Olivia's First Thanksgiving, a Trip Downtown, and Christmas Photos!

Thanksgiving 2009

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year--we had a lot to be thankful for! Chad and I hosted at our house for the first time ever...a little intimidating, but thanks to Chad's superior turkey cooking skills and my family members all pitching in, it went great and was a ton of fun. Lots of laughing, enjoying of wine, and passing around of Olivia from person to person--I don't think her feet ever touched the ground! It was also neat because it was actually last Thanksgiving when we broke the news to my family that I was pregnant, so how amazing to sit here exactly one year later with our little miracle Olivia as a beautiful four-month old baby. Here are some pics from the day:

Olivia in her "Baby's 1st Thanksgiving" onesie and matching hat (thanks to my dear friend Kimmy for giving this to Olivia!)

Olivia with her new orthopedic shoes (or her snowboard, as we call it), which recently replaced her casts. She pretty much hated it the first day she got it, but she quickly got used to it and hardly seems to notice it most of the time now. We get to take the bar and shoes off for 4 hours every day, so that is cherished time for us!

Olivia with her proud Daddy & Mommy

Honey with Olivia

Aunt Lisa and Ian with Olivia

Uncle Peter with Olivia (during some of her 4 hours of "no-snowboard" time!)

"Via Colori" Fundraiser in Downtown Houston
We took Olivia a couple weekends ago to a fundraising event called Via Colori, where hundreds of local artists come and create works of art in chalk on the streets of downtown. We went with Aunt Lisa and her boyfriend Ian, and we had a lot of fun. The event is held to raise money for the Center for Hearing and Speech, a wonderful school and speech therapy center in Houston that helps teach hearing impaired kids to listen and speak. Olivia is going to start doing weekly therapy at the Center, and we are really excited for her to start there as they do some pretty amazing stuff with the kids. We took her in recently for her hearing evaluation, a prerequisite for starting therapy with them. Obviously with a baby you can't do the standard hearing test you do with adults (sit in a sound booth and raise your hand every time you hear a sound), so it's much more based on watching the baby to see if they react to certain sounds. So the audiologist, Chad and I all watched Olivia very closely as the various tones and sounds were played while she was wearing her hearing aids, and it did seem that there were several times that she reacted specifically to a particular sound. Then the head of their speech therapy department assessed her next by presenting more sounds, and again she consistently responded when he would present the various sounds--we all saw it, and it seemed pretty crystal clear and way too consistent to be just coincidence. So we were thrilled, as this means that her hearing aids are actually helping her to hear better, which the audiologist at the hospital was not very optimistic that they would. We have a renewed motivation now to make sure that her hearing aids are in as much as possible every day (not an easy feat with a feisty baby who is very good at getting them out of her ears!)

Our Christmas Card Photo Shoot!
With Christmas coming up soon we decided recently that we needed to take a nice family photo to put on our Christmas card, so our very sweet friend and next door neighbor Kara agreed to come take some pictures of us. Kara brought her awesome camera and her keen eye for photography, and we think the results were great. Chad and I "dressed up" (hey, I wore makeup, which I've only done like four times since Olivia was born, so this was a big deal!) and we put Olivia in her beautiful Christmas dress from Gramma Mary. Olivia was such a champ through the whole session, not fussing at all and staying very alert for the camera. I think she knew how pretty she looked and was enjoying it! ;-) We took her various accessories off her face (glasses, nasal cannula), so you can actually see her whole beautiful little face, a rare treat for us. Here is the shot we chose for our cards, as well as some other cute candids Kara took.

Olivia sucking on Daddy's nose--she loves doing this with us and it feels SO cute!

Olivia sucking on something she loves even more than our noses...a lollipop! Again, my disclaimer is that her speech therapist told us to try this to stimulate her mouth, and we never give her more than a few licks at a time!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well and are getting as excited for Christmas as we are. Take care and keep in touch, and thanks for all the continued thoughts, prayers and well wishes for our sweet little girl...she is thriving and we are thrilled with her progress!