Spontaneous Sign

Addy uses several signs and she will do "more, all done, dog, bath and star" pretty much on her own when it's pretty much a routine thing we are doing. However, today she and I headed to Target before her doctors appointment and I was looking at things to buy for a friend's new baby. We were in the bath aisle and I saw these little turtles that I thought were cute. I showed them to Addy and she smiled and touched them and held onto them for a minute. I picked them back up and put them back on the shelf. When I turned around to her she was signing "PLEASE"!!! It was too cute and so spontaneous and appropriate!! (yes the above pic was prompted!) So yes, Addy has new bath turtles to play with! I'm so thrilled!

We also got good news at the doctor. We saw Addy's surgeon's physician assistant today. Her surgeon just announced his retirement!! He is gone and we are heartbroken! He has performed all of Addy's surgeries (except T/A) since we brought her home! He was the only doctor that embraced us when we brought this medically fragile child, that we were adopting, to him. He really made us feel like that no matter what we were doing the right thing and Addy was a lucky little girl. He never made us feel like what we were doing was a mistake. We did have others that treated us that way! Anyway, we are sad he is gone but happy that he gets to be home with his wife to raise his twins that were just born within the last several months. What a blessing to them! Anyway, the good news is is that Addy's little bottom is doing really well and we can drop the dilations down to three times a week! We go back in five weeks and if things are still good we can quit! Woo hoo! Addy had developed quite a bit of scar tissue and at one point we were told that the doc may have to go back in and remove it surgically! So glad that's not the case! The PA also told me that she just went to a conference in Chicago for anal malformations (sounds like fun huh?) and got some awesome information on potty training these kiddos! She said when it looks like we will start training Addy that we will be able to work with her so she can do some things medically to help Addy out! Nothing invasive from what I gathered but I'm glad there is some information out there. Kiddos with anal issues usually are much harder to bowel train since they were not formed correctly. We are really hoping that Addy won't always be in a diaper due to bowel issues so I'm glad there's hope!