by There were a lot of tears today. Mostly the good kind of tears, but tears no less. Our apologies to anyone that might have stumbled across our emotional selves in Lindale Mall today.
First off, Averie went to Elevate Salon & Spa and donated her hair. They even still took her in after we messed up our appointment time. Donating her hair was a pretty sweet act by itself, but she specifically donated her hair to Children With Hair Loss in honor of a little girl she met while we were in Philly. I do have to say I was a little worried about shorter hair on her, but she looks amazing. Although maybe a little too grown up for me. She said her plans are to grow it out and donate it again and again and again. 💕
After that we wandered into Justice while waiting for the line for Santa to die down. They had a wishing tree promotion thing going on (#justicewishes). Most of the wishes on the tree were for toys or money or clothes. Averie, on her own, wrote out that her wish is for her brother to get better. The only help she asked for was how to spell “better”. Cue tears from mom!
We went to get dinner in the food court and Averie was dumbfounded that there were people bringing their presents in and paying someone else to wrap them because wrapping presents is fun to do. I explained that the money went to a good cause (The Arc of East Central Iowa) and told her what they did and how it related to her brother. She changed her mind and decided it was the best idea ever and asked if we could bring our gifts all in to be wrapped. I told her that might be a bit much for our budget and she asked if we could just take the one gift that we had bought earlier for her dad over to be wrapped, so we did just that. When we got home she told me it was the prettiest package under the tree because it was wrapped with love. 💕
In line waiting for Santa later, Averie nabbed my phone and was looking through my Instagram pictures and reading the captions I had written, when all of a sudden she got misty eyed after reading my post from her last birthday where I mentioned I was proud of her. She tried to hide it, but there were tears on her cheeks. It was just such a raw reaction that I really didn’t expect out of her. I expected her to maybe say “aww” or something, not to be that overcome with emotion. We had a lot of hugs and snuggles in line while we waited.
Then we finally got ourselves over to Santa, and she told him she wanted a camera and for her brother to get better. I couldn’t hear all of the conversation from the distance I was at, but it seemed that Santa didn’t hear everything, so he asked what she wanted to take pictures of with the camera and she said “my brother” and then he asked what it was she had said she wanted for her brother and said she wanted him to get better so he could come home from the children’s hospital.
Cue Santa’s tears… Shortly followed by my tears when Santa looked at me and said he knew what my Christmas wish was then. And he thanked Averie for making his day.
It was all unprompted and unscripted. Averie may not really spend that much time with her brother yet, most of her time at University of Iowa Children’s Hospital is spent worried about when the next childlife activity is, but she sure does love him a lot… She has the biggest heart of any six year old I know… And truthfully, standing in that line was hard. So many others with their families – big brothers and baby sisters galore, and I kind of wanted to stomp my feet and cry about how it wasn’t fair that there wouldn’t be two kiddos in our Santa pictures this year. Averie brought me back down to just being thankful for where we are and the amazing family that I do have…
Speaking of… I didn’t get to see AJ today, but Aaron was up at the hospital with him. They started pressure support trials – basically turning off the machine assisted breaths and leaving on some of the support in terms of how much air he takes in. The goal was for him to tolerate it for two hours, he was still at it when Aaron left around 3 hours later. I haven’t called to check in on him yet to see how long he lasted, I’ll be doing that in a few minutes, but anything over the goal is definitely a victory.
Thank you again to everyone for your continued prayers and support. One of these days we will get around to mailing out thank you cards/birth announcements/Christmas cards/and whatever-other-holiday-has-passed-by-the-time-we-find-the-moment-to-get-them-put-together cards. Just know that we most definitely do appreciate you all, and everything you’ve done and continued to do for us on this journey, even if we sometimes struggle to find the words to say it. 💕
