Saturday night

I should know by now that when Hannah has a really hard day  (like yesterday) it is almost always followed by a really AWESOME day.  And it was.  I think God knows we can only handle a bad day every so often, and in between we need a lot of good days to carry us through.  I'm so thankful that He knows us so well.
Part of the reason today was so good was because she had a lot of family here, and also some great friends from home came to spend some time with her this afternoon. She loved spending time with everyone and was awake almost the whole day.  She got up really early and so I kept waiting for her to zonk out but she never really did until tonight.  But I think she will sleep well!
Her therapies went well and she was able to keep the feeding tube out which was so great!  Not being attached to an I.V. pole gives her a lot more freedom and she's able to get out of her room now.  I'm hoping tomorrow she'll be able to go to church.  The other thing she has been able to do the last few days is give hugs.  She's always so loving and hugging everyone is such a part of her personality, so it's just like we have got another important piece of her back. So grateful for all of these things.  They may seem like small things, but they feel huge to us.
No matter how good her day is, she usually has at least one meltdown.  I think all her anxiety and frustrations just build as the day goes on, and when everyone is around she tries to be so positive, but when she gets tired and everyone but mom goes home, she usually just lets it all out.  It is so sad to watch but I think being able to release all that pent up frustration is probably a healthy thing. I told her it's a healing thing to do, but that it's important to laugh more than we cry and we've been pretty good to stick to that.  It seems weird to think that there is a lot of humor going on up here, but you'd be surprised.  Maybe we are just so sleep deprived that things really aren't funny, but we think they are.  I'm not sure.  But I do know Hannah has a gift at seeing the funny side of things.   Her easy- going personality has definitely helped her navigate this hard journey.
Today she was wondering about school and I told her we were going to forget about school for the rest of this year.  She looked so shocked and said, "I'm going to be a Super Sr.?  ha ha   Oh. . .  maybe so?  I don't really know.  But it's all good either way.  I' m realizing how this whole thing has put life into a very clear perspective. Five weeks ago I was so stressed out because she was missing so much school because of her gall bladder issues, and now I'm wondering what my problem was.  We can really make ourselves miserable when our perspective gets out of whack.  Just a good lesson for me to keep my eye on the big picture, and not stress the rest.
Last night I was so discouraged because she'd had such a hard day.  She woke up at 4:30 this morning when they came to draw labs.   She was in a much better mood after sleeping.  She said so clearly, "I love you mom." and then a minute later, "I'm so blessed."  I was totally dumb-founded that those words came out of her mouth after the day she'd had.  But she meant it very sincerely, because that's really how she feels.  Despite all this hard hard stuff, she still sees that life is good and that we are blessed.  I love that.  Just another lesson from my angel daughter.