Who needs sleep?

We're adjusting to life as a family of 5. (My parents would file a formal protest if I didn't include Snoopy and Pete). David is getting more and more comfortable with the dogs, and they've been very gentle with him, especially considering what maniacs they are. David been sticking his hand out for them to lick. He's also starting yelling "hey!" when he wants their attention and using his patented fake sneeze on them as well. Tonight Pete would lick him, then David would open his mouth wide and make a biting motion towards Pete's nose, then they'd do it all over again. A little bizarre, but we're happy they're making friends. Pete gets very worried when David cries. He puts his ears back and comes running over to check him. Snoopy has not exactly been on her best behavior. She's a little jealous and a lot bored since we've had less time to play. She's been even more mischievous than normal, and there are shards of toy blocks, cardboard boxes and various household items distributed conveniently throughout the house.

I never expected completely flipping David's days to nights and nights to days in an environment that is totally foreign to him to go smoothly, but he is taking sleep deprivation to a new level. For the first 3 nights home, he's only managed 2-4 hours of sleep a night. He's done a little better with naps, but he's still way behind on sleep. He went down relatively easy tonight, and we're really hoping this will be the night he'll start to catch up. The poor little man is exhausted.

We got super fantastic news at our appointment with the plastic surgeon today. Kevin and I had not been able to find the cleft in David's palate, not that we'd taken a tongue depressor and really searched, but after 2 weeks you'd think we would have seen something. The only thing we noticed (Kevin pointed it out first) was a little notch along his right upper gum line. Well after a thorough inspection of his palate this afternoon, our surgeon says he has a cleft at the gum line but the rest of the palate is not involved. The cleft would have been more noticeable prior to his lip repair, but because the overlying muscles were pulled together at that time, it now looks like a little divot. What all that means is that he likely will not need surgery until he's closer to school age. At that time they'll have to do a bone graft to close the cleft, but that's actually not as difficult a surgery as the initial cleft repair we were expecting this summer, not to mention the fact that he'll be old enough to understand. We'll follow up in 3-4 months, at which point they will reevaluate his palate function (mostly his ability to make certain sounds), but that's it for now. We are so grateful that he won't have to go through that painful procedure and that we can devote the rest of my maternity leave to his adjustment. Hurray!


Picture of a very tired boy