Thursday, May 10, 2007

Tubes


Well, Gretchen got her ear tubes yesterday... It was scary for us but after she slept off the anesthesia, she seemed good as new again! Whew!

Thursday, May 3, 2007

No more sleeping! (April 2007)


We have had a busy month! We took Gretchen to the zoo for the first time. We had some unseasonably warm weather one weekend so we took that opportunity to see the baby polar bear at Brookfield Zoo. Gretchen was pretty thrilled to see an elephant. And because she has a beanie baby goose, she really wanted to get close to the geese walking around Brookfield. Last weekend we went to Great America for a preview night. While it wasn’t Gretchen’s first time at Great America (Six Flags), it was the first visit that she could enjoy Great America (and boy did she!). We took her to the little kid’s area and she actually went on a ride by herself. Steve and I were white knuckled, ready to jump the fence to get her if needed. Of course she was fine and enjoyed every minute of the ride.

Gretchen’s favorite word these days is OUTSIDE. As in “I go outside?” We bought her a sandbox/water table that she really likes to play with outside (she has learned to say sandbox as well). She enjoys moving all the sand from the sand area to the water section of the table. She can spend an hour doing that! We also got her a little picnic table for the yard though now she would rather climb into our patio chairs. Sigh…. You see all these things in March’s
pictures.

We’re still doing some home improvement. We finally got our foyer tiled and hope to have the kitchen and family room floor replaced in May. We also started a real vegetable garden in the backyard. We had been doing container gardening for the last few summers but we decided to really do some growing this year. We planted broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, string beans, zucchini, and peppers. I can’t wait for the summer now!

Gretchen has been battling constant ear infections for the last 5 months so we saw an Ear Nose and Throat doctor. It turns out she’ll be getting tubes in her ears May 9th. We’re a little nervous but we think it’s the best thing to do considering the number of ear infections she gets and since it’s a vital age for language development. The fluid on her ears could be compromising her hearing and thus her language skills. It will be interesting to see how fast she learns words after the surgery (yes, tubes in the ears is surgery) since she’s flexing her vocabulary muscles daily. My favorite example of this happened last weekend. I told Gretchen to go see Daddy one morning to wake him up (I know, I’m mean). She went in and said “Wake up Daddy”. Then she said “No more sleeping”. Steve and I were shocked. We didn’t teach her that but she learned it from somewhere! We really have to watch what we say.

After her surgery, I’ll post here to let everyone know how it went! Until then, keep our little pumpkin in your prayers….