Surgery & Pink Casts

This week Kinsey had her foot surgery. Surgery was early Tuesday morning (we left our house at 4 am and surgery was at 7:30 am). The doctor was great - very attentive and knowledgeable. I was also confident in the anesthesiologist. Actually, our entire stay at the hospital was very smooth and everyone was great, with the exception of the pharmacy that was beyond slow at getting medicine delivered to Kinsey!

Getting ready for surgery

Anyway, the surgery went smoothly. It did take about 30 minutes longer than expected, but we received frequent updates from the nurse, so that was ok. Here's some information and xrays about the surgery:

This is an xray of Kinsey's left foot from before the surgery.
The arrow is pointing to the bone (vertical talus) in her foot
that is out of place. (The weird stuff coming off her foot is
the doctor's hand holding her foot in position.)

This is her foot after the surgery was complete. The arrow
is pointing at the same bone which is now in the right place.
The dark black lines are the pins in her foot to keep it in place.
The pins will be removed after 6 weeks before her short casts are
put on for 4 more weeks.

Another view of the bone that is now in the right place. Here you can see
the top of her foot is flatter now and she has a little arch now too.

This is a top view of her foot. Some bones along the top of her foot
also had to be aligned.

 That first afternoon Kinsey did pretty well initially, but had some gas problems later in the afternoon (from the breathing tube during surgery) and was pretty unhappy. We gave her every pain medicine we could think of before we realized it was gas and that's when the pharmacy took forever (an hour and a half) to get some mylicon to her to make her feel better. Once that was resolved she slept pretty well that first night.

Wednesday morning she was starting to feel a little better. She ate breakfast and the doctor came by early to discharge us. While we were waiting to leave, we took Kinsey for a walk around the floor in a wagon where we happened to run into a therapy dog that was coming to visit. She was very excited to see a puppy:  

We were home at about noon on Wednesday and Kinsey did ok that afternoon and evening, with pain medication every 4 hours on the dot. Thursday was not as good - she was very fussy all day long and didn't sleep well that night. The pain medicine wasn't lasting long enough. On Friday we spoke to the nurses about changing her medicine - the only thing we changed was using ibuprofen which lasts a little longer than tylenol and allows us to stager her medicine better. She started to do a little better Friday afternoon - I was finally able to get her to eat and she seemed to perk up right then. Hopefully she will sleep better tonight and continue feeling better each day.

Surgery and casts aside, we have had a little fun this week. Prior to surgery, we spent some time playing in the grass one night. Here are some pictures:

Grabbing Bailey's tail

Laughing at Bailey

Picking the grass

Kinsey's been doing a sucking sound with her lips for quite some time now, but the other night her and Jamie were taking turns doing it. Here's a video: http://youtu.be/E6lNtIvkVmU

100%

Here are some pictures of Kinsey getting used to playing in her new (pink) casts (Yes, I got to pick the color and of course I picked pink. I might change the color when her casts are changed in 3 weeks).

Enjoying the cool evening in her lawn chair outside
(wearing her Farmall onesie)

Playing in her room

 We've also discovered a couple more foods that Kinsey likes: Jell-O and Pasta!

Eating pasta

That's it for this week. Please pray that Kinsey continues to feel better and better each day and gets used to wearing these casts.

We're Home!

We closed on our new house on Monday and promptly began moving in! It's been a very busy, exhausting week, but it's all been exciting and well worth it. Our new home is actually a very old farmhouse (1929) with many additional buildings (playgrounds for Jamie) - all of which needs a lot of work and updating. We're getting settled slowly, setting up the basics and doing minor improvements like some paint, with the exception of Kinsey's room which is completely done!

Getting her room set up before surgery next week was my first priority so she has a comfortable place to come home to. As I mentioned before, she now has a "little girl" room complete with pink (very pink!) walls, a new dust ruffle that I made for her crib, and a great wall mural on her closet doors. I ordered a custom-designed wall mural from a lady on Etsy and it arrived just in time. My dad and I spent the greater part of an afternoon deciding on the layout and putting it up and I think it turned out great:

I selected the flower colors to match her room, had to have the ladybugs of course
and the words "You are my Sunshine"

Kinsey has spent a lot of time this week playing by herself (thankfully she is usually ok with that) so that we could get work done around the house. My dad is also staying here with us (his RV is parked inside one of our large buildings!) and he has been helping us take care of her and has been a big help to Jamie too! Here are some pictures of Kinsey entertaining herself:



Today we also discovered a new food that Kinsey likes: Spanish olives (the real ones from Spain) stuffed with anchovies! Like mother, like daughter -these are one of my top 3 favorite foods! She ate 2 of them and actually chewed them up on her own. And of course, she stuck her finger in the center when she put it in her mouth :) Here are some pictures:

A couple of weeks ago we went up to Red Rocks to take a family picture for our moving announcement. Kinsey wasn't really in the mood the day we did this, plus she was squinting a lot from the bright sun, but here are a couple of the pictures as well as a copy of the moving announcement (which went out in the mail today too):

I love this one of us looking at the camera and Kinsey checking out the view!

