Easter Festival!!

What a great day we had today!!! I took Wynn to an Easter Festival and we had a great time! We got balloon animals (Wynn got a flower), got her picture taken with the Easter Bunny, decorated cookies, did an egg walk, and tons of other stuff! The only downer to the day was that Wynn is REALLY starting to throw tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants. When I even tried to hold her hand when walking through huge crowds of people she yanked it away and threw herself on the floor in a free fall. WTH??? I swear I always said I would never do it but I'm thinking about getting my kid a leash. No joke! I couldn't have imagined if I lost her in that giant crowd today. So, we had a great time and girly girl was cashed out. She then took a 1/2 hour nap on the drive home and was up for the rest of the day. :) I took her the playground in our neighborhood with "tucieeee" and she had a great time! Then we had dinner with Gigi (LOVE PF Changs!) and Wynnie cried when she left. :( It was so sweet!

New Vids

I took these last week before her surgery so her eyes are white as snow in them. :) I just keep forgetting to post them so I figure I probably should do it while I'm thinking about it. Wynn's new favorite word is "yeah" and she will answer that for any question you ask her! I even asked her if she wanted to eat poop and she said "yeah" but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't really do that. Well...maybe not totally sure.

"Yeah"


I've always been a stickler for manners and Wynn has really caught on the last 6 months or so. I would say that she's become quite the little lady but seeing as she began picking her nose last week I'm not sure that description fits. She generally says "please" and "thanks" and now has begun saying "Excuse me" when she burps or toots. :) It sounds like "moo me" but she knows why she's saying it. :)

Manners

Lollipop, lollipop, oh lolli lolli lolli, lollipop!

Wynn received some absolutely wonderful gifts for being such a trooper for her surgery. She got a stuffed lamb with glasses from Auntie Ade and Carson (that they stuffed special just for her at Build a Bear), an adorable bunny from Jojo and a fantastic Sesame Street gift basket from Auntie Di, Tom, Hannah and Kate! We just got it last night and she was ripping through that thing sorting through all of the cool stuff. It had coloring books, crayons, board books, bubbles, figurines, hair bands and clips, a Zoe bag, stickers, Goldfish, animal crackers and most importantly a Tootsie Pop. Ahhhhh! Wynn was in heaven! She enjoyed her first ever lollipop last night and LOVED it. Thanks so much to everyone for thinking of her and for putting a smile on her sweet face.

Update

Wynn is doing great tonight! It's amazing how quickly kids bounce back. They told me she would sleep all day and not eat until tonight but she's been eating all day and not sleeping at all. Here's a few gross pics of the insides of her eyes. And then a few silly ones where she was channeling Buddy Holly through the glasses that came on Lexi the Lamb and Auntie Ade and Carson got for her being such a brave girl today. :)

Eye surgery is DONE!

Wynn had her bilateral eye surgery this morning and it went really well. Her procedure was quick (about 30 minutes) and there were no complications. She did have a hard time in recovery and was VERY fussy but once we got her home she is so much better. So good in fact that she ate TEN mini pancakes! Seriously! They said that she would probably sleep all afternoon but of course she's up in her bed, wide awake, as I type. I just thank God that she did so well and thank you all so much for your prayers and positive thoughts. They worked. :)

Here's my lady before the surgery:




And after :(




I'm going to try to take a picture of her eyes but so far they're coming out blurry and I can't turn on the flash because she's not supposed to have bright light today.

18 months old today!

Today is bittersweet for me because my sweet princess is now one and a half years old. Officially. Her 17 month update was 14 pages long so I'll simply say that I love my sweet girl more than I ever have before. She is the most loving child and kisses everything in sight. Her new word as of yesterday is "bubble" and she says is superbly. So there's her 18 month update. Short and sweet. Just like my girl. :)

Fun at the Rainbow!

Sam and I took Wynn to this super cool indoor play place today. It's called Rainbow Play Place and is actually a showroom for Rainbow swingsets and Step 2 products. They have swingsets, coasters, trampolines, cars, basketball hoops, wagons, etc... It's so cool because the kids can play on everything and it has a padded floor too so no bumps and bruises! They even had a super cool extreme coaster that Wynn loved! I can't wait to take her back!

