December through to January is a busy time for Gracie and for that matter all of us! Gracie's family day (the anniversary of when she was placed in our arms in China) is December 12th, then we have Christmas, and her birthday on January 3rd. There are all of her big occassions for the year. This year, I want to start new traditions that do not involve hospitals!!
Last year for family day and for Christmas, Gracie was in the hospital. For Family Day, she was in with pneumonia and we discovered she was allergic to sulpha drugs (of course, after having received two doses of them!) We totally skipped over celebrating her day. For Christmas, Grace had a seizure in the early afternoon. She had excellent timing as she got to open all of her presents from Santa before needing to leave the house and prior to us putting the dinner in the oven! We spent the remainder of Christmas in the ER. We celebrated her birthday with no problems - but as we said that was her last birthday cake for a while as she was starting the ketogenic diet the next week.
This year, we need to celebrate family day in a new way - the traditional Chinese meal will have to change as she can't eat many traditional Chinese dishes - too many carbs! We did purchase gifts for both girls from China to give them on their family day. We will be able to give that to Grace and maybe go out for crab legs (or as Grace calls them, 'crap'.)
For Christmas, we are looking forward to just simply staying at home this year! We promised the staffs at the local ER and at CHOP that we would not be seeing them until Easter. We gave each other our holiday greetings before Gracie left the hospital last week!
For Gracie's birthday, we are trying to figure out something that does not involve food. Gracie knows about birthday cake and candles. Tom has been working on some recipies for cheesecake so that we can try a keto-cheescake with candles for her. It has to be something that we can serve to everyone as Gracie catches on right away if she gets something different! I think the cake and candles will be the key thing - and of course the singing :-)
The pictures are of recent hair cuts and a picture of Rita and Gracie with Rita's classroom project, Kingston. Kingston came to stay for two nights in the middle of November.
Thanks for checking in!
