagan came over and the girls had a blast! They had not seen each other since the week before we left for China and there have been tears in both houses asking for a playdate. Friday was museum school and Good Friday. Whew!

Here is what we did squeeze in.

We made a mini book about the Days of Creation.

This is a random workbook I found in my stash. Nadia liked the “color by letter”. We should finish this book next week.

Kumon Workbook – Capital Letters. (On a side note, I took all the large Kumon workbooks apart and dropped them off at Office Depot to be hole punched. They did the entire stack for $4 and I will be able to reuse these for Amelie. And when Nadia needs to do something again we just erase and go again with the dry erase marker)

This “map of America” puzzle was a gift from Reagan. Nadia put a lot of work into it and was very proud. She didn’t want me to take it apart the next day either.

Amelie has decided that she does NOT like to be left out of school. So here is what I did to keep her busy this week.

Pretty impressive with the cast I thought.

The puzzles are a little ahead of her, but she did have fun using the drum stick on them.

We also did some work out of our Critical Thinking Pre K curriculum, but I didn’t take any photos since we do that every week. She is half way through the Pre K bundle. We highly recommend the Critical Thinking stuff for building logical thinking skills.