Saturday, December 19, 2009

Updates

We haven't been able to post much lately because Elise "washed" our laptop in mid-November and we had to get a new one.


The girls continue to grow and change each day. Elise cracks me up with her vocabulary. She's using "probably" and "actually" all the time and in the correct context. It cracks me up when she'll say, "Not right now," or "Oh, man! My __________ fell!" She has an amazing memory for things we do or people we meet. We went to the grocery store yesterday, and it was the first time we hadn't given the woman from the Salvation Army money, and at dinner last night she told Ray, "We went to the grocery store. We didn't give the girl with the bell a dollar this time." One day, she also was telling me the bible story of Naaman we had been reading a couple of weeks ago, counting to seven for the number of times he had to wash himself in the Jordan River. Elise is still completely in love with Rebekah, always wanting to make sure she's ok or safe and constantly referring to her as "my sister."

Rebekah is just about two weeks shy of her first birthday. She babbles all the time, although we're not really hearing any real words. She knows "mama" and "dada" and will occasionally say them in the correct context, usually when she's upset or really wants one of us. Rebekah absolutely loves cheese! It's the first thing she has to eat at lunch and when she sees it she says "chs chs chs" with a huge smile on her face. Rebekah's able to stand for a few moments on her own now, although it doesn't happen very often because she's always on the move. She doesn't like keeping her shoes and socks on, and she loves crawling up the steps. Typically we'll find her half way up the stairs with her shoe or sock in her mouth. This past week, Elise had her first visit and overnight hospital stay due to an illness. She woke up on Tuesday morning at 3am calling for Ray, and when he went into get her, she started crying saying that she wanted me. I went in and could kind of tell something was off, but she didn't have a fever, so we put her back to bed. At 4am she woke up calling for me and ended up getting sick twice. She was able to keep her medicine down and slept until about 7am and then got sick two more times. We ended up having to give Elise her first emergency shot (which was not fun for us, but now we really know what to do) then she got sick again, so Ray and Elise headed to the ER. Thankfully our ped. endo. is so wonderful and accomodating, he called the ER before they got there so the medicine would be on its way, and they wouldn't have to wait too long. It's amazing what a bag of IV fluids, a Solu-Cortef drip and lots of prayer can do. When I was finally able to go see Elise later in the afternoon, she was more or less back to her usual self ready for pizza for dinner and to color. Elise wasn't very happy to have to sleep in a crib or to have a board on her wrist to stabilize the IV, but she was a trooper. At one point she started picking the tape on the IV board saying, "I take this off. I break this! I wanna break this off!" I was able to stay the night with Elise at the hospital. She wanted to sleep in bed with me, but since she couldn't I held her until she fell asleep- that was such a sweet moment for me, being able to hold my little big girl and thank the Lord for her life and happy spirit and the amazing blessing that she is to us! In the morning she woke up ready to go home and in a wonderful mood. She was talking to the nurses and playing peek-a-boo with them through the window of her hospital room. I thought she looked adorable with her puffy, had a lot of IV fluids and just woke up face. Elise got home close to 11am on Wednesday morning and the reaction between Elise and Rebekah when they saw each other was the sweetest and most priceless moment ever. Huge smiles, lots of claps, and excitement!