A needed break!

After all the drama on Sunday evening with losing Gracie's tooth, Monday morning didn't start off any better. We woke up at 5:30am to a pool of blood where Gracie was sleeping (in our bed). After a major freak out, I cleaned her up and realized that she must have dislodged a blood clot that had formed. I was worried that she would need stitches, but after a quick trip to the dentist, found out it wasn't a major issue, especially since Gracie is on aspirin, which acts as a blood thinner. Other than putting Grace on an antibiotic just in case infection resulted, there was nothing the dentist wanted to do for her.

"Gracie's new smile."

A couple hours after she had gotten home from school on Monday, we noticed that she was developing pink eye. We quickly started the drops and kept her home from school Tuesday. I think both Gracie and I needed a lazy, fun day and luckily Morgan didn't have school either so me and all my kiddos just chilled all day long. We needed it.

After breakfast, we decided that we would fore go getting dressed and hang out in our pj's all day. We read books and played with playdoh---Ryan may have eaten some.

Then the kids had a snack and watched a show while I worked on a surprise for them upstairs.

We played in the tent, read more books and sang songs, until everyone was ready for lunch. After lunch I surprised them with jello-jigglers. Morgan loved them! Gracie was terrified and Ryan wouldn't touch them for the longest time, when he finally did he just poked at it and wouldn't even try it. Too funny!

We needed a day like this to get better and just be together--too bad dad had to work!

Lost tooth

If I was talking about Morgan losing a tooth, that wouldn't be too bad--she is 5 1/2 and it would only be a year or two till a new one came in. But no, poor Gracie lost a tooth. Now that she is tucked in bed after the traumatizing evening, its my turn to cry for her.

I know I sound silly, but really, poor Gracie! She is only 3 1/2 years old and will be toothless for at least 3 more years. But what gets to me more is that this is just another thing to make her 'different' from her peers. It's not all about my vainness, I think all parents want their children to fit in with other kids and Gracie just already has so many things that make her different.

I was peeling potatoes for dinner tonight and Gracie had gone into the front room. Ryan followed behind her and had stepped on her oxygen as she walked away. Gracie fell face first on the tile, hitting her mouth just right. There was blood everywhere! The mouth bleeds good on its own, for a kiddo on aspirin, it bleeds so much more and for so much longer. I tried to get her to suck on a cold rag, to no avail, but at some point she screamed allowing me to see she was missing a tooth. We found her tooth and for the next hour had to comfort her. If came near her or if we even mentioned her tooth, she screamed and freaked out.

We eventually got her to calm down and all she kept saying for the rest of the night was, "my tooth is better." Poor girl! No one wants any of there children to get hurt, but man, why does it seem that it is always Gracie?

Though I have cried and shed many tears of this lost tooth, I will get over it and soon we will love her toothless smile and it will become as much of a trademark as her pigtails and sweet little voice.

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CHD Awareness Week in review

I realize that CHD awareness week was over a month ago and I am quite behind, but I still wanted to post about what we did to bring awareness to the number one birth related defect. The following post is the video that I made for the presentations---I am grateful for another heart mom who let me 'copy' her video so I could include Gracie in it.

I was able to set up some presentations with some local organizations. My first presentation was for the Resident Assistants (RA) at BYU (the local university). I think this was by far my favorite presentation, perhaps because I felt that it brought the awareness to the ones who will be most affect by CHD's in the near future. I loved how receptive they were and how many of the RAs jumped on the opportunity to do a service project for the kids at Primary Children's hospital as opposed to 'traditional' Valentine Day activities.

My other two presentations were for school aged groups. One group was about 60 3rd graders. It was fun to have some of them wear oxygen and carry around a tank and try to do things that some heart kids have to do. I loved hearing how hard the experience was for them and how it made not only those who were wearing the oxygen stop and think, but all of the students seemed to get a sense of how hard it can be physically for our heart kiddos.

My last presentation was to a bunch of young men and young women from my church between the ages of 12-18. I don't know why, but that presentation seemed to stress awareness to how they can help heart kiddos in the future. I kept telling them that maybe one of them would become cardiologists or cardiothoracic surgeons--wouldn't that just be amazing! At the end of the presentation, this group also had the chance to help me with my service project that I have been working on for the last month.

Gracie spent more of her first year of life at Primary Children's hospital then she did at home. We were blessed by many donations from others and I wanted, not only to pay it forward, but also to be able to give heart kiddos something fun to do while they are stuck in bed and not have much energy for anything else. I am not very crafty, but wanted to make something, so I finally settled on making finger puppets.

My finger puppets are by far not perfect and I kind of feel silly taking them up to the hospital since they look kinda "ghettoish". But I figure, the kids aren't going to judge and hopefully they are just going to love to play with them, even if it is only for 10 minutes.

"Super hero puppets"

"Old MacDonald puppets"

"Princess puppets"

As previous post mentioned, a friend and I worked together to sell hair bows for IHH, I am happy to announce it was a great success. Tons of bow were sold and we even had a special donor buy 26 bows to donate to the hospital in Gracie's name!

I am excited to drop both the bows and puppets off to the hospital this Friday when we go up for our fetal echo. I hope that both of these things will bring a smile to the faces of so many sweet heart kiddos and their parents as they go through the trials that come with not having a perfect heart.