Before and After

Well, the sprinkler systems behaved themselves, so surgery happened this morning!

Once more, here's Ebby before:

And this morning, all dressed up in his surgical gown:

Even though we're no stranger to it, there's still something tough about watching them put your little ones to sleep, and when they're so tiny, laying that limp little body on that big bed in that big room full of equipment and walking away is just hard to do.

He woke up screaming heartily, but fell right back to sleep on my shoulder for another good 40 minutes I'd say.

That gave me enough time to finish what I'd been working on in the waiting room...you see, we typically have our kids look in their stockings on St. Nicolas' Day, which is December 6th. When Owen and Leah were little we called it Little Christmas. I've cross stitched a stocking for myself back in high school, then one for Matt, then Owen and Leah. My mom had done one from the same series for herself and one for my dad, but since she's learned to knit, she let me have those two for Reuben and Rinnah (pick out the old name, add the new!) I managed to get one done for Krassi and Evania, and then I picked the name out of mine for Bobbi. I'm still working on Gloria's. Maybe next Christmas! But for Ebby I just took Dad's and picked out the name (but kept the "E") and was able to finish up during surgery this morning! Because of the surgery, we'll have the kids dig into the stockings tomorrow instead of today.

So now, all the stockings are hung by the gas fireplace with care...

As you can see, Gloria's using a blank one again this year, and Mira's still using a blank one (which we put some candy for me and Matt, since Mira's not much into candy, and neither of us have our own anymore!) By next year maybe I'll have Gloria's real one done, and then I can start in on something for Mira. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do for her, though, because I've now used all nine that come in that series!! But seriously, that's pretty low on my Challenging Decisions list. I've got bigger fish to fry, and we'll cross that bridge when we get there!

All in all, Eben is doing quite well. He spent most of the afternoon sleeping on my shoulder, but perked up a bit around supper time and before bed. The eye looks pretty rough. But that's to be expected. There's a 20% chance that he'll need to repeat the surgery to get it just right (that seems high to me!), but we're hoping that we hit the 80% that are just right the first time.