It's 2013 and I've missed a lot of details over the past year or so. We lost our dog Brody last January, but to help with the healing we got a new pup, Cooper in February. Cooper just turned 1 on Christmas Eve and he's Lilah's best friend:)
Olivia kept us busy with soccer last year (Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring!). She just joined tumbling and is working on learning aerials. She's in 5th grade and will be turning 11 next month, which seems crazy to me! I just turned 33 a few days ago and it really makes you realize how fast time flies. Olivia is your typical girl...loves clothes, malls, boys (Justin Bieber is out and One Direction is in). She has posters plastered all over her walls and keeps her room like a little pigpen. I hope to share that with her one day when her kids do the same:)
Liam is my little man. We started a chore chart a few months ago and he loves getting prizes. He used to volunteer to help me with things just to get more stickers. I found that the chores kept him in check...he's a little overemotional and has been getting cabin fever since we've been staying home a lot over the past few months. He loves ham sandwiches and hot dogs (not the ones with the casings though, he calls them the "crunchy" kind). He hates casseroles, stir fry and my homemade chicken pot pie. A few weeks ago, he cried (actual tears) because there were peas on his tray and one was also in his mash potatoes. He loves Playmobil, puzzles, winding up the vacuum cord and playing Angry Birds on Nick's phone:)
He's always requesting milk with meals and always puts his dishes in the sink. He just finished weekly preschool and will be going back in March, as well as starting golf. Nick is so excited about that one! He's a great big brother and he and Lilah are best friends. He loves Amelia. He loves Olivia, but likes to harass her even more:)
Lilah is our little princess. She recently started fitting into Olivia's old dress up clothes so we brought those down for her to play with. We usually stay pj's (Umm, its cold here, the flu is spreading like wildfire and we have a new baby!), but Lilah changes into different princess dresses two to three times a day. She is our "loud talker"...Nick thinks it's because she has to fight for attention, but I think it's just part of her personality. I think she'll be on stage one day! She started ballet lessons last semester and absolutely loves it! She talks about "Donce Closses with Ms Sa-nay-dra" in this funny little British accent. She loves to let Olivia fix her hair and likes to play with her American Doll when Olivia lets her. She's recently started to push Liam around a bit-just to see how far she can get.
Amelia is our newest addition. She is perfect:) She's 5 weeks now and started smiling last week...real smiles and goofy grins! She likes to wake up around 4am and has this look on her face that shows that she missed us while she was sleeping:) Amelia was born with a congenital defect called IA, or Imperforate Anus. IA can cause other anomalies as well, but we were fortunate as she only has the one issue. She was also born with a fistula, which allows her to get rid of waste without having to use a colostomy. We found out about the IA three hours or so after she was born. We basically held her for those first few hours and when they took her for her bath, they came back with the news instead of with her. We were floored. Nick and I looked at one another and were speechless. I felt like everything around me stopped moving during that moment...
They immediately took her to the hospital's NICU to run tests. I wasn't able to sleep and found myself sneaking down to see her every few hours. We could hold her, but they needed to transfer her to our local Children's Hospital so I wasn't allowed to nurse her, pending possible surgery.
The next day, we were released and Amelia was taken to the other hospital. She spent 6 days in the NICU where they tested her to make sure she was able to come home. We were relieved to find that she passed her tests, including the echocardiogram (they thought she had a heart murmur). She was so sleepy those few days...so quiet and tiny. Looking at her and watching her sleep made me less anxious about all of the things that were yet to come.
Other than twice daily dialations, Amelia is like any other newborn. She sleeps, cries, eats and is awake for tiny amounts of time in which she allows us to be enamored with her. Besides smiling, she recently started making tiny gurgling and cooing sounds. She loves her nightly baths and LOVES taking showers.
We met with our surgeon and discussed her pending surgery set for March. We are also talking with the doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital to see if she would also be a candidate for surgery there.
