If you’ve been reading here for any length of time, you’ve seen this one.  But I think it’s always worth a repeat.  If for nothing else than to remind their mother that they DO love each other. Some days it can be easy to forget.

Did you know Avery likes to sing? Sort of? Here you go. This is her favorite song right this minute.

Avery and her daddy sound JUST LIKE They Might Be Giants. Here’s a comparison for you–

Uncanny.  Or something. Heavy on the something.

Anyway.  John and John, if you ever need a very young back-up singer, do give us a ring.  Avery is ready.  Need an audition?  We’ll see you March 6.  I know one little girl whose head might pop off from all the excitement of seeing “The ABC Men” in person. The other one will probably pitch a fit and have to be escorted out. That’s just how we roll.

It took Zoe eighteen days before she started “redecorating”.  I think she showed remarkable restraint.

(It still functions perfectly as a house for assorted small cats, livestock, and dinosaurs.  The human dolls go neglected.  Such is life in this house.)

So she cried.  All.  The.  Way.  Home.  Not just a little crying, but the kind of crying that makes little babies huff and puff and cough.  BRUTAL crying.  Guess who doesn’t like crying?  Other than me?  Avery.  So Avery tried to be the good big sister and help Zoe out.  It went a little something like this.

Avery:  Zoe, be more cheery!

Zoe:  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

Avery:  It’s OK, baby!  We have new fish!

Zoe:  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

Avery:  Zoe, listen to me.  Blah blah blah unicorns blah lollipops blah stegosaurus blah blah herbivore blah blah Isn’t that cool, Zoe?

Zoe:  (Practically growling) Don’t talk to me EVER!  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Yes, that is really what she said.  I know this because I asked Avery to repeat it.  “Zoe told me to not talk to her ever.  Hmmph!”

I’m quite certain this can be blamed on Mike’s genes.  This kind of attitude personality trait could never have come from my side of the family.

What?  Why are you looking at me like that?  Here.  Look at this instead.

It has nothing to do with anything, but it is a very good reminder of why I haven’t sold Zoe to gypsies on any given day.  Yet.

Let me stop right here and remind you all that my child is not graceful.  She does not have an athletic bone in her body.  Gravity is not her friend.  As a matter of fact, gravity is almost always working against her.  She comes by it honestly though; I am the same way.  (Did you see me just use a semi-colon?  I know.)

I took swimming lessons once.  I was told to do “freestyle swimming”.  So I swam like a frog.  Because that’s what I liked.  And it was FREEstyle swimming, right?  After the instructor showed me how I was supposed to swim (for the record, a Front Crawl), I was totally over it.  Somehow I never had to go back.  My parents are awesome like that.

OK.  Back to Avery.  I wasn’t sure what to expect with swimming.  I thought that maybe, just maybe, being in the water would help her with that whole gravity thing.

I’m going to interject here that I love my daughter very, very much.  I am always there to pick her up after she falls.  Which is often.  Moving on.

She’s doing okay at swim class.  But I don’t believe she’s the next Dara Torres.  Avery has this problem in classes such as this.  The problem is that she gets SO EXCITED about it all that she can’t really listen to the instructor.  So she just kinda does her own thing.  She did this in ballet.  She did this in soccer.  I’m beginning to wonder if she’ll ever outgrow it.  So while all the other kids are laying flat and still to “float” with the teacher?  Avery is kicking as hard as she can.  Because hello?  She’s in the water!  Water is fun!  We show our excitement with lots and lots of movement!  Not lying still!  Lying still is BORING!

Tonight in class, one of their drills was to jump from the side of the pool into the instructor’s arms.  My ever-cautious child was the only one to sit down on the side and THEN thrust her little body into the pool.  When the teacher dunked her a few minutes later?  Avery was the only one who came up screaming.  Do you know why?  She was SO EXCITED about the dunking she had her mouth wide open.  Again, this is how we show our excitement!

But here’s the thing.  The whole time she’s in that pool, she’s smiling.  She’s bobbing up and down, laughing with the other kids, and having the best thirty minutes of her entire day.  She may never win a gold medal in, well, anything, but she does have fun.

As we were leaving the Y, she pointed at a large telephone tower across the street and exclaimed, “Mommy!  It’s the EIFFEL TOWER!  Is this France?”  And I was reminded that no matter what, she will always have that big beautiful brain to fall back on.

Really, she might totally fall on it.  Because the child can fall over just about anything.

I’ve put off writing an update post for several reasons.  The main reason?  If I write it all out and shoot it over the interwebs, then it’s really real.  Then it’s really our life.  But I feel like I need (most of) the whole story written down.  Maybe for the girls someday?  Maybe so they can understand why Mommy and Daddy were so preoccupied in late 2009 and 2010?  I don’t know.

