Year End Activities

May is always a busy time of year because of class parties, award ceremonies, exhausted children that have checked out mentally, and etc. This year was no different.  One of these days I hope to be finish blogging about May festivities.

I have to admit that this years awards ceremony was SO much fun.  We love Elizabeth.  But we can only hoot and holler for so long.  She received so many awards and eventually we were just graciously clapping for her.  That's when Jeremiah came up with an idea.  As she kept receiving awards, he started to dance...in his seat!  Then we had the following conversation:

Me (in a very loud whisper):  What are you doing?! Knock it off!

J: No way, man.  Dancing is way better than clapping!

Me: WHAT?! 

J: Absolutely!  Just like Shawn and Gus on Psych.  They dance when something cool happens so I'm dancing, too!  Come on...dance with me!

Me: Well hold on!  Who's Gus and who's Shawn? 

J: Good point. It doesn't matter.  Just start dancing!

He had me laughing so hard that I had to bury my face in my hands.  I never did dance because if Jeremiah got thrown out, Liz still needed a cheerleader to be present.  By the way, Jeremiah danced through our entire conversation and until the ceremony was over.

One more thing, the bottom right picture is before her choir banquet.  My mom did her hair and makeup and Jeremiah's mom took her shopping for the dress.  She received awards at the banquet, too.  Thanks goodness it was for students only.  

This was Scarlett's last year as a preschooler and she had a great year!  She was the first one in her class to receive a star.  As the kiddo's progress all year long, they moved up the rungs on a ladder.  When they reached the top rung, they got a star that hung from the ceiling.  On the last day of school, her teacher "cut" them loose because they are now ready for kindergarten!  As an incentive for the kids to become a star, Mrs. Talley promised the kids that they could throw water balloons at her on the last day of school.  I love how she made the kids clean up the pieces.  I'm so excited that Savannah starts with her in the fall!

Goodbye Ventilator

Jeremiah and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on May 12th.  By celebrate I mean that I spent the entire day loving on Sophia.  See, way back in April I had to choose a mid May date to admit her to the hospital to wean her off the vent.  I chose May 13th.  I didn't want to do it on our anniversary so I chose the next day.  Unfortunately, our anniversary was less than stellar this year.  Oh well.  There'll be more.

So here we are.  The moment we have been waiting for was upon us.  It was time to see if Sophia can breathe on her own without a vent.  Upon admission, she was off the vent for two hours during the day and three hours at night.  The plan was to have her off the vent for twelve hours during the day and put her back on the vent at night.  By May 16th she was off six hours during the day and six hours off at night.  I thought the doctors were moving WAY too fast.  My biggest fear was that Sophia would crash and burn AND she would have a massive setback.  But she just laughed and clapped her way through the entire process.  

  By May 23rd, she was breathing on her own without ANY respiratory support.  WHAT?!?! She did it!  No code blues.  No setbacks.  No nothing.  Just like that.  Done!  All the months of keeping her isolated and protecting those lungs had paid off!  May 29th was discharge day and we were out of there!  Below are a couple of pics of her journey.

On day two she's just hangin' out watching it all happen.  I love that she loves her race car.

THIS was such a fun day!  I was giving her a bath and for some crazy reason I burst in Tina Turner's Proud Mary.  The moves and everything.  The more she loved it the more I got into character.  It was wild and man we had fun!

I love the way she gets so excited whenever we come visit her.  On this day, we snuck up on her and I finally remembered to record her reaction to our entrance.

We brought the girls up for a visit one day.  They were happy to see Sophia and Sophia was happy to see them.   

 Don't know why I have this one but here you go.  That's the problem with blogging an event from six weeks ago.  You can't remember a single thing and why you took a photo.  Geez!

This here is Debbie and I will forever be grateful for this lady.  She was Sophia's nurse practitioner and I loved her.  She has seen Sophia at her best, worst, and everywhere in between.  And, she held my hand through it all.  We were discharging and walking out the door and she told me that she was resigning.  I felt like she knocked the wind out of me!  After I was happy for her and was smiling again, we took pictures.

On May 29th, 17 days after admission, Sophia Lynette was breathing on her own without a vent.  Yay!  Also, Sophia no longer has pulmonary hypertension.  Double yay!  While we were there, her doctor and I agreed to try to wean her off of a couple of medications.  She was weaned off lasix and sildenafil.  We were hoping to get her off of her clonidine but Sophia wasn't having that.    

After many prayers and support from friends and family, this little girl has made a tremendous amount of improvement.  She's been doing great and hasn't had any serious setbacks.  God bless her for that!