Sydney's Tonsils

Sometime in February, Sydney started snoring. Not cute, soft snoring, but full-blown, "is there an old man in that bedroom?" snoring. We kind of laughed about it until we spent a night at Jenni and Jim's and had to share a bedroom with Syd. Not so funny when your three year old sounds like she is working hard just to breathe. So it was off to the ENT she went and home again with a date scheduled to have her tonsils removed.
We tried to prepare Sydney for what to expect without freaking her out too much. We got some books from the library, her favorite being "Curious George Goes to the Hospital". We bought a bunch of jello, ice cream, and Dora Popsicles and saved them for after her surgery. The night before the big day, we had a "Good-bye Tonsils" party complete with a cake. And where there is a party with a cake, there should be candles as well, right?

That night she crawled into bed and when I went to tuck her in she said to me, "Mommy, my tonsils are all gone, they squiggled away." It was really hard to see her so scared.
The next morning she was very scared and Steve had to coax her out of the car when we arrived at the surgery center. The amazing thing was that we were only there for about an hour and a half before all was said and done and we were on our way home. Once we got home all she wanted were Dora movies and Dora popsicles...
The next day Steve went to work and came home with a little bear which one of his friends at work brought in just for Sydney when he heard she was having surgery. This bear turned out to be a life-saver! One of the hardest parts of this whole ordeal was trying to get Sydney to take her medicine, it tasted yucky and it hurt to swallow. But, if the bear cheered her on, or was just nearby, she would take the dreaded medicine. I was very grateful for such a sweet and thoughtful gift!
The other thing that was indispensable was Sydney's Dora couch (do we see a theme here?) which was also a gift (thank you Parker) and which made recovery much more comfortable. I began to wonder after a week and a half if Sydney would ever eat with us at the table again, she was quite the spoiled little girl for a time there, as her brothers pointed out every time she got to eat ice cream for dinner.

I am happy to say that Sydney is quite herself again! It is so good to hear her singing everywhere she goes again and to have her sleeping peacefully at night... without shaking the rafters!