August 9, 2006

Leah is showing off her fingernails after our trip to Jiva Salon yesterday. Both of us had massages as well--they felt great! In case you cannot tell, there are gems on each fingernail with purple glitter polish.

Our days of summer vacation are quickly ending. School begins on the 21st for us. Leah will start Discoveries, an all day preschool program in Denver, and I will go back to Irving as the media specialist. The routine will be good for us, and we have started trying to get back in the swing of things by doing bedtime a bit earlier and using an alarm clock in the morning to wake up. The first day Chris was unaware of this new plan, so the Dora alarm clock (the kind with 2 big bells on the outside) was quite stunning to him as well. Unfortunately, even though it is loud, the girls take quite a while to even acknowledge it at all.

Leah's birthday is still coming up and she is counting down. We are hoping that for our big party on the 20th a few nurses and James will be coming from Iowa City. That will be a big suprise for Leah and it will be fun to see her reaction to this.

Today I went back to school briefly and Leah and Chloe both went to daycare-the first time they both could do this together since last December. The same crew was there, and I think Leah enjoyed the time of playing with her friends and seeing Karen. Her other thrill of the day was that I had new book order forms for her to look through. She is a good shopper and found a lot of new books that she "needs." We have made a good start of reading Charlotte's Web as well--she is sure Wilbur will not be killed because the farmer loves him (yeah, right).

We go back to Iowa City on August 17th for blood work --- an AFP reading. So, keep praying for really low numbers......we really like 2.1. She will also have an echocardiogram that day to watch for heart damage. She seems to feel great here at home and has been full of energy. We have done a lot of bike riding, trike riding, and have even been to the park a few times and done some hard playing there. We continue to be thankful for the thoughts and prayers of so many and hope you will continue to remember Leah each and every day as we continue on this journey. (P.S. thank you to the prayer circle in Pennsylvania for your prayers and the medal of courage--something Leah has a lot of!--we hope you continue to pray for her and her good health to continue).

Our next post should be about a BIG 5 YEAR OLD LEAH! We will probably bore you with some pictures as well. I know I promised I would not continue to post them, but Leah informed me that "people can see how cute I am!"

Another quick comment....Leah is quite interested in reading, so the other day she was looking at an old People magazine with the headline "I'm Gay!" She looks at it and asks me, "why does it say, 'I'm Gray?' " Thank goodness she cannot read everything with great accuracy yet!