Big Day, Big Month

Two days ago Mia was fifteen months old! How the time flies! Next week is the anniversary of the day she came home from the NICU. Thanksgiving Day to be exact! Today is Prematurity Awareness Day, along with Prematurity Awareness Month. The March of Dimes is an organization near and dear to us, and they have done a great job promoting and bringing awareness to this cause all month long. I am already getting excited for the next "March for Babies" walk that is in April. I hope that this year our team will grow with even more supporters, and that we are able to beat our fundraising totals from last year!

Today we had our fifteen month check-up. Mia's doctor was pleased with her progress, and especially her new crawling moves! We will continue to monitor her development and feeding issues over the next months, and continue with speech and physical therapy, but at this point we are going to just let her be Mia! The sweet, funny, cute, feisty, book loving, bottle drinking, daddy's girl, stubborn, crawling, bath splashing, bouncing, beautiful, chocolate pudding loving, smart, silly, and amazing girl that she is! (Feel free to add on to this list...) :)

I LOVE that Mia came home from the NICU on Thanksgiving! Someone up above must have orchestrated the timing of her homecoming. This year, and years from now, when friends or family go around the table talking about what they are thankful for, I'll be listening, but mostly I'll be looking into my sweet girl's eyes thinking about how thankful I am for her- for all she has taught me, and all that I will continue to learn from her.

Holiday pictures!

Mia and I had a little "photo shoot" today. Long story short, things did not go as I planned. You can see from the "lovely" pictures! I was really hoping to get some cute pics for a Shutterfly offer I had for free cards- I love free anything from Shutterfly! Instead, I just used an old picture, but I think it still turned out cute. I am determined to get that scottie dog outfit another day though!

Snowflake Wonder Holiday Card

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The Princess is crawling!!

Yipee!! We have been anxiously awaiting this day! I know that all parents get excited for their baby's milestones, but for Chad and I, each milestone Mia meets leaves us not only excited and amazed, but also relieved. For those of you who don't know, Mia has been working with a physical therapist 2x's a week and another day each week with a P.T. assistant. It's not always fun, in fact the first month was mostly Mia working through tears and me fighting mine back. Her hard work has paid off, and we are just so excited for her. You can see the look of excitement in her eyes as she moves around. She had been belly crawling for a couple of weeks, and on Monday she was finally able to get on hands a knees. We keep getting the warnings of "just wait, before you know it you will be chasing her everywhere." I can with all honesty and seriousness say that we can't wait!!

Monday was crawling. On Tuesday, Chad and I though she should learn to drive :) My Dad gave us a ride on toy that belonged to my little brother, Hugh, and Mia just loved it! It lights up and sings an annoying song, but it was so cute to see her scooting (backwards) around the room. I'll post some crawling pics soon (the only one's I have are with Mia in the nude before bath time!)

Before I go a quick (not really) medical update:
Mia's MRI came back TOTALLY NORMAL. Double yay for that! This does not mean that she will not have delays, learning issues, etc. in the future, but it does mean that everything looks good structurally. We sure celebrated for this news. Blood work was taken to check for any genetic diseases that could attribute to her swallowing issues and hypototonia (muscle weakness), but what was checked all came back normal as well. We are still having to investigate possible causes for her dysphagia (swallowing disorder) and meet with our pedi next week to discuss where to go from here. The neurologist who did the MRI and lab work has suggested and EMG (easiest to google) to measure her muscle function. We are not too excited about this option unless they feel it is urgent/necessary because it would involve using needles to insert electrodes into the muscle. Not sure that any 1 year old would do well with this, but with as much poking and prodding as Mia has already had to endure, we are willing to hold off on this as long as medically appropriate.

But, back to the real reason I am here today- she's crawling!!!

Posing with Dad before she heads out for a drive

For the girl who I can never get to smile in pictures, this one is just great- little teeth and all!


She was having so much fun!


I don't know how, but she managed to scoot back into this little spot from across the room- we were laughing so hard!