Cora's Surgery and Ten Months

So back in February. I noticed that Cora's eyes were starting to cross, mostly when she got sleepy.

It continued to get worse, moving to all the time, and after chatting with another pediatrician and then my sister about it (my nephew's eyes also cross) I decided to talk with our pediatrician about it. At Collin's well child visit, which coincided with Cora's Synergis shot, I talked with the doctor and we decided that it would be best for her to see the specialist. After a month's wait, we went up (the appointment was almost 3 hours long total) the doctor decided we would start with 8 hours of patching, as her right eye at that time had no vision in it. We also scheduled surgery for the next month, and so for 2 weeks we patched every day, for 8 waking hours. At the 2 week visit, the doctor congratulated us on diligently patching as she now had vision back in her right eye. June 6th was surgery day, and it was hard. Primary Children's brings back a lot of bitter-sweet memories for us, and I think we both lost it a bit when we handed over a sleeping Cora to the anesthesiologist's arms, as we made the walk we had walked with Ryker a few too many times, and also Jacob. The surgery was about an hour, and we were allowed back pretty promptly, where we found our tired and "hangry" little girl guzzling down some glucose water. 

We had to stay for about 3 1/2 hours after she got out, as there were a few breathing complications after she was extubated, and she needed a little help getting the bronchioles to expand a bit more. But we were exhausted at the day's end, as Mike so lovingly documented for our posterity. 

She will still need to have more surgeries, but she looks pretty dang good. 

This top picture was taken this last week, and the bottom two were taken the week of her surgery, so you can see the difference between what she was experiencing to the amazing work they were able to do for her. We will have glasses in the next little while (it could be a few months, it could be a few years) but we are in some excellent hands as far as her care goes.

This sweet girl also turned 10 months this last week, which is just crazy. She still sleeps solidly through the night, takes 3 or so naps a day, and began backwards crawling today, so I give her the next two weeks to be doing frontward crawling or some solid army crawling at least. She is the most talkative little girl, just babbling and babbling, and her whole 3 word repertoire is "mama", "dada", and "baba". She signed "mama" for me this last week, and I could not have been happier. Collin was an early talker, but she seems to have him beat. It's like she just has so much to say and cannot wait until she can tell you about it.