Hug them a little tighter.

I have been following the blog updates on sweet little baby Stellan all day and am just beside myself. I can't get over the heartbreak and fear that his parents and that he himself must be feeling right now. If you feel so led, please say a little prayer for Stellan to make it through this rough time and for his parents to continue to hold strong in their faith. Stellan's journey has truly confirmed my faith and trust in God and I thank him for that.

I find myself completely overwhelmed right now with love and gratitude for the sweet precious gift of my baby Wynn. She is truly a gift from God and miracle in her own right for surviving such a tumultuous beginning in my belly. She should by all accounts have something wrong with her but she doesn't. We are truly blessed. As I was rocking my sweet baby to sleep tonight I felt overwhelming love and gratitude that God chose to give us this precious, healthy gift and chose for us to be her parents. Not everyone is so lucky. Please, tonight, as you hold your little ones, hug them a little tighter and thank God that they are here and that they are healthy and that they are yours.

Eye doc update

Wynn had a follow up appt. with her opthalmalogist on Friday and unfortunately we learned that she is going to have to have surgery on both eyes. The alignment of her eyes has not been fully corrected with the glasses. So if you could keep her in your prayers on the morning of March 30 we sure would appreciate it. She will still have to wear her glasses because the surgery is to correct the alignment, not the farsightedness. And now just a few pics of my cutie patootie this morning before I dropped her off at Jojo's house. What a gorgeous girl she is :)

Surprise!

My sister and I threw a surprise party for my mom's 60th birthday on Saturday and it was a huge success! Mom was so surprised that she actually walked in and closed the door and had to come back in a minute later because she couldn't believe it! Thanks so much for everyone for coming and especially to my Auntie Donna, Uncle Tom and cousins Melany and Natalie for making the long trip down and for your FANTASTIC deviled eggs, meringues and homemade guacamole)!! Everything was fantastic! Wynn didn't go to bed until 9:30 and wasn't even crabby. :)

Sam and I got her her own little table from Ikea and it is awesome! We actually packed up her highchair and she's been eating there since Saturday. We set it up for the kids to eat on at the party and it's her favorite spot to snack and color. I cut up an old Christmas tablecloth and taped it on top so the kids could eat and play on it without ruining it (we have to stain or paint it still) and did so well!

HAPPY 60TH BIRTHDAY GIGI! WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Our preview of Spring!!

We had a great weekend! Friday and Saturday were about 65-72 degrees so we took advantage of it. We took walks and went to the playground both days for hours. On Friday we spent the afternoon with Adrienne and Carson at the playground and we had a great walk. Wynn LOVED it!! She is such a big girl now on the big toy and the swings. She enjoys being outside so much (just like her mama) which I love. Here's a few pics of our adventures...

17 months old!

Wynn turned 17 months on Saturday and I just can't believe that she's growing up so fast. She has changed so much from that happy, chunky little baby that I had this time last year! Here's what 17 months looks like for Wynn Caroline....

- She is fiercely independent but will absolutely ask for help if she feels like she just can't figure it out. I taught her to say help at a very young age so that she wouldn't grunt and cry if she couldn't do something and she uses that words constantly.

- She is very into taking her shoes and socks on and off now. She is trying to dress herself too. She actually does a great job with the socks and shoes. If she only put them on the right feet...

- She does her shape sorter with ease now and loves to do her wooden puzzles.

- Her vocabulary is expanding more and more everyday. I bet she probably says at least 60 words now with the newest ones being: gentle, horse, purse, drop, Tico, hola, and Lucie. She even calls Lucie's name now just like mommy does. :) It sounds more like Teesee but we'll take it.

- She loves to watch Sesame Street and Dora. We really limit her TV time but these two shows are great because they're educational and they hold her interest. She has fallen in love with Melmo (Elmo) lately and loves to watch him sing Elmo's World on Sesame.

- We practice words in English and Spanish with her flashcards and she does a great job at identifying the items now.

- She is trying to sing the ABC's and Rock a bye baby.

- She is really getting better at eating. She still has her finicky days but it's getting better. We haven't cracked a jar of baby food in a few months and for her that's progress!

- She loves to brush her teeth and we usually do it in the morning and before bed just to get her used to it.

