Tonight we went out to dinner at Fiesta del Burro Loco. As we were leaving Nadia stopped to do a little dance.
Amelie’s Hand Video
I have been getting lots of questions from people who can’t “see” Amelie in person how her hand is doing. I took this video of her hand 2 weeks and 2 days after the cast came off. AMAZING!!
The Cast Comes Off!
Grammie came over to watch Nadia (which she LOVED) and we headed over to Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children to have the cast removed and see Amelie’s hand. I didn’t sleep well at all the night before. At one point I was up for 45 minutes wondering how it was going to look and if it was going to hurt and so on. I wasn’t worried, it was really more like how excited I get before we go somewhere on vacation.
Once again we were impressed by the staff and volunteers of Scottish Rite and their love for the kiddos. They are also very efficient!
Amelie in the waiting area.
I think this is so cute.
Waiting for the nurse to come take the cast off.
Here is the video. It’s just under 6 minutes and I really made this for Amelie when she grows up. I want her to be able to see the reaction she had when it was being removed and when she first saw her hand. I hope no one gets jeebed out.
Here I am being jeebed out at her picking the scabs off. Amelie DOES NOT like her hands to be dirty.
Sweet girl!
We couldn’t be happier or more impressed with what they accomplished at Texas Scottish Rite. They do have the best hand surgeons in the world! I was overwhelmed by emotion and gratefulness to God seeing those little fingers flex and move independently.
She has been in quite a bit of pain whenever she accidentally bangs it or puts pressure on it. The first night she would pick something up or climb on the couch then whimper, show me her hand and want a kiss. It was clearly catching her off guard that the stuff she wanted to do was causing her pain. She got used to the cast banging around and she has been carrying her arm a bit like it still has the cast, but that will fade more and more. She has no official occupational or physical therapy – she only needs to play.
We will take her in for a check up in about six weeks. Here is what we understand might happen in the future (but we don’t know any of this for sure, or when it would happen): another surgery on her left pinky finger to free it up from the base. A bone graft on the left middle finger. A touch up to the left hand fingers when she is older – plastic surgery type to make them look smoother. Also surgery on her right hand to separate the three partial fingers.
Thanks for all the many prayers and encouragement we received through all of this.
For your viewing pleasure
I realized pretty quickly that if I don’t keep up with the videos now that we have 2 kids, I may never catch up. So here is the first round that I had some time edit together; 3 from the China trip and one from home.
The first one is of Nadia at the Novotel Peace in Beijing. She said, “Stay at the bottom of the stairs mommy and watch my show.” It was SO FUNNY that Nadia did this in public. It’s so unlike her if people are watching.
This is the girls playing a little game in the hotel in Ningxia. Notice that Amelie is totally silent which is how she was for the first days with us.
Here is Nadia and the Hameloth girls on one of our sightseeing days in Guangzhou.
This is from last week, about 5 weeks after Amelie joined our family.