Will's Special Day

Warning: Mega post with a lot of words and pictures!

Today is a special anniverary for Will.  Two years ago today we brought him home from the NICU. 100 days after he was born!!  I remember it like it was yesterday and I can't believe it's been two years.  It was such a crazy time since we had left Lindy at Duke and drove 2 hours to the hospital to pick up Will.  We were so incredibly happy to have that little guy at our house that night.  He was such a little peanut.  So little and cute and such a good baby!!  Wow, time flies by so fast.  I'm going to turn around and they'll be driving.

The kids and I picked up colds over the weekend.  Will's nose ran like a faucet and Lindy was stuffed up.  Thankfully it was just a runny nose and no one really seemed to feel bad. 

Monday morning Lindy had a checkup at the neurosurgeon's office.  With all her clothes and shoes on she weighed 23lbs 10oz.  Her head circumference looked really good.  She is tracking nicely on the growth chart and had no significant jumps in head size.  We can now start going to the neurosurgeon yearly, unless we have a problem.  I did ask for clarification on a few things we heard a couple years ago when she first got her shunt.  There is a 70% chance that her shunt will malfunction.  The greatest chance is within the first year.  She has done awesome so far with no complications, let's hope it stays that way.  Although it does slightly feel like a ticking bomb we're just waiting to go off.....

Tuesday the kids got their H1N1 vaccinations at the pediatrician's office.  They only had the flumist available so we took it.  They just squirted it up their nose and we were back out the door 3 minutes later.  Their noses had stopped running by Tuesday but they did start running again after the flumist.

Wednesday Lindy had vision therapy in the morning and it went fine.  We put her in her high chair and she definitely paid attention better.  We worked on coloring and turning bolts off these big plastic screws.  Wednesday afternoon we had our hearing therapy and Lindy did AWESOME!!  We have this basket of 22 animals and objects that we use during the week.  We go through the basket and talk about the name and the sound each makes.  We've been doing this for 1.5 years now.  For awhile now we've been trying to get Lindy to choose between two objects and she's done okay.  Sometimes she cooperates and sometimes she doesn't.  This week Chris put out 3 objects and asked Lindy to get the train.  She chose it out of the three objects.  Then Chris put 5 objects out there and asked her to choose the duck.  She looked at all five and then got the duck.  She contined to choose the correct one (out of 5 objects), every time on the first try, for 18 turns!!!!!  She never got one wrong.  She did amazing.  She had to listen to what Chris asked her to get, find the object, and give it to me.  Chris said most kids have to hear the sounds that the object makes and Lindy was able to do it on name alone.  We would say, "where is the dog?" and she would pick out the dog.  We never had to say 'woof woof.'  It was a really exciting day!  We are just so proud of her!

Drew and I have been amazed at Lindy the past month or so.  She has really come a long way.  No major milestones, but it just seems like everything is coming together for her. Her walking has grown by leaps and bounds.  She walks everywhere now.  She has been talking and imitating us a ton lately.  It's the cutest, sweetest thing you've ever heard.  She says hi and bye all day long but she also says moo, neigh, baa, aaahh (for an airplane), up, down, ga-ga (for dada), mama, hop, paper.  I'm probably forgetting something too.  This week she ate her first bowl of oatmeal, BY HERSELF!  She finally figured out the whole scooping food with a spoon!  We've been working on it forever and she's been so close but she finally got it!  One night this week we were looking at a book and there were 6 pictures on the page.  She pointed correctly to 5 of the 6 when we asked her.  She didn't know the 6th one because we don't talk about dolphins a lot.  And then the picking the correct object out of 5 objects in hearing therapy.   What a great month for Lindy Lou!!

Back when the kids were born we decided that because they would always have to celebrate their birthdays together that we would do something special for them on the day they came home from the NICU.  It's a little harder since they are young, but we tried to make Will's day special.  We took them out for lunch at the mall and then we went to Build-A-Bear.  They had giftcards from their birthday so we built stuffed animals today.  Will got a dog named Buddy (what we call Will) and Lindy got a bear named Boo Boo (one her many nicknames).  Then they got to ride the carousel again and finally we bought Will two new books.  The boy is a book fiend.  He LOVES books!  When we got home we went outside to play, something he also LOVES to do.  He had a blast in the leaves.  It was so funny and cute!  (It was all fun and games in the leaves until I noticed Lindy didn't have hearing aides in her ears.  Then an all out hearing aid search was conducted.  Thankfully we found them in the pile of leaves I had raked.) He didn't know what was going on today but we definitely celebrated him!!

And now for a million pictures!

GrandBob got the kids fireman hats for Halloween.  They were fun for the 3 days we had them before Lindy broke BOTH of them!

Will's new dance moves. He goes up and down really slowly. Like he's doing squats.

Lindy after a little Halloween candy this week.

Will has been playing at the table all week with his sandwich makings.  He has concocted some fine sandwiches such as peanut butter, lettuce, and bacon.  yummy.

Fun with Daddy!

Cute outfit on a cute girl!

Can you resist this face?

GrandBob visited us again this week!

Daddy's Little Monkey and Mommy's Little Monkey

Will's got a car on his head. Lindy's got a car on her head. 

Doing our version of the Laurie Berkner song, "Laurie's got a pig on her head."

Building a bear and a dog.

Riding the carousel.

Lindy wouldn't sit on the horse so they had to sit down!

Playing in the leaves.