It's hard to believe, but Miss Olivia turned one year old on Tuesday, July 20! Where has the year gone?? It was such a great day for me and Chad to just reflect on how far we've come with Olivia over the course of this crazy, but overall wonderful, year. There have been ups and downs for sure, but I think the downs have made the ups that much sweeter. The littlest things that we probably would have taken for granted had Olivia been born totally healthy, instead give us the biggest thrills--like seeing her getting better at responding to sights and sounds, watching her continue working so hard on improving her motor skills, and melting as she shows her beautiful smile to us more and more each day! Though I know we both get bogged down at times in the day-to-day grind of everything involved in taking care of Olivia--all the therapy, doctor's visits, developmental exercises, etc.--at the end of the day we still know just how blessed we are to have her in our lives. We have learned so much over the course of this year that I don't think we would have without Olivia--we've learned to be more patient, more accepting, more loving, more determined, more optimistic even in the face of incredible challenges, and probably most importantly, more dependent on God's hand in our lives. We have no doubt that He trusted her with us for a reason, and reflecting on the past year makes me even more convinced of that. She is truly a miracle, and so that is what we celebrated on Tuesday! So enough of my waxing poetic...now let me tell you about how we actually rang in the start of Olivia's second year of life!
Chad and I both took the day off work to spend the day with Olivia, so we could just enjoy her and enjoy the significance of the day. However Miss O had quite a wild night in her Pack N Play the night before, so of course she ended up sleeping through most of her birthday. We still tried our best though, and we took her to Dave & Buster's as she had really enjoyed it when we went last weekend with my family. Fortunately she did wake up at D&B, and she seemed to have fun looking at all the crazy lights, listening to all the loud sounds, and of course riding her favorite vibrating ride again!
Daddy and Olivia riding the shaking/vibrating ride she likes so much!We also decided to measure Olivia for the first time on her awesome giraffe measuring stick that Chad made for her way back before she was even born. She measured about 25" tall...10" longer than she was at birth!
In her "Birthday Princess" hat from Aunt Lisa...very carefully placed on her head so as not to wake her up...
Earlier in the day, in her cute birthday gear from Gramma MaryAlthough Olivia played hooky from school on her actual birthday to hang out with Mom and Dad, on Friday her wonderful teachers at the Arbor School threw her an awesome party at school, which Chad and I got to crash. As you can see from the pictures, she also slept through most of this celebration...apparently Olivia was not nearly as excited about her birthday as all the rest of us! But it was still a great party and lots of fun--there was music, banging of musical instruments by all the kiddos, cupcakes, singing, and great presents!
Holding a maraca while dead asleep...
She didn't look too thrilled about the taste of chocolate ice cream Daddy gave her...(the bib reads, "It's My Party")Cochlear Implant Surgery on Mon. July 26
In less than two days Olivia will be having her surgery to get a cochlear implant in her right ear. We are doing it at Texas Children's (of course) and are actually really looking forward to it, unlike one might with most other surgeries. But this is a surgery that we so badly wanted her to be able to have, because it will give her the best possible chance at having "normal" hearing (or as close to normal as possible). Cochlear implants are truly amazing in what they are able to do for people with severe to profound hearing loss, and they make normal speech and language possible where otherwise sign language probably would have been the only option. Though of course we have some nerves about the surgery, mostly we are just looking forward to everything we hope and believe it will do for Olivia and her quality of life, her development, etc. She already shows definite interest in sounds like our voices, music, etc., so I can only imagine all the possibilities it'll open up to her once she can hear all those sounds infinitely better and more clearly. It'll be about another month before they actually activate the implant, so that she has time to fully heal from the surgery first, so late August is about when we'll get to really start seeing what this implant can do for her, and we cannot wait. Anyway, surgery is first thing Monday morning and should take about 2 hours, so please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that day for everything to go smoothly and for Olivia to heal quickly and with as little pain or discomfort as possible. Our surgeon is great, and most kids bounce back within just a couple days, so we have no reason to believe she won't do great too!
Thanks to everyone for all your continued love and support!
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