She can see!

It took until noon on Sunday, but she finally opened her eyes! She was sitting on one of her stools and she reached up and pulled the eyelashes of her left eye and raised it a bit, and then did the same with her right eye, and then she just opened both and looked up at me and smiled! I smiled back at her and said, "Hi! Welcome back!" She seemed so excited and happy to be seeing and immediately started tearing around the house, back to regular speed.

We had spent a good morning, although mostly we just moved from room to room, with her feeling along the wall and counting steps as she went. She wasn't interested in staying in one place very long. I put her Russian Little Mermaid DVD in, but she just said, "Television, nyet". We went for a walk at 9:30 as I discovered how beautiful it was outside. Back to the house at 10 for eyedrops (we did ok, but it was still a struggle) and then outside again, but quickly back as the worm had turned! The wind started blowing and it got cold. I was depressed as I'd hoped walks could pass some of the "blind" time. We had an early lunch and then I was going to put her down for a nap when she decided to see the world again. So we played for awhile and I finally had her take a nap about 1:30. She fell right asleep, but woke up and started just wailing when she realized I wasn't in the room. Then I couldn't get her to go back to sleep. Finally she slept a bit. When she woke up, she had to go potty and I noticed that she kept her eyes closed and was sort of having me lead her. As she went into the hallway and wasn't turning, I said, "Why don't you open your eyes?" She stopped and seemed kind of startled and must have opened her eyes as she immediately corrected her course. Kind of funny!

Her eyes seemed perfectly aligned after surgery, but of course she was on quite a bit of medication. I was a bit bummed today, though, to see her right eye turn up while she was looking at me. I had hoped they would just be aligned, but I guess it takes awhile for them to learn to work together. We don't even have a follow-up visit with the doctor for six weeks (phone consult next Friday). By the end of the day, though, they seemed to be already better aligned and working well.

Another interesting moment was when we were in the living room, right after she had opened her eyes, and she looked at this little puppy toy on the floor and said, "Smattee (look), Mama, two!" I said, "Two puppies?" and she said, "Dah, two puppies!" I just looked at the one puppy laying on the floor and said, "Ok...." Something else to fine tune! I asked about a few other things (like, how many Mamas do you see?) and they were all the right count, but the puppy remained two. I didn't recheck it later, but I bet that was also corrected by the end of the day.

We went upstairs for eyedrops about 4:30 and she started crying, but I talked to her and said that she could hold her eye kind of open or at least not struggle and we could get it done quickly, or I could struggle with her and we'd both have a harder time, and she actually sort of let me put the drops in her eye! I'm not sure how much she immediately blinked out (tomorrow I'll hold more of her eyelid to prevent that somewhat) but it was great not to have to fight her!

Steph, a friend from church, and her daughter Kimberly, stopped by with some homemade macaroni and cheese and also some breakfast for tomorrow, so I didn't have to worry about supper! Such a nice surprise and the mac & cheese tasted great! Thank you Stephanie! (and Kimberly) =)