Reality is setting in...

It seems Jordan has tired of sitting on the couch while the world goes by. It's really pretty sad to see. She just seems tired of sitting and wants Mommy and Daddy to hold her all the time. She went two days with no napping - she cried for two hours both days for Mommy and then last night woke up at 3:30 crying for me. She wouldn't stop unless I held her and walked around. Finally I had to put her down and let her cry. I wonder if what she feels when she has to watch the other kids play and run around. I wonder what goes through her mind when I leave the room and she cries until her voice is hoarse.

Another thing I've noticed lately is her looking at her own hands. I saw her last week looking at her right hand (more severely affected) and turning it over, opening and closing her fingers etc. I wondered what she was thinking and if she was beginning to notice it doesn't look like ours. The other day picking up Noah from preschool a little girl said that Jordan's hand looked funny. Right away Jordan looked at her hand. I touched her hand and showed the girl and said, "It is a really cute hand isn't it? Look at it, it looks like a cute little glove is on there. It also works really well. She can do anything with it that you can. God made her that that way just like he made your hands the way they are. We are all different." I have no idea the "right" response when kids ask or say things like that. It's innocent and they are just curious but for Jordan's sake I want to respond appropriately. I love every inch of her exactly the way she is and I want her to know that in my responses as she grows.

My aunt sent $5 for each kid this week so tonight we had a big night out at Wal-Mart letting the kids pick out whatever they wanted to buy with their money. Jordan picked out a little set of horses - tiny little plastic horses in a pink case. She loves them. Noah wrestled with such a huge decision and was a wreck in the toy aisle unable to decide on ONE toy. He'd pick one then another then another and was totally frozen with indecision. It was so funny. He ended up with a hauler truck that opens up into a helicopter pad. Pretty cool. After that we went in search of one of those cheap quarter riding toys that is typically outside stores. Apparently San Clemente thought they were an eye sore because we looked all over and couldn't find one. They took them out! Second choice was to let the kids ride in the car shopping carts at Albertson's while we wandered around the grocery store. What a cheap family date night! Thanks Aunt Edna and Uncle Frank from North Carolina. You are so thoughtful and so kind. What a wonderful outing and such a distraction.

We have friends coming in town to stay at our house this weekend so hopefully that'll be good for Jordan to have people to play with and be entertained by. I am going work on her crawling and see if we can't get her moving around a bit without standing up.

Her cast change appt is for December 9th - one week early. Yay! He'll put on a short cast that she can walk in for another six weeks (mid to late January) then a brace for six months. He said on Monday that he doesn't expect it to function a whole lot better than before but it will look more normal and it was something that couldn't be left the way it was. She would eventually have been unable to walk. I'll just be glad when she is walking again. We'll call her hand surgeon in January to schedule her pre-op stuff for the next surgery on her thumb. Hopefully we can get that one done late winter/early spring. For that he'll take bone from her leg and creat a longer, more stable thumb on her left hand. Another pin to keep things in place and another cast but at least she'll be able to move around more.

Thanks for checking in - I'll post more pictures soon.

Jen