We started this unit study ages ago and finally finished this week. The main thing the girls would say about this unit was that they LOVED the videos of the tigers, especially the baby tigers and swimming tigers.
Here are the girls watching some of the tiger videos.
As with the other Amanda Bennett Unit Studies, it was broken up into 5 days.
What is a Tiger?
Getting to know Tigers.
Where are the Tigers?
The Science of Tigers.
Cool Things about Tigers.
“Spider Bat” completed this part of the Tiger Unit. Ha ha!
Even though this unit took us much longer than usual, we did have a great time. Amelie thought that tigers with webbed toes for swimming were the best. Nadia thought the Siberian Tigers who lived in the cold were the coolest.
On December 20th we had a one year check up with the surgeon at Texas Scottish Rite hospital, since they told us in December 2011 they wanted to let her hands grow for a year. We arrived and got checked in and the admissions woman said that Southwest Airlines had donated pillow pets for the patients. Amelie chose a lady bug and then the woman noticed Nadia and let her pick one too. As we walked down the hall to the radiology department some more people where there handing out large helium balloons. Amelie was given a panda and Nadia a jet. So the girls were excited before we even made it to our first appointment.
Amelie playing around while we wait on the hand team appointment.
Dr. Oishi came in the room with his nurses and a surgeon from Belgium who I think is training at TSRH. He had Amelie play with some toys and then he felt for the bones in her hands. He showed us the x-rays and told us what he would like to do for her this time around. We agreed and his nurse returned to ask if we could be ready on January 2nd. We agreed and the hospital got everything set up.
We arrived at Scottish Rite at 7 am and went straight to the Day Surgery area. The nurse Anne led us over to our waiting area and told one of us to head downstairs and get Amelie signed in. Everything that followed was just like her first surgery. She even had the same anesthesiologist who came to speak with us in advance. They weighed her and checked all her other vitals and we tried to keep her busy until they were going to give her the “goofy juice.” Last time she had only been home with us about 6 weeks when she had surgery and didn’t speak English at all. This time she was quite hilarious once the relaxation kicked in.
This was shortly before surgery. We changed her into her gown and she was being silly with the Magna Doodle.
They came to get her and told us we could take a pager/buzzer and leave our cell number with them. We headed downstairs to the Crayon Cafe for breakfast. We both got gigantic omelets that were a whopping 2.50 each 🙂 All the while we were receiving lots of love, prayers and encouragement via FB and text messages. About 90 minutes later they called and said that the surgeon was done and wanted to speak with us, so we went back to the day surgery area. He told us that her foot was really easy to do. Then he told us everything he did with her hand. They released her pinkie, cleaned up the banding to try and make it look “prettier” and put a temporary pin in her middle finger to try and fuse the two bones together.
She woke up in recovery and they brought her out, but she fell asleep again pretty quickly. We were surprised and relieved to see that she didn’t have a cast on her leg. Instead she has to wear an ace bandage on it for just five days. While waiting on meds and for her to be discharged, the PA reminded us about taking care of the cast. She also told us that because of the pin in her finger she will now have to wear the cast for five weeks instead of three. Then we return to have the pin “blown out” and see if the fuse worked. I am interested to see how they do that, but they did tell us that the key to it is for us parents to be calm while they blow it out. I am sure that will be it’s own blog post once we actually see what happens.
Being silly with Daddy while I sign documents and wait for her discharge.
Amelie did a great job and Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children is amazing! We are also thankful for all the love and prayers for our family.
I got this idea from The Imagination Tree site. If you have little kids and haven’t been to her site, you should go! I dyed the rice with food coloring, stirred in some cinnamon and gold glitter and added all the fun items. I made it so that everything in the pan was yellow or gold. I even buried some chocolate coins which I let them eat when they found them. Before letting them see it, I tried to bury almost everything in the rice.
They were really excited and told me this was so neat. I gave them spoons and containers and let them have at it. They played for nearly an hour and rice ended up all over the kitchen floor, but it was easy to clean up! The more they stirred, the more the cinnamon smell wafted up and they kept telling me it smelled so good. Nadia created stories from the stuff she found and acted them out. But Amelie was the most content to pour the rice from container to container which was fine by me.
This is such a great idea and fun for the kids – I plan on trying another one of the Imagination Tree sensory bins in the future.
