“I want to go outside!”

If there is one phrase I hear the most from Maggie, it is this one. She was born for the outdoors. She loves playing with sticks, watering the flowers, luring bunnies with clover and walking around like she owns everything in sight. Thankfully she has older siblings who love the outdoors as well, and a big sister who can show her rolly pollies and the intricacies of mud pies. To beat the heat, they all like to venture out right after breakfast, while Carlos and I go about our duties. This morning I heard Maggie’s cute little voice from outside, “Mama? I sit on your plant. I sorry!”. Nothing like a remorseful three year old.

Maggie’s language skills are a favorite among everyone in our family. We all appreciate her rendition of a robot (it is quite good..) “I not Maggie, I a robot! I need breakfast.” or after she has a good cry when we tell her “no”, she walks back in the room to say, “I happy now!”. The most recent thing that made me laugh happened while I was putting her to bed. She was not interested in the process but was humoring my efforts by trying to put me to bed. She began singing a song that her brother made up, “Go to sleep… go to sleep…go to sleep little Maggie, go to sleep… go to sleep, and tomorrow we will do it all over again.” As Maggie sang to me, she decided that it was the appropriate time to work on her speech therapy right in my face. “Go to sleeee-Puh, go to sleee-Puh, go to sleeee-Puh, MAMA!” When she had finished and it was safe to open my eyes, she gave me a look that begged me to acknowledge how funny she was. I did.

The last time I wrote we had just had Maggie’s eye surgery. We went back a few weeks later for a follow up and her six-month craniofacial clinic. It was fantastic news again, no surgeries need to be scheduled. My favorite moment was when our neurosurgeon looked at Maggie and said, “We really only did one skull surgery?!” I was happy to say, “YES!”.

My second favorite moment was when we went to visit Maggie’s orthopedic. We had seen him almost a year previously to see if Maggie had any Apert related malformation in her hips, knees and ankles and to figure out why she wasn’t walking yet. He had assured us her joints and muscles were all within normal range and to just give it time. We ended up getting a walker and orthotics and she took off before her orthotics even arrived. This time we were following up to talk about Maggie’s walk and our concern that her leg was giving way at times. He examined her and had her walk up and down the hallway unassisted. We came back in the room and he said, “How long has she been walking?” I did a quick calculation in my head, “About six months.” His eyes widened, “Really, only six months? She is walking amazing for six months, I couldn’t tell that she was that delayed.” He assured us that Maggie’s walking was great and that what we were seeing was a result of her bone being slightly twisted. Another win!

We go up next month to see her eye doctor to get her regular examination which will help us see if the eye surgery helped her vision in any way. We always appreciate your prayers, because as you can see, Maggie receives them readily. She never turns it down. In fact last week I walked in on her praying for her own foot. “Jesus, make boo-boo go way, THE END.”

We keep you all in our prayers as well. May God make all your boo boos go away, so you can rejoice in every little moment of progress and healing.