Good bye card to Ms Brown

Addie's substitute Miss Brown will be leaving next week, since Miss Melgarejo is back from maternity leave. Last night when I was reading Ben's bedtime book, Addie explained that she needed to do something. She asked me to fold a piece of paper in half, so I did and she was off.

At the foot of my bed, she furiously scribbled away. The card had to go into her folder for today, but I didn't want to lose what she wrote, so I copied it word for word.

This is what she wrote:

Miss Bron Sary that you haft to go I howp you have fun!!

I will mis you and I howp you mis me to.

Have a grat day Love Addie

You are deftly coming to my brthday I will com to yours if you com to min

Good biy

I LOVE that she can read so well and yet doesn't make the connection between the words she reads and how she spells things. It just makes me smile. I howp you enjoyed reading that!

What a year

I love having this blog and being able to go back to old posts. Today I did that and realized that one year ago, Addie gave her hair to kids with cancer!! What a year! Her hair is now back past her shoulders, having had it recut to her chin twice! In Ben follow-up news, there really isn't much to follow up on. You'd never know that a day ago he was under the knife. He's been fine. No big deal!

Bye bye bump!!!

We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 this morning!! We were excited because that meant that Ben would be one of the first patients in the OR, and that means we'd get out relatively early.

We waited about 30 minutes or so before they called us back. He did his blood pressure, etc and we were shown into our little holding bay. We got him dressed into his gown and then they gave him "silly juice" to help calm him so that he wasn't upset when it came time to separate from us.

The Silly Juice has a nasty after taste and he wasn't loving that at all. This is him just after the silly juice, he's kind of making a gross face because of the flavor.

The "silly juice" has no effect on Ben, as you'll see... :)

Just after this video was taken, the surgeon came in to say hello and she said, "Hi Ben. How are you?" He looked at her and instead of saying a word, he raised and lowered his eyebrows at her. Oh my God, it was so hysterical. About the same time, he told me he wanted to have the blanket up over him, so I pulled it up over his body and he proceeded to cover his whole head with the blanket and started giggling under the blanket, then he would slowly pull the blanket down under hiseyes and put it back up. It was really funny. Like I said on Facebook, quite possibly the funniest thing is watching your child be loopy and see how they behave.

He went into the OR at 7:55am and at 8:22am the doctor came out to say that he was done.

She believes it was actually an angioma, because once she shaved it off, the blood vessels underneath were really deep. She cauterized those blood vessels. Right now it looks like a dark scab. It will transition to a pink dot and then gradually fade to light pink and eventually white. He may have a small white-looking freckle as a scar. Because of it being an angioma, there's a chance it could grow back. If it starts to look puffy pink, we are supposed to go back to see the plastic surgeon, because that means it's growing back.

This next picture is of him chilling on the couch. He's not allowed to walk by himself at all today, since the anesthesia stays in his system for 12 hours. He looks like he's still feeling good, right?

Now he's hanging out cuddling with Muddy for the day. He got to drink a post-anesthesia slushie, which has been a point of conversation all week long. He was in the PACU (post anesthesia care unit) for maybe 30 minutes before we were discharged. Overall total time in the hospital=less than 3 hours!

It looks so good to his face without that thing sticking out of it!

Addie was upset she couldn't come with us this morning. After the surgeon told us he was done, I started to email Addie's teacher to ask her to let her know he was ok, until I realized she hadn't gone to school yet! So I called home and talked to Muddy who put Addie on the phone and Addie was so relieved that Ben was ok. She giggled at the story about playing peek-a-boo with the blanket. Muddy said after that, Addie was like normal- where prior to that she was in a funk being so worried. :(

Special shout out of appreciation to Muddy for being at our house at 6:15 today to allow Brian, Ben and I to get to the hospital in time!

A preview...

Afterwards, her teacher gave her flowers and the kids had all made special signs cheering her on! Awesome!

That's Miss Brown, her substitute while Ms. Melgarejo is on maternity leave. She's been helping Addie during lunch time with rehearsing the words.

Pre-performance. She was just a wee bit excited, in case you can't tell.

*You can see the video on my Facebook page- it isn't loading on my blog the right way, for now at least.*

My daughter the superstar

Addie's school has a program called "Reading Basketball Association" (RBA) which is designed for third-fifth graders and involves story reading by the principal followed by a basketball game. They practice for 12 weeks and have games with other elementary schools. Apparently the kids all insist the most important part is the reading-- ok, I don't quite get it yet, but I'm sure by the time Addie is in third grade it'll make more sense to me.

Her principal has a habit of pulling Addie out of class and having her sing during the upper grades' lunches. He gives her the mic and all and let's her perform her heart out.

Last week he asked Addie if she'll sing the National Anthem for the RBA's All Star game, which is in front of the entire school (700+ students). She of course said yes, so this Friday at 1:30PM my daughter will be singing her heart out in front of over 700 people, and will be as proud and confident as is humanly possible.

Of course there will be video to commemorate this event. I, unfortunately, will miss the real thing because I have a conference for work that I'm hosting and we've been planning for over a year. So I'll have to enjoy it after the fact like the rest of my loyal blog followers. Don't worry, Brian, Muddy, Ben, Aunt Erin and Claire will be there in person to cheer her on.

She's excited because the cheerleaders are going to give her a rose after she sings. It's the little things, right?Can't wait to share the video with you all!

Ben's favorite movie

is "Die A Rumpy Kid." In case you don't speak Ben-ese, or at least haven't brushed up on it recently, that translates to "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." For some reason though, he's convinced it's called "Die a Rumpy Kid." He says it with such conviction sometimes it makes me think, "do I have that name wrong?"

Update on the bump

The silver nitrate hasn't changed it one iota. So Ben will be heading under the knife for plastic surgery. He's scheduled for his plastic surgery consult on Tuesday the 22nd. Wednesday he has his pre-surgical screening and then he'll actually go into surgery on Tuesday the 29th. I have no idea how intense a procedure it will be yet, but he's going to the OR, so I'm guessing it'll be full anesthesia, which I'd expect considering I doubt there's any feasible way for a child to lay still on a table while someone cuts into his cheek and pokes around. No idea about how long it will take or how they'll close the incision. Will update the blog after our appointment on Tuesday.

By the way, Ben couldn't care less that he's having it done. :)