- She tells us when she has pooped. Gotta love this one! She will say "poop" and continue to until you change her diaper. I'm hoping that means that she will be ready to potty train soon.

- She knows most body parts and loves to point out everyone's eyes, ears and noses. She also knows belly, feet, hands, mouth and fanny.

- She is a total little mommy. She loves to rock her dolls and sing to them and push them around the house in her stroller. It's interesting because we've never pushed dolls or girly things like that onto her but that seems to be her natural instinct.

- Her favorite animal is her cow! She calls it a Dow and yells for it until we find it. Once we do she kisses it and hugs it until Lucie steals it out of her hands.

- She recognizes and says most animal sounds with their animals. Her newest is to "woof" everytime she sees a dog or carries her pound puppy around. It's so cute!

- When she hears Sam open the garage at night she says "Dada Jeep" (he has a four door Jeep Wrangler). The weirdest thing is we never taught her that so we have no idea where she picked it up from. She says it until he walks through the door. It's amazing to me that she associates the two now and nows that he's there before she can see him.

- She looks around for objects that she knows she had but can't see anymore. She wanted to take her cow to bed the other night so I let her. When she woke up in the morning I went in to get her and she was calling out "Dow, Dow" and looking around for it. She had dropped it through her crib rails the night before and couldn't see it but she knew that it was there somewhere.

- She's a major snuggler. She still lets me rock her and hold her before bed and naps. :)

- Book freak. Two words that describe Wynn to a T! She has started to try to read along and points out and labels things in the books that she recognizes. If she wants you to read her a book she'll bring it up to you and say "thanks" and climb up in the chair. She plants herself right on your lap and opens it up and says "thanks" again. She also uses most manner words like "please and thanks" on a regular basis (sometimes with a little prompting!).

- She feeds herself with a fork (I highly recommend the Take and Toss forks and spoons). I generally get it on the fork for her but she shovels it into her mouth all on her own!

- I can leave the house on the drop of a dime now with just a sippy cup and snack trap of goldfish if I have to. It's so liberating to not have to pack a giant diaper bag of stuff for every outing (at least until the next baby comes)!

- She is doing great with her glasses. She now adjust them and puts them right where they should be if they shift or fall off. She still takes them off randomly but overall she is doing great. Her eye seems to correct itself with them on (as far as the cross eye) but when she has them off it's clear that she's having a hard time focusing and it crosses back over again. I pray that we won't have to do corrective surgery.

Overall she is doing great and I can't wait to see how she grows and changes over the next few months!

Her new favorite toy!!!!

Gigi and I took Wynn to Toys R Us today to get a new Little Mommy stroller today and she LOVES it!!!! She keeps checking on her baby and making sure that she's okay. We took her to Pottery Barn Kids yesterday and she got a hold of the doll stroller there and ripped through the store for a good 15 minutes with it. That one was $39 which I refuse to spend on a doll stroller but this one at TRU was perfect!

Little mama

Wynn is such a little mama. She "sings" to her baby/bear/Lucie and rocks them and it is so sweet. :) Here's her favorite little diddy and then her suffocating, I mean snuggling, with her bear. ;)

Then there's me breaking it down singing the Choo Choo Soul version of the ABC song. Please excuse my singing but Wynnie loves to dance to it. Just humor me.

Snuggles

Choo Choo Soul

Pigtailia

I have taken to calling her Pigtailia lately. Seems fitting I think.

Dancing fool....just like her mama

Wynn is a dancing fool. She loves to shake her tail feather just like her mama! She is in love with a giant Peanuts card that she got her birthday that plays the "Snoopy" song and she dances around to it and "sings". Enjoy the show folks! She has such a fun and happy spirit. :)

Eating or for that matter not eating....

I haven't posted in a week so of course there are all sorts of new things going on with Miss Wynn. She has become obsessed with blueberries. She will eat them morning, noon and night without fail and last night as we were eating dinner she decided to stick one in her ear. :) Sam had to point it out to me because it just POOF disappeared and it certainly didn't go in her mouth. And apparently she has begun the toddler diet and she barely eats. The other day she literally had three biscuits, watermelon and blueberries the entire day! Tuesday night I had to put her food in a muffin tin just to get her to eat something. That way she could stand at the coffee table and do it all by herself. She is little Miss Independent lately and God help you if you get in her way. Our highchair is pretty much useless at this point. I'm thinking about selling it on Craigslist actually.:)

Dora the Explorer + Wynn = BFF

Wynn is a Dora freak. Seriously. Her favorite word is backpack and she dances like a fool when she hears the music from the show. We had to get it on video....

