and now i'm annoying even myself...

so i had a whole big blog post written for today.
and then i thought about it a little more.

i can kind of sum it up for you: "whinewhinewhinewhinewhineywhine".

so i scrapped it.

i'll give you the cliff notes version instead:
meet tiny tim.

she's my middle child. #3. a goofball with an easy laugh, a happy spirit and an easy-going attitude.

sometimes we call her ava. a lot of the time we call her tiny tim. and this is why:
she was born with a clubfoot.
(yes, we enjoy dark humor like that)

i have very few photos of  her casts & braces...and only one of her uncorrected foot. it's not something you think you'll ever want to remember...but it turns out--you do.

it was unexpected, meaning our one and only prenatal ultrasound with her didn't catch it.
we used a non-surgical treatment method to correct her foot and it worked just fine.(that was casts # 1-9)

she wore this brace 23 hours a day for a long time...then 21 hours a day...then 18...then nights and naps. then nighttime only until she was 5. she still has a brace she wears during the day, and a different one for nighttime.

until she was 3--then it started to relapse. at that point we flew her halfway across the country for treatment with a new doctor--one who specialized in older children with relapses. (casts #10-12)

about a year later it relapsed again. fortunately by then we had found a local doctor (45 min drive vs. 3 hr. plane ride) who was/is awesome. that was casts #13-18.

last friday was another "foot checkup".
guess what?

presenting cast #19, or as i like to call it~

{Clubfoot Correction}

~2011 Edition~

this is ONE.STUBBORN.FOOT.

but it's cool, you know?
i told her we'll just lay in bed together and boss everyone else around. gimpy one and gimpy two.

because this cast is for clubfoot correction it's bent at the knee and at the ankle to hold her foot in the right position. looks comfy, eh?

we may even head to walmart and race on the electric carts.

we like to keep things interesting in the googiehaus.