Here’s the short story on her condition.  Her liver is failing.  And the darn thing is bound and determined to bring down all her other organs with it.  Her kidney function is reduced.  Her heart is under a lot of pressure.  Her gallbladder is giving out, but she’s too unstable for gallbladder surgery.  Because of the failing liver, she suffers bouts of hepatic encephelopathy which give her the symptoms of dementia and sometimes put her in a semi-comatose state.  She’s also retaining a lot of fluid in her abdomen, making her very uncomfortable.  She is too sick for a liver transplant, so she’s being treated with medication to keep that troublemaker liver in line.

Her current saga all started with a case of pneumonia.  She woke up one morning unable to breathe.  That was November 18.

Grace spent half of November and all of December in the ICU.  For a couple of those weeks, she didn’t recognize her sons.  For a couple of days in those weeks, she was on a ventilator to help her breathe.  She had a chest tube for the duration of her stay in the ICU.  It was a complete roller coaster.  We never knew what to expect or what was going to happen next.

Right before Christmas, she started turning around.  She woke up.  She was transferred to a regular room for a few days.  And then she was transferred to a nursing home to begin physical therapy.  When a person has laid in a bed for six weeks, they lose the ability to walk.  They lose the ability to do simple things like brush their hair.  It’s amazing how quickly our muscles forget their given purpose.

So on New Year’s Eve, she moved in at the nursing home.  She began physical therapy.  It wasn’t more than four days before she was back in the hospital.  That visit was short.  Back to the nursing home, back to physical therapy.

We took the girls to visit her.  It was the first time they had seen their Grandma since October.  I was naturally concerned about them seeing her like this.  Laid up in a bed, in an unusual place, with unusual people sitting in wheelchairs out in the hallway.  I was worried that they would be scared.  I was worried that they would say inappropriate things.

My girls?  They did beautifully.  They hugged their Grandma willingly and enthusiastically.  Avery sang a few songs, did a couple of her dances, and made her Grandma smile.  Zoe gave her that million dollar smile and Grace’s heart pretty much melted right there on the spot.  Did you know that Zoe is the spitting image of her Daddy at that age?  Truth.  Needless to say, Grace finds this fact absolutely charming.  It was a good visit, and I was taught a valuable lesson.  One I keep having to learn over and over again.

Never underestimate your children.  They will always, always surprise you.

Fast forward to this week.  Grace was sent back to the hospital after becoming unresponsive Saturday night.  She is still there, hoping to be discharged very soon.  Mike was with her on Sunday and he spent the day with her today.  They ate dinner together while she sat on the edge of the bed.  She sat on the edge of the bed. It sounds simple, but it’s kind of a big deal.  Her mind is completely clear.  Mike had a really, really good visit with her.

Did I mention she also stood up?  That’s an even bigger deal.

The plan now is to get her transferred to a facility closer to my brother in law and his family.  If all the stars align correctly, she’ll be discharged from the hospital and go directly to the new facility.  We’re also having to jump through a lot of hoops to make sure that Medicaid will cover her stay.  To that end, we’ll be emptying out her apartment this weekend, dealing with some bank stuff, selling her car, so on and so forth.  Mike met with a lawyer yesterday who gave him a very precise plan to follow to ensure that everything happens correctly and quickly.  My husband loves a good plan.  I could literally see the weight being shaken off his shoulders when he got home last night.

Speaking of my husband, he has been truly incredible through all of this.  I’m sitting here trying to think of adequate words to describe some of the things he’s done/said/made happen.  Guess what?  All the words I can think of are much too small.  I knew he was a good man before, but watching him take care of his mom has pretty much turned him into Superman in my eyes.

Remember that support system I told you about?  They are needed now more than ever.  We are truly so blessed to have so many people in our lives that want to help.  We have simple goals–Make sure that Grace is taken care of.  Make sure that she’s comfortable.  Make sure that she’s happy.  Through this entire ordeal, one thing that has remained constant is her good spirits.  When she’s awake, she is her normal jovial self.  I know that this whole experience has been so hard on her, but she manages to see the bright side of it all.  It is truly amazing.

So that is that.  The exceedingly abridged version of what’s going on in our little world.  It is all-consuming and exhausting, but we’re making it through together.  And you know what?  Having these little girls laughing and dancing in our faces at the end of the day makes it all just a TAD easier.

The day we said Goodbye.

Avery has adjusted well–understands that Sushi is gone and can’t come back.

But she keeps telling us we need a third cat.

I keep telling her she’s bananas.

I know, I know.  I should have gotten some blue icing.  But I didn’t.  Do you love the candy letters?  Mike does.  And Avery does.  Zoe’s indifferent.  Avery helped with the baking.  Her contribution to the decorating?  Sticking her finger in the icing while I did all the heavy lifting.  This is what it looked like when Mike got home.

He didn’t care about the lack of blue icing.  Mainly because when we cut it, it looked like this.

All my husband cares about is chocolate.  He passed this gene on to his daughters.  He’s helpful like that.

I really, really wish I had pictures of Avery and Zoe with chocolate all over their sweet faces.  But I was too busy putting chocolate into my sweet face to pull out the camera.  Next time, y’all.