Dinner Down Under

Look at this cute little baby girl in her pastel-ish rainbow stripes, ready to start her big day at school!

I finished one audio book this morning before work (it was a pretty interesting mystery kind of situation), and then started a new audio book after work (which is a sci-fi/dystopia/survivalist kind of situation), which I’m into so far.

Aunt Meggie checked out Emerson from school a little early today, and took her to run some errands with her around town. Emmie always likes riding in the buggy at the grocery store, and Meg told me today was no exception. Emerson likes to wave at the whole story, and force everyone to look at her, and basically pretend like she’s in her own tiny parade.

Then I met her and Uncle Bo and Grammy & Pepaw for dinner at Outback! They all got there early, and so my salad was waiting on me when I got there. Emerson ate practically an entire Outback-sized loaf of bread & butter all herself. Plus some bites of chicken tenders, broccoli and baked potato. Her little belly was poking out so much at the end of the meal!

We played around the house for a little bit, climbing up & down on the couch, and laughing at Pretzel, then she had lots of fun playing in the bathtub. Daddy came home, and she was super excited to see him. Then sucked down a bottle of hot milk, cuddled with mommy while I prayed over her, and was out in an instant.OK, so I’ve mentioned a few times before that Emerson has an upcoming surgery. She was born with a strange little thing on the right side of neck. An ENT doctor came to visit us when she was a couple days old, before we even left the hospital. They did an ultrasound and an MRI on it then, and have done one more ultrasound since then. We’ve continued to see Dr. Whitaker (at Tally ENT) every 3-4 months for regular check-ups this past year, just to make sure it wasn’t changing. However, they still don’t know exactly what it is. They’ve said it could be “misplaced” cartilage or even a “dermoid cyst.” Either way, he’s not super worried about, but he doesn’t want to leave it there. By removing it now, there’s no chance it could grow bigger, or grow into the muscle, or become infected. So they’ll put my baby girl to sleep tomorrow, and surgically remove it. And then of course they’ll biopsy it, just to make sure everything is all clear.

We scheduled the day a few weeks ago, but didn’t have specifics. The surgical nurse called me this morning, to finally give us some details for tomorrow. (Below are the notes I took while we talked.) I plan to wake her up again tonight around 11:30 pm for a late-night bottle, to fill up her belly a little bit more since she can’t have a bottle when shew wakes up in the morning. We have to be there at 7:30, and hopefully they take her back quickly. It won’t take more than an hour, and we’ll get to go home shortly afterwards. They won’t put stitches on the outside, so there’s nothing to worry about her accidentally messing with. And the doctor has said that there will be the tiniest scar, that will most likely go away eventually.

Here are a few photos and a video I tried to take of it tonight after dinner, before it’s permanently removed. It’s tricky to photograph, because unless she’s looking hard left, it’s virtually hidden. She’s also never still, so that makes it tricky too. It’s small, and white, and kind of looks like dull fish hook under her skin.  It’s not exactly soft, but not super hard either, but you can kinda squish it around and move it back and forth. She has never even acted like she was aware of it, except for a few very random times we’ve seen her kind of playing with it/pinching it. But it doesn’t seem to hurt or bother her.

Anyways, that’s a lot of information, but I know I wanted to write it all down, so when we look back years from now like, “Hey, remember when Emmie was only 1-year-old and she had that surgery?”, we’ll have it all here. Plus, I know some of you sweet friends & family & readers were wondering what was going on too, so there you go.  I’ve been pretty good about it, but I’m getting some serious anxiety now that we’re so close. So if you could, would you please, please, please pray for us all in the morning? We’ve prayed for rest for Emmie & the nurse & doctors tonight, and clear eyes & head and stable hands for Dr. Whitaker in the morning. I’ll definitely update here again tomorrow night, but until then, we appreciate all your thoughts & prayers!