The first solo mission.....

When we left Shriners on the 24th, I was ditched back at my in-laws' to finish recovering from my surgery and by Sunday catch a puke bug :( & my mom took the girls to her house for the remainder of their school vacation.

While I wished I had taken a day off of work to 'enjoy' my no-kiddo time, i'm glad I didn't because whenever Jeremy & I weren't at work we were whining that we missed our girls.

The girls had a blast the entire time of course. They made cookies, whoopie pies and cooked their own pancakes! They went to the Children's museum, went sliding when we had our freak snowstorm, went to the movie theater to see The Lorax and topped off their vacation with a trip to an indoor waterpark in the White Mountains. Spoiled much!?

While this was going on.....

Tayt had her anchor "sticker" on but was using her harness. With the challenges of an overtired child and getting her harness set up after being at the hospital all day and then the wonder/worry about how super crazy sensitive Taylor's skin is, she went to Grandmama's & I kept the other part to her anchor.

The "sticker" stayed on her until Wednesday night (6 days), and that was after probably 12 tubbies (we don't have a tub so they find any excuse to take several tubbies whenever they go anywhere else). She did have some redness around where the anchor sticker was and a little zit. It looked a little not good especially to super-protective Grandmama & Auntie Julie who aren't used to seeing Tayt's skin freak out from everything on a daily basis. But it wasn't bad.

The bulk of that week, from my understanding and the pics i've seen, she didn't seem to wear her new Armie much at all. Oh and it's not New Dora or Pink Dora, it's Boots Armie as she keeps reminding me. I'm not sure why she didn't wear it.... I can't tell you how many nights I have to force her to take her Armie off before bed. The only thing I can think of is her harness was really loose when she came home, so maybe it was annoying her but I don't know.

Tuesday the 6th finally came and after Jeremy & I got home from work, fixed our frozen-again-but-not-supposed-to-be-able-to-freeze water spout, we finally made the journey to get our girls. We had a delicious dinner when we arrived and then packed everything up quickly and hit the road again. We arrived back here around 11pm. Come 6am I was not in the mental state to set up the anchor so Taylor wore Boots with her harness. Everyone at school loved her Dora dress (the one that matches her Armie) and they were so excited to hear about her adventures & the anchor system.

The next morning (Thursday) I braved my first solo anchor attachment.

It didn't go so well.

I did as instructed with the rubbing alcohol, compound tincture etc. Even the placement was good. But on the way to school Taylor said her sticker was falling off. After seeing this thing stay on for almost a full week I knew there was no way it was coming off.

We get to Taylor's school and she proves me wrong.

Leave it to me to find out the hard way that when the tincture package says "discard after single use", it doesn't mean "use me, save me for 12 days and use me again".

Sooooo, yeah.

The sticker was now turned sideways and her fragile back skin was not happy about it. After a quickly failed attempt to fully remove the sticker, we left it alone and put on her Dora armie (the old one) for the day.

I picked Tayt up around 230 to bring her to OT at the hospital with Tim (he's the OT whose LAE) and he is sooooo excited to hear and see this anchor system and her new Armie. And he's quickly saddened to hear I messed up so he would only get to see her new Armie and not the anchor yet :(

I had tried again while waiting for her appointment to remove the sticker with no luck and a few whines. And at that point I was a bit worried about her having to wear it crookid for a bunch of days until it came off on it's own.

When we got back home I had her hop in the shower and began to search for anything I could think of to get the sticker off of her. Much to my surprise, it was so incrdibly easy to remove it. I tried Johnson & Johnson baby soap, that didn't work. I thought about how slimmy conditioner is so I tried that. Poof! Not even any real effort and the sticker came right off without a peep from Taylor.

I figured i'd give her skin a rest after torturing the poor kid with my stupidity and we will try to attach it properly tomorrow.

I am also debating about changing her band back to the weaker one until she is used to the new set up and maybe trying the weaker of the two adhesives to see if she has less irritation.

We shall see tomorrow

- Sent from my Palm Pixi