The Big Day

Wow, I just cannot believe the day is really here. I have been reliving when Lydia was a couple weeks old though my friend Kim who just had her baby three weeks ago. I remember thinking, I just did now if I was going to make it..and now here we are a year later.

7 lbs 2 oz, 20 inches, 7:40 am,
I still cannot believe this kid was born with no hair!

Blessed

We are so blessed to have gone from this to this.
And from this ...
to this.

Flash back

You had to know that it was coming. With her birthday less than a week away, I had to bust out some old pictures. I have not shared these before because althought it was a wonderful time, it was also a very scary time. I have been thinking how her life started. Not know what was wrong, all these scary dark images kept coming back on her lung x-rays and nobody could realy tell us what was going on..I only had to deal with this for three days..I absolutely cannot imagine how these mothers who have their babies in there for weeks and months do it.Here she is wrapping Daddy around her finger already
Here is Uncle Mike going to visit her
This was the first time Mark got to hold her. She was two days old.
This was supposed to be the first picture. This was what she looked like when we first got to the NICU. The really scary/sad part was she was one of the healthiest babies back there. So say a little prayer for all the babies in the NICU and for their families.

My first's photo and my other favorite things

So I was sitting in the dining room minding my own buisness when out of nowhere I hear the sound my of camera going off and see the flash go off. At some point in the last week, my "baby' is now able to reach things on the edge of my dining room table. She got the camera and because she love to find and push buttons...she got a picture taken.

Her other favorite thing to do is put this old phone around her neck and crawl/walk all around the house like Jacob Marley (the ghost from Christmas Carol) and if she does not have the phone around her neck...

she has her cool glasses around her head. She will put these on and off all day...

crawl around

and up and down.

Funny Ones

Here are some funny ones from our Year One photo session take two.

Can you tell what kind of mood she was in?

The Masked Avenger

Rock Star

Getting ready for Sports Illustrated

Things are coming together for the party. Wendy is working on some super cute favors but I am going to wait to show everyone those later. I have the decorations ready. Nonni found her Winnie the Pooh cake pan. I am trying to figure out if I am going to do homemade pizza or order pizza..I was going to take the day off to make them but then I ended up taking today off to take her to the doctor...so I hate to miss two Fridays in a row. (Yikes, that means she is one week away from being one!) I won the Little People Zoo..although Wendy did ended up finding it Target. Mark picked up some cute clothes at the Elder Beerman in Morgantown. It is going out of buisness.

Now for the doctor. Lydia has had this cough for two weeks now. I finally called the doctor and she has a mild form of RSV. So she has a chest cold. No treatment yet. The doctor wants to give her two more weeks to try and fight it off on her own. Especially since she is not having too much of a problem with it. She is now 20 pounds, they did not measure her height but we have a follow up/one year visit on Feb 4th. But from some of the pictures we took, she is long and lean. I will post those tomorrow.

The Big One..

These are some pictures that Miranda took as a test run of some one year pictures of Lydia. I have not been real happy with Sears the last couple of times. After writing all the time of the wonderful pictures that Miranda takes of Lydia...well I guess I just finally put two and two together. Sunday was a dreary day so the lighting is a little off...but I think they look great. She just gets the best expressions from her

She loved this little rocking chair of Braylon's. Especially when she figured out that she could get down from the chair all by herself. She did her trick over and over...not fun for pictures.

She does love to read....She might not look like me but she is getting some of her habits and eating traits from me..her love of cherrios, peas and bread and her use of the word "cool". What a weird word for a 11 month old to know you say...I guess I say this word quite often. Not only has Lydia picked up this word without us trying to get her to say it, she repeats it everytime I say it..which now I know is all the time!

First sled ride

Here is Miranda and Braylon when they came over for the first sled rides of the season. Both Braylon and Lydia got sleds for Christmas.

Here we are after going down the hill in her sled from Nonni and Poppi. She really did not know what to think of it. She did not or get upset but really did not laugh. We went down the hill pretty slow. It was a quick wet snow and I was afraid to go to fast and lose control of the sled.

I love this picture that Miranda took of her. She does such a good job of capturing the best pictures of Lydia.
I pulled her around on the porch in Braylon's sled. I have never seen one like that before. She liked that ride pretty well.

Here was Braylon making some snowballs afterwards. We had a such a good time. It is so crazy to post these pictures from Thursday when last night Miranda, the kids and I were walking and sweating. They were super cute talking to each other in the strollers...

The Baby Wii

The Little People Learning A to Z Zoo I found this on line while looking for a little people set for Lydia's birthday. Trying to find stuff in the stores right now is a joke. I have learned my lesson. Buy birthday stuff during Christmas shopping. I guess all parents of winter babies have learned this lesson. So anyway, I have looked at Walmart, Target, Toys R us and they do not have it in the store. Then I tried to buy it online...Walmart.com says it is out of stock, no other store even has it on their web page. Amazon.com is selling it for $99.00...so I am currently bidding on one from Ebay. If that does not work, the Fisher-Price website says you can order it but I am afraid once I do, then they will tell me it is backordered like some websites. I guess if I lose my Ebay bid, I will have to go that route...so the craziness begins..yes, mom, I remember the cabbage patch story...what comes around goes around.

Sleeping Beauties

Ok, this for all those folks who kindly try to tell me that my daughter looks like me. Sometimes when she gets up too early for Mark and I to function, we plop her into bed with us. So the other morning I woke up to this, the Bobbsey Twins staring at me. Could they look any more alike?

Christmas Leftovers

This is a picture our friends Angie and Dereck playing with Lydia. Dan and Kathy hosted a party so that we could visit with

Christy! She came in from California to visit over the holidays. I was excited because this is the first time Christy got to meet Lydia.

Here is Lydia on Christmas day with our cousin Andrew. We traveled all over the place that day. We did Santa in Fairmont, then more Santa in Mannington, then we went to Christmas dinner at my Aunt Louise and Uncle Mike's house in Fairmont then off to our Cousins' Beverly and Tony's house for dinner number 2!

Elmo and 11 months old

We got this costume from Miranda and Mark put her in the costume one day. I cannot believe she tolerated it so well.

I think this one looks really funny. It looks like Elmo is eating her.

Here she is playing with those musical Christmas decorations. I cannot believe in one month my baby will be one year old!