Surgery time again. Sigh.

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn we head into the hospital for Q's second surgery. We have every reason to feel positive about this surgery, which will complete the closure of her lip, and if all goes well it will be considerably less invasive than the last round. Still, it's hard not to be nervous, and to feel a sense of guilt at betraying this little girl's trust once again. It's especially difficult when they're still too young to understand why they need to go through this kind of pain. She is an extremely self-confident girl and loves to look at herself in the mirror, and I doubt she'd understand, at this stage, that there is anything about her that needs to be "fixed". So it seems especially cruel, as gloriously happy and content as she is at this moment, to put her through another couple of weeks of discomfort.
For me, it's hard each time to say goodbye to the face I've come to love so intensely. I know she will still be the same girl with the same brilliant, drop-dead smile, and that I will quickly grow accustomed to the "new face", but each time I mourn a little for the way she looked before.
Sigh.
At any rate, wish us an easy journey this time around, and we'll see you when we're out of the hospital and back online.

ps - Thanks, Anne, for the guitar, which she LOVES! Here, she is playing it with both hands, flat on her lap like a dobro. I have a whole series of these pictures which I will post when I have time...in the course of this jam session, she played between her legs, over her head, and even held the guitar by the neck and played the strings with her toes. No, I'm not exaggerating. You'll be amazed. She is quite the creative musician.