Willow's Winning Ways!

Today marks one week since Willow's surgery. She is doing great! For all the vim and vigor she displays in her life, she is really an amazingly compliant child too. We have marveled at her sleep habits since we returned from China. She goes down with a quick song, and up till a week ago, a bottle of warm milk...without a peep of complaint. We blow a kiss, say "Night-night, I love you", and that's IT! Tom came home last night 5 minutes after she was put to bed and she greets him from her crib with a smile and their traditional, "Ni Hao Ma", and when he leaves the room, again, not a complaint! The same for her naps... When she is awake, she is FULLY AWAKE and Busy as our other posts have described. But at nap time I simply kiss her, plunk her in her crib (which she can now escape from BTW) and she lies down to sleep. If she plays for awhile we simply go in the room, tell her to lie down and she does!! She usually sleeps for 3 hours for her naps, but post-surgery naps have been 4+ hours! We still pinch ourselves as we have never had a sleeping "angel" like this. We think the Lord is having MERCY on us in this department and we never cease to be grateful!!

She has Tylenol with Codeine every 4-5 hours and eats a lot of pasty foods as her palate heals, other than that she is her old self. Poor Poppy struggles with a fair amount of jealousy with all the additional attention this surgery and recovery have brought to her sister...there is nothing new under the sun folks!

I am attaching a picture of me and my Mom. Due to circumstances outside of her control, she wasn't able to raise me past the age of 5, She is a very sweet woman and I had the opportunity to see her a couple of weeks ago in San Diego. My half-brother, Marshall, was married and it was a great time to reunite with family that I don't see very often.

I had to include this picture of Poppy with our 15 year old cat Penelope or "Kitty" as we so creatively call her! Kitty has been sleeping with Poppy these past couple of weeks and it is so sweet. Penelope is a gentle, quiet natured cat and Poppy loves to wrap her up in blankies. Amazingly, kitty doesn't seem to mind one bit!