Vacation: Cousins

Well hello there internet!

Have you noticed that I'm stretching out my vacation for a whole extra week? It's meant to distract me from all the other craziness in my life this week, and it kind of works.

Anyway, tonight's vacation topic, Cousins:

The girls have exactly one cousin (I am an only child, and David has only one sister who has only one child), and his name is Kai. He is 10 months older than Elizabeth, and although the kids haven't spent much time together for cousins (he was born in Australia, lived there until he was 3 or so, and now lives in North Carolina), they are really fond of each other. He is not always the best example in my opinion, but the girls think he is amazing.

No really, I listened to Elizabeth say several times (in a very dreamy voice I might add), "Kaaaaaai, you're amaaaaaazing."

Anyway, here's some cousin pics for you.

Elizabeth and Kai with Gary Maurer, the magician whose show they were in:
Oh yeah, and Kai is crazy tall. Elizabeth is tall for her age, but Kai has both 10 months and practically 10 inches on her. He's got a super tall dad that he takes after.


Digging a hole:

Cousins hard at work:

Cousins in the bath:
I am a total party pooper and made everybody wear their swimsuits. My girls are not naturally modest, they like to be naked and they are completely uninhibited, but I do draw the line at being naked with their almost 7 year old cousin. Gotta draw the line somewhere after all.

And then I'm giving you three of the "officially posed" cousin pictures.

First, Lilli looks adoringly at Kai:

Second, nice smiles on everybody:
Did you see how much my girls look like Kai? To everybody who says Lilli looks like me, here's your proof that she gets her face just as much from David's side of the family.

Aaaaand, cousin hug! It kind of looks like it hurts:
I'm glad they got to visit!

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Next on my agenda, EEG and MRI updates.

We didn't get the best news this morning, Elizabeth's EEG was abnormal.

I was pretty much expecting that, so it wasn't a shock, but of course I was still hoping it would be normal. Of course if it was normal there would have been some other explanation for her "episodes", and that could have been worse. Now her neurologist thinks that the fainting might not have been just fainting after all, and might be related to what he is now definitely considering a seizure. He actually wants her to start medication pretty much immediately. David and I still have some talking to do, but I think we'll go for it. It's a very safe medication, they main side effect is that it can alter a child's mood, but I'd rather have a cranky non-seizing Elizabeth, then a happy Elizabeth who has a seizure that causes her to walk out into traffic or something. I'll have to give you more updates as I get them. The neurologist told me a lot of things, and I took notes, but they're pretty much a blur at the moment as it has been a really long day.

So, the MRI.

I think I was more nervous than she was about the IV stick. They had the obligatory child life specialist (Caroline this time) come in to talk to her about her "medicine straw", only this time they gave her a little "straw", a length of tubing, and a syringe and let her squirt all the nurses (and David and I) with water. Oh yeah and she got to take that apparatus home. Grrrrrreat. But she loved that. And she got to watch Sponge Bob, which is not on her approved list here at home, so she was actually in 7th heaven for a while, at least while the numbing patches were doing their thing. Because the ER had such a hard time getting in the IV, the sedation team put patches on both her wrist and inner arm in case one spot didn't work, and these were heavy duty patches that actually seemed to help this time. Oh, she screamed plenty (as my mom and I clutched each other off in the corner and daddy held her hand), but her nurse (Rachel! High five for awesome Rachels!) got the IV in on the first try. When Elizabeth was all hooked up I asked Nurse Rachel if she accepted hugs from strangers and hugged her without waiting for a reply. Totally invaded her personal space. Hah! But she didn't seem to mind.

Anyway, Elizabeth, even while screaming, had held her arm still, and I had told her if she did she could squirt me with her syringe thingy IN MY FACE. So I made good on that, and she was delighted. Shortly afterwards they hooked up the sedative and moved her bed down to the MRI unit. She was practically out by the time we got there, and it didn't take long after we arrived before she was completely sedated. David had to go back to work, but my mom waited with me. The pediatric intensivist who was leading the sedation team came to talk to me a couple times, and the time went by pretty quickly. They ended up giving her an additional sedative because the original one puts you to actual sleep, like nighttime sleep, and it turns out that she tics in her sleep. And also talks. And also moves around a lot. So she needed to be deeper under than they originally thought. But she did great, her vital signs stayed perfect the whole time, they got all the pictures of her brain they needed, and although she's in bed now she hasn't seemed to have had any problems with after effects of the sedatives other than being really sleepy and having a bit of a stomach ache (a side effect of the second sedative). The doctor said that although he isn't a radiologist he sees a lot of MRIs and there did not appear to be any kind of large mass in her brain, so that's a good thing. I have to say that the way he was phrasing things did lead me to believe that there might be small abnormalities with this scan too, so I'm looking forward to talking to Elizabeth's neurologist again tomorrow.

Oh yeah, her hospital booty? A stuffed bear, a stuffed snoopy, a bouncy ball from the "prize tower", the syringe and tubing thingy, apple juice, teddy grahams, and her name bracelet. She was a happy girl. And she got the movie she has been asking for for the last 6 months (Thomas the Tank Engine Misty Island Rescue) from me. There was a happy girl on my couch tonight eating popsicles (clear liquid) and watching her movie while cuddling her new friends.

Love that big girl of mine!

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Do you mind if I mostly skip my Anniversary Anecdote tonight? I'm wiped. I will say though, that David is an awesome daddy. He did what he had to do today to be there for Elizabeth when they put her to sleep, even though he thought he wasn't going to be able to leave work. I know it's pretty much a general good daddy thing to be willing to walk through fire, drop anything, throw yourself in front of a bullet for your kid, but he would, and I love that about him.