Fireworks and Firecrackers

I'm sorry I haven't written in forever. Sometimes I get so busy living life here I forget to share what we are doing! But hey, that's the way it should be, right? It has been one crazy week full of energy and changes.

Last week we celebrated the 5th of July. I know that's weird. We were going to celebrate the 4th of July since a lot of our staff is American, but we sent most everyone to the hospital that day, and then that evening we got a call to bring another kid in for surgery. Since there was no one here, we postponed our party a day. For the fifth we went all out.... hamburgers, french fries, potato chips.... we even built a bonfire in our tiny garden and had s'mores! Somewhere in the city fireworks went off (probably for a wedding), but it felt like the city was celebrating right along with us.

We've also had a lot of changes with the kids here. Since sending two kids home last week, we got one new one. His name is Ahmed and is a four year old that is full of energy! Apparently he has learned screaming accomplishes a lot and has tried to employ this method to get things he wants. But in the few days that he has been here he seems to have settled down a bit. But he still has a ton of energy! We also have two other kids in the hospital.

Little Hani is.... well if you took a firecracker, the energizer bunny, and a spinning top and combined them into human form then gave it a vente starbucks coffee you might almost reach the level of energy that Hani possesses. This kid is off-the wall awesome. However, she just had surgery last week. When they started to wake her back up after surgery, they had to tie her arms and legs down because she flailed so much she was going to hurt herself by pulling out the i.v. and chest tube. Now, only four days later she is up and walking again. We expect to have her back in the house in a couple days.

We also unexpectedly admitted our other child for surgery today. Little Mohammad is about 7 months old. He has this huge toothless grin that is absolutely adorable. His surgery tomorrow morning is supposed to be very difficult. I was at the hospital yesterday for his diagnostic echo. It took an hour. (Normally they are less than half that time). The doctors wanted to make sure they really understand his condition. Despite all this, they still don't know exactly what they will do once they open him up tomorrow. They have three different surgery options and won't know which to pick until they are looking at his heart. If you think about it, pray for the little guy. He'll go into surgery about midnight today, US time.