Happy Valentine's Day to you all! We had a great day with Jordan finally eating better and much happier. Noah and Jordan's friends, Ivy and Gabe came over to play and make (actually just eat) Valentine cookies.

Jordan is much happier lately and is doing much better. It's still a challenge to get her to take all of her bottles and it's a difficult balance between giving her enough rice cereal in her milk to help with the reflux but not so much that she can't make room for more - if you know what I mean. :)

One other problem is that her skin keeps coming off with the steri-strips we have to use to keep the nose stints in. They get clogged with her spit up so she can't breathe and we have to change them but every time we change them the skin on her cheeks gets more raw.

Today Jordan got her second cast change and the doctor opted for a short cast. She still has about four more weeks with the cast on. He said that there will be no problem with her walking! Praise the Lord! He also said her z-plasty, to smooth out the band in her leg, is healing well. He also said that the bones are not fused together on her hand. He thinks he will just need to cut the webbing and do some plastic work on them and we'll have more to work with than we first thought. He's unsure how long they'll be after the seperation but it does look better than we first thought.

Here's a summary for prayers and praises...

+ Praise that the doctor is confident that she'll walk without problem with the help of physical therapy.

+Praise that we are two weeks down on these cast changes and that it's now a short cast, meaning we can put regular pants on her (not so obvious, less people staring).

+Praise that the z-plasties (spelling?) are healing well and are pretty smooth. We were hoping the back of the leg would be smoother but we are still very pleased.

+Praise that her reflux is much more manageable with the new medicine and that we are thinking we can now avoid an upper G.I. (barium swallow with an x-ray).

- Pray that her reflux will get even more under control and that sooner rather than later, she won't need medicine for it.

- Pray that she will begin napping on a schedule during the day. At this point she only cat-naps and mostly wants to be held.

- Pray that her skin will hold up under the strips that hold her nose stints in and that they won't get so clogged with spit up that I need to change them in order to get her to eat. They've become such a problem but we are supposed to keep them in for six months.

*********Thanks for checking in again!