Celebrating Small Victories

We are celebrating Ellis's latest accomplishment! She is now able to wear her Passy-Muir valve 60 seconds at a time, exhaling through her mouth and sometimes making real baby sounds as she does it. The process is bittersweet right now. We are getting to hear her sweet voice for the fist time in over a year, and that has brought tears to my eyes every time. Most of those sounds right now are cries, however, because she hates it. Really hates it. It is scary for her to breathe in a different way and she looks at me and Greg like we are trying to kill her. We do the valve trial once a day, usually five times in a row. Some times go better than others, but for the past few days she has been tolerating having it on for around a minute each time. This is great progress from a week ago, when she could only stand it for about ten seconds before spitting up from anger or ripping it off herself. We hope it will get easier on her the longer we try and that she eventually will work up to wearing it all day.
Going along with the celebration theme, here are some funny pics from Ellis's very own Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, courtesy of Joe & Moe! Thanks for sharing the fun!