Christmas Celebrations

Life is really crazy right now! I see how fully overloaded my life has become. The sad thing is that I'll try to organize my life and change priorities around, but once I've gotten rid of something that's taking up too much time, I'll fill that empty slot with something new. I just came to that conclusion this morning when I gave myself about 15 minutes to curl my hair, get dressed, put makeup on, and get the baby dressed. I can fully admit that I spread myself too thin. I can't sit still...it drives me batty, but the moments I allow myself to stop and breathe, it feels really good.
......and that's the explanation for this post being so late :)

Phew...now that I have that off my chest...let's get ready to rumble!

The season was filled with christmas tree decorating....

Gingerbread house decorating.....

School plays.....

School Christmas programs

Snowman building/more gingerbread house decorating.....

meeting Santa for the first time for one and sitting on Santa's lap.....

Shoveling LOTS of snow/making sugar cookies for Santa....

And last but not least..... Christmas surprises on Christmas morning and all through out the day....

It was definitely filled with fun and magic. They're already counting down the days for next Christmas!

Days Gone By

Life just keeps happening all around me. I feel so neglectful to the blog, but it turns from doing a quick post into me being on the computer for an hour! It's what I want though. I love being able to look back on these memories. I've always talked about printing my blog into a book and I finally did it. That in itself takes time, but the results are beautiful!

The kids are busy as ever. Scottie, Savana, and Luke are all in a bowling league on Saturday's. They are really enjoying it. This last Saturday was the first time we all went as a family. All the other time's, either grandma and grandpa took them or Scott, something was always going on. I'll have to remember to take picture's tomorrow and post them.

Lincoln is doing amazing things (as always)! He is getting up on all fours! No crawling yet, but he's very eager to be mobile. He rolls ALL over the house, but no getting up into the sitting position as of yet. The therapists have us working on getting him to go from lying position to sitting position. He gets it, he just needs time to gain more strength. They also want us to have him rock back and forth once he is in the crawling position, so that his body gets the cues of his weight shifting. I'll say "rocky, rocky" and he rolls over and starts rocking on all fours! He'll sit pretty well if we put him there, but that's about it for now. I've seen that I should never limit my expectations with him and just understand it will all take a little extra time. I'll start to introduce vitamin d cow's milk pretty soon. We'll see how that goes!

We were all sick for the span of about two weeks. First the 24 hour flu hit everyone besides Lincoln and myself, then all of the kids caught a nasty cold with the croup. Lincoln decided he didn't want to eat any baby food when this all went down. I was a bit worried about him. He was still nursing and taking bottles so I knew he wasn't in any real danger. His poor gums have been swollen for about the last three weeks and yesterday one of his upper front teeth finally cut through his gums. Even having to go through all of this yucky stuff, he was still a little angel.

I never mentioned how Lincoln's latest neonatal follow up clinic went. It was a loooong day. We didn't even see everyone that he qualifies to see. First up the pediatrician, Dr. Bybee. He took his time assessing Lincoln and had nothing new for us. He took note that Lincoln is behind in size as well as with his gross motor development. He's still amazed with Lincoln. I love Dr. Bybee. There's something about him. He's so gentle and soft. Lincoln takes to him very well. Next we saw the nurse...she got all of his stats :S wish I had written them down! The nutritionist was next, she noted he's on a steady growing curve, but is still at the bottom of where he should be. She suggested that I add 1/2 tsp. of olive oil to his baby food to help plump him up. I've been doing that and it's not bothered him a bit! She also suggested to make sure we get in at least one bottle of 24 calorie formula a day. I've been trying pretty hard to make it two...just to be safe. I think I heard someone once describe the 24 cal diet as stuffing a bunch of donuts in his bottle (something like that). Last but not least, the highly anticipated, Dr. Larson. I had a bunch of questions for him about Lincoln wearing his glasses. I was a bit confused between the three different people we were working with, Dr. Hoffman, Dr. Larsen, and our vision therapist Terry. I learned that Lincoln wears his glasses more to correct his alignment rather than to correct his vision. That was comforting. He said as long as we're persistent in keeping them on, that would rule out any probability of surgery. It's so very hard to keep the glasses on him. Besides the fact that he tears them off constantly, I don't trust myself with them. They weren't cheap and I'm afraid it would be so easy for me to lose them! It's more of a habit, for both of us, than anything.

Life keeps evolving. It's almost Christmas and it will be a special one. This time last year, we had a little piece of us missing.....Lincoln was in the hospital. He'll get to experience his very first 'real' Christmas at home with his family.

Birthday Bash

Scottie's birthday party wish was granted! We threw a family party for him and Lincoln. They had a blast and we loved all the company!

On Lincoln's actual birthday we gave him his own little cake and told him to dig in. He wasn't quite sure what to do with it.

At first, the slippery gooey mess in his hands was pretty foreign. Then, he really got the hang of it and was thoroughly enjoying himself!

Insert smiley face and ..... ta-da .... we have a happy baby causing all kinds of mischief!

Phew, he's not used to working that hard! It did exhaust him a bit, but it was well worth it for us to be able to see him enjoying his first birthday cake!

Happy Birthday Little Linc!

Well, the day is here. He's officially one! He's still so happy, mellow, precious, and we all just want to eat him up! We'll have a little family celebration tonight. In the meantime, here is a video for you viewing pleasure of Lincoln's first year of life!

Lincoln's First Year from Megan Brown on Vimeo.

I made sure to take a picture of Lincoln every month on his birth day. The first couple of pictures were taken in the hospital, but from four months on we were able to take them all at home.


Birth


One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Five Months

Six Months

Seven Months

Eight Months

Nine Months

Ten Months

Eleven Months


Twelve Months

More birthday celebration photos to come!