Merry Christmas!

And a happy New Year!

IT'S OFF!!

Eden got her cast off today!!! Since October 12th, she has had 3 casts, and one foot surgery, and now we are D-O-N-E (well, at least for a while!)! We had a party, cake and all tonight to celebrate the great occasion! And, Eden had her first shower in 2 months (she's had baths, but anyone who has ever had a cast knows how rushed and uncomfortable it is trying to bath while keeping the leg out of water), and it is actually the first time her right leg from below the knee has been cleaned since she got her cast! Let me tell you how gross a leg and foot look after being in a cast for 2 months!!! She had a layer of dead skin on the bottom of her foot that looked thick enough to be a sole of a shoe, and it was YELLOW! It was disgusting! The good thing about having a five year old, though, is that she is old enough to scrub it herself, which is an improvement to me having to do all the scrubbing when they were babies and had to have casts! Her scars look really good and have mostly healed already. There were more than I knew of, actually. They had to make a few extra incisions to complete what they were doing, so she has several on the top of her foot, one on each side, and a couple of the bottom, and the one under her toe. But, really I don't think they are going to scar that bad in the long run because they all already look really good! The one that looks the least healed is actually the one under her toe, which is the only one that still has a stitch visible! The rest of her leg is still really dry, and she is having to work on flexibility on her ankle and toe (the poor toe now sticks almost straight out and doesn't bend at all-she has to manually bend it with her fingers and the doctor said it will eventually "remember it's a toe" in the next few weeks!), but we are just so glad her cast is off! She started walking on it right away while the doctor was still there, which I had been worried about since I knew her skin was going to be sensitive, and I wasn't sure after having the support of a cast for two months how well she was going to do walking, but she did great! Isaac had his feet looked at today as well, but he is still super flexible! He actually shows some bad signs, like pulling his big toe up first when he walks, but the doctor said he is so flexible that he's not worried about it for now! It's something we'll have to watch, but he has always been a lot more flexible than Eden. When Eden was Isaac's age, she was already stiff. We've known this surgery that Eden just had was a possibility and probably going to happen probably since Eden was Isaac's age, but we just kept trying little things to see if she would eventually be able to stretch it out from using it. So, hopefully this procedure isn't in Isaac's future! I'm so glad we got her cast off today too because with winter finally deciding to come and the weather turning so cold and snow finally falling a bit, I couldn't really cover Eden's cast very well, and so her toes were always hanging out and getting cold! I'm so glad she can wear socks on both feet now and shoes so her toes won't freeze anymore at school!