September Update

September 8, 2011 (9 weeks post surgery) Elle and I headed down to the med center to see her Geneticist, Dr. Lailani. Dr. Lailani is absolutely wonderful and we are so blessed that she is such a caring and involved doctor. The last time Elle saw Dr. Lailani, Dr. L started crying because she was so impressed by all Elle was doing and that was a year ago! We had such a good visit with Dr. L! Elle said her ABCs and counted to 10 and sang "Spoon Full of Sugar" from Mary Poppins. She said her colors and just sat and talked with Dr. Lailani. It always makes me feel so blessed and amazed at how far Elle has come when a doctor vocalizes how impressed she is with Elle. To God to be all glory in this little girl's life!! After our visit with Dr. Lailani, Elle and I headed over to the zoo to eat lunch, see the animals and ride the merry go round. Since her surgery, Elle has had a slight obsession with Mary Poppins so getting to ride the "Mary Poppins merry go round" was a great treat for the little miss!

Friday, September 9, 2011 I took Elle to her first pep rally! Cy-Ranch High School, the high school that our neighborhood goes to and the same school where Elle's Gigi (Lee's aunt Tanya) works was having their homecoming. Elle loved the pep rally and loved watching the girls dance and the band playing. That night, Lee and I took her to her first high school football game. She was decked out in her Cy-Ranch t-shirt thanks to her fabulous Aunt Mel.

Elle and Gigi (tanya)

My old high school band director is the band director for Cy-Ranch and he let Elle help direct the band! She loved it and was telling us "I led the band" for the rest of the night!

Elle and Meme (Lee's grandmother)

Saturday, September 17, 2011 Elle and I met up with Gigi and Vivi and headed to Warrenton to see what type of antiques we could find. The last week in September is the Round Top/Warrenton Antique show and it is massive! Fields and fields of vendors selling anything and everything. They usually start setting up early so we drove out to see if we could find anything good.

While we didn't buy anything, we did find a fabulous park in Carmine, Texas. Who knew that such a little town would have such a great park!

Elle loves her Vivi and her Gigi!

Elle's progress continues to amaze us! Her eating has been wonderful - so good that we have cut down some of her tube feedings. She was getting a tube feed 4x a day every 5 hours but we have cut it down to 3 tube feeds a day. We are back in our full swing of therapies so Elle has physical therapy twice a week, speech therapy once a week and feeding therapy once a week. She is also doing great in her gym class and still has sign language once a week as well. It just continues to boggle my mind that she had open heart surgery just 12 weeks ago! God has a mighty plan for this little one!

Update is coming soon...I promise!

Well - we finally got out of quarantine and have been blowing and going since. I can honestly say that I haven't sat down to check out blogs or to update ours since the end of July...we've just been so busy. Elle is doing great and I promise a lot of posts that will be back dated so that I can capture everything that we have been up to in the past 2 months!

August Update

We spent the month of August taking things slow but trying to gain a little bit of normalcy back in our lives...

We took some unused wall space in our kitchen and thanks to our little helper...she now has a magnetic chalkboard to call her own...

Exactly 4 weeks post open heart surgery, we had a nice little play date with two of Elle's favorite little friends....Maddie and Kayla. It was at Kayla's house and SO nice to get out of the house! This was Elle's first time to leave the house since surgery...

Elle and Maddie playing in the kitchen

On Thursday, August 11, 2011 (5 weeks post surgery) we went back to see Dr. Wolfe, Elle's cardiologist. This was her post surgery visit. After he did the echo, Dr. Wolfe walked into our room and gave us the most amazing news. He said that everything looked great but more importantly, we are surgery free! This is the first time since I was 20 weeks pregnant that Elle doesn't have any impending surgeries. While Elle will have to eventually have her pulmonary valve replaced, that date is WAY in the future. According to Dr. Wolfe - it could be in 5 years or maybe 10 years...only time will tell. It was such an awesome visit and then we officially got moved from his "see every month" patient list to the "see every 6 months" patient list which was huge! During this visit we also got the all clear to resume all of Elle's therapies so that was exciting too! Whoo hoo!

No, my loyalties have not wavered...but we sure do have some amazing Aggie friends and when Ms. Jill saw Elle decked out in her UT shirt - she rushed right out and bought her some maroon and white!

Elle relaxing and watching Mickey Mouse...complete with Minnie Mouse shades...she's an accessory girl!

August 24, 2011 we started going to a new gym for a mom and me gym glass. At this gym all the little girls wear leotards so Elle got to choose what color leotard she wanted. The girl in the office pulled out a multitude of brightly colored leotards...purple, pink, red, black...and Elle looked right at the orange one and said "I want orange." I questioned her choice, "are you sure you want orange?" Her reply was a definite "yes." The pictures don't do this leotard justice...it's safety cone orange...safety vest orange..high liter orange. It's pretty bright but Elle seems to love it...and I'm sure her Uncle Benny does too!

August 25, 2011 Elle and I made a day trip over to see our very favorite twin girls (Natalie and Claire) and a chance to see my friends Lala and Amy. We painted with Natalie and Claire and Elle just had a blast! It is so hard for me to believe that we are 7 weeks post surgery and already out and about visiting friends and getting back into our daily life!

When we got home, Elle wanted to wear the turtle she painted as a hat...I'm telling you...she's an accessory girl!

We started back with Physical Therapy on August 23 and resumed our normal 2x a week with Michelle, Elle's PT. After Elle's first open heart surgery when she was 6 months old, she came back to PT a different baby. She started wanting to sit up on her own and was initiating more developmental skills than prior to surgery. It seems like that same situation may be happening again with Elle. Pre surgery, she wanted nothing to do with the horse swing and in only her second session back, she climbed right on the horse and started trying to make it swing. This is huge for her! Not only is it a great test of balance but also core strengthening and getting her knees to bend!

We ended August with a birthday lunch for a very special 1 year old, Elle's cousin, Stella. I use the term cousin loosely because Stella is my cousin's daughter - but whatever - we're family!

We have so much to be thankful for! Elle is just doing great and we are so thrilled with her progress. She is even starting to eat more and more foods by mouth and maybe one day we won't have to depend on the feeding tube! She is growing stronger and stronger every day and never ceases to amaze us! To God be ALL the glory for her amazing recovery and continued growth!

The Tale of a Mirror

So I'm kind of obsessed with blog stalking some fabulous DIYers. I love to see them take thrift store finds and make them into beautiful pieces of furniture. I saw this post on Centsational Girl and immediately went on the hunt for Rustoleum "Night Tide."

Kate's fantastic piece

Thankfully, some Wal-Marts carry it and after googling it - we finally located a Wal-Mart near us that had it in stock. I just had to have it some place in my home. I'm really wanting to spruce up our master bedroom so I figured that would be the best place to start. I had a mirror sitting on my night stand that Lee had before we got married. It matches all the wood in our house but I'm kind of over the Tommy Bahama matchy matchy look....so....I decided to paint the mirror and see how it turned out...

Here's the mirror before - not too shabby. It's sitting on a 20.00 desk I use as my night stand.

After taping it off and priming

And the end result. I love the blue color and once the desk gets transformed - I think it will be the perfect combination. I'm thinking the desk will look fantastic with the same dark stained top and heirloom white legs and drawers. Hmmmm......

I followed Kate's step by step directions and while it does have a few brush strokes from the poly - you can't really notice them unless you are right up next to it. I dinged it while I was bringing it in from outside so I do have one little touch up to do - but other than that - it didn't turn out too bad. Kind of a fun project!