What do you tell a 4 year old the second time around???

Well, she surprises me with what she remembers from the last time.  She remembers watching the Angelina Balerena show on the TV, getting medicine and seeing the Dr in blue scrubs.  She then remembers waking up with her musical bunny and something that made her mad in her arm (the IV)  She also remembered they gave her a popsicle and that her eyes hurt.

So, we decided to get a little more technical. Unfortunately, we told her last week that she would have surgery, but then she had fevers… so there was some time of uncertainty between the two dates.  After things were changed, we let her know not to worry and that we would tell her more when we knew the information (ie)today,  the day before she was re-scheduled to go in.  We explained that she was going to have surgery to help make her eye straight.  We told her that we would go meet our DR at a different building and that she would have medicine to put her to sleep.  While she was sleeping the Dr would help make her eye straight and when she woke up, she would be in my arms.  I did make sure to tell her that there would be something on her wrist that she needed to leave it alone (since she was a little peeved that it was there and kept trying to rip it out)  I’ll let you know if this worked.

Per Natalies suggestion, we expedited the book Blueberry Eyes to our home and were pleasantly surprised at how well the book explained the surgery on a non-scary kid level.  Having done this once already, I was comfortable with all the terms and procedures.  Elly’s will be VERY similar to the little girls’ in the book (book review to come later) My only problem now is that the book talked about her friends bringing her balloons and get well cards.  As I tucked Elly in tonight, she said, “When will my friends be able to come bring me balloons?  You know, the special ones with helium?”

Gotta love her!  You mean buying the pudding already prepared in the cups isn’t enough… you want balloons?  =)