So, surgery is scheduled for Tuesday next week at 7:30 am. I'm still pretty nervous about it, but at least I've been too busy to think about it lately. Kinsey should only be in the hospital overnight, just like the last surgery. From what I can tell, the Children's Hospital here is great so our stay there should be ok. Please say some extra prayers for Kinsey to do well with the surgery and recover smoothly, for us (especially me) to stay calm and for all of her doctors and nurses to have God with them to perform the surgery expertly. I will be posting facebook updates and sending out text updates on Tuesday to let everyone know how it goes!

Finally, here are some cute pictures of Kinsey wearing some adorable clothes from Aunt Linda:



20 Months!

Kinsey turned 20 months old this week! It's hard to believe that means her 2nd birthday is only 4 months away!!!

The big news this week is that Kinsey's surgery has been postponed by a few days. The doctors office called to push it back to Tuesday, July 24th, something we agreed to easily because it works out better for us too! Since we're moving into our new house starting on Monday, this will allow us to get more settled before we have to deal with the surgery. Plus now we have the first timeslot of the day, which means we have to get up in the middle of the night to get to the hospital, but it also means we (hopefully) won't get delayed and we can get it over with early in the day instead of dragging it out all day.

So as I mentioned, we are moving into our new home on Monday!!!! We have a lot of decorating and rennovating to do to make it the home that we (mostly I) want it to be, but we're going to start with painting all the bedrooms first. Kinsey isn't ready for a "big girl" room yet, but I am going to redecorate and make it a "little girl" room instead of a "baby room." She's getting pink walls (very pink!), new bedding, new curtains, a new area rug and a new vinyl wall decal that I special-ordered from Etsy! I'm excited  - my goal is to get her room completely done before the surgery so I'll share pictures soon :)

Kinsey's been trying more new foods this week - she tried baked beans, but I'm not sure whether she really liked them or not. She also had some Auntie Anne's pretzel bites, which she loved, but who doesn't love Auntie Annes? She had another lemon this week and she still likes them and she's been eating refried beans like crazy! Tonight we went out for mexican and we gave her 2 jars of baby food before the refried beans and she still ate the ENTIRE bowl - and it was a big bowl! Here are some pictures of her eating adventures:

Eating an Auntie Anne's pretzel bite

  

Eating a Lemon

Chowing down on refried beans!

Look at the size of that bowl and she ate it all!

This week Kinsey and I went to the mall and there was a pet store there with puppies playing in the window. I rolled her stroller up to the window and she got all excited watching the puppies run around. It's really too bad she's allergic to dogs because she really likes them - she's always watching Emma and Bailey and talking to them. But she breaks out pretty bad after playing with them - the other night we had to give her a bath after she sat on the couch with Bailey for a while because she broke out so bad. :(

Here are a couple pictures of her watching the puppies in the window:

That's it for this week. The next post will be from our new home!!! :)

A Fun Week

Last weekend we drove into the mountains a little bit (really just the foothills I guess) to go to a little place called Tiny Town where they have kid-sized buildings and a little train that goes around the "town." Kinsey liked riding the train and checked out some of the buildings. Here are a few pictures:



Sitting outside daddy's favorite store

Kinsey in jail

For July 4th Kinsey wore her pretty red, white and blue dress from her photo shoot again and we went to the Zoo. My dad went with us too. We went to see the Polar Bear again - one of our favorites since they usually get close to the glass and Kinsey can see them pretty well.

Wearing her USA headband and sunglasses!

Riding the carousel

And here's a picture of Kinsey wearing her other patriotic shirt - it says "Red, White & Cute!"

One night this week we went to our favorite Denver mexican restaurant and they had a Mariachi band performing at tables so we had them come over and perform for us, well mostly for Kinsey. She really liked watching them and was intently listening to the violin (we thought the trumpet would get her attention, but she actually looked right at the violin when he started playing). Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylIsFIvu95U (the violin is on her left)

Only 9 days until we close on our new house! And that means only 12 days until Kinsey's surgery. Her cardiologist has cleared her for surgery and once the anesthesiologist is assigned to her case, they will call me to do the pre-surgery consult. It will be a CRAZY week!