SIX SUPER BOWLS BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Could I BE anymore excited right now??!!!! I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Steelers just won their SIXTH Super Bowl and Santonio Holmes (a Buckeye!!!!) won it for them!!!!! Wooooohoooooo!

HERE WE GO STEELERS!!

So if you haven't guessed by the title we are HUGE Steelers fans!! We are so excited that they made it the Super Bowl again and we are rooting them on with all of our might! We went to a super bowl party at a friend's house tonight and had a great time. Well, Sam is still there but I had to bring Miss Wynn home to hit the sack. She literally took NO nap today. When I say no nap I mean NO NAP. She was fabulous today though and in a great mood so I can't complain too much. Here's our future Steelers Cheerleader!!






Here's a few random cutie pics of her from this weekend too. :) She's wearing brown glasses because she broke her pink ones last Sunday so those are her temporary specs until her pink ones come in this week. We literally had them for two days and she whipped them off and stepped on them by accident. I'm sure it won't be the last pair that she breaks but she was been AMAZINGLY good about keeping them on!

Her hair is getting SO curly after her baths but it just doesn't stay that curly once it's dry. There's definitely some curl there but just not as much. I SO hope she ends up getting my curly hair! Heck, she's got to get one thing from her mama!

SPECtacular in specs! :)

Miss Wynners got her fancy pink Dora glasses today! I am amazed at how well she is keeping them on. The poor kid is blind as a bat without them. Her prescription is very strong and I can't believe she's been wandering around without them for this long. She looks like such a BIG girl in them and if I do say so myself she looks ADORABLE!!! I gave her some Tylenol before bed thinking that she may have a headache from the HUGE change in what she is seeing. I hope she's not nauseous too but of course I wouldn't know it even if she was. She is being such a good sport about this. I'm so lucky to have her as my daughter. We are so blessed. Here's our gorgeous girl....

Eye doc update

Well folks, it's official. My gorgeous girl needs glasses. We were very surprised by this honestly because we thought she just had a lazy eye type condition and would need something short term or surgery. Turns out that she is significantly far sighted and the poor thing has been trying so hard to focus that her eye is turning in to do so. There is a good chance that the glasses will correct the cross eye but if it doesn't then she will need surgery. We're not sure how long she will have to wear them, it could be forever, but I'm just grateful that nothing more serious is wrong with her. I had a very hard time dealing with this initially but I can come to a point of acceptance where I can't change the situation so I have to move on and make the best of it. I'm sure you are all eagerly awaiting a pic of her in her new specs so as soon as they come in I'll get one.

On a different note last night when I put Wynn to bed (before our furnace went out on a 10 degree night) we went through all of her words saying "night night cow", "night night brush" and so on and I counted 31 words!! I think I may have even forgotten a few but we'll work on that tonight. It was so cute because she said each word right after I said it. My sweet smartie :)

Eating with a fork and my new word!

I finally got some new video of Wynn feeding herself with a fork because the last video was too big and it wouldn't upload. She also has a new favorite word that she says all the time....brush! She's obsessed with brushing her "ho" (hair) and walks around saying brush and backpack (her favorite word from Dora that she says ALL day long)while she brushes her "ho".

Enjoy!

Feeding herself with a fork:



Saying brush:

Doc Update

Wynn's 15 month well baby check went great today! She said that her vocabulary is exceptional and developmentally she's right on track if not ahead in a few areas (must run in the family, Ha!). She has had a bit of a crossed eye for the last month or so so I was really concerned about that. She never had it before that so it was so weird that it just came on like that. Apparently it's really common and she referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist so we'll see what they say. She could end up having to wear a patch (this makes me so sad :( ) or having to wear glasses. There is a small chance that she would need surgery to correct it but we're hoping not. Other than that she is doing great! And she actually has two more molars pushing their way through and not just the one I felt. She said that's a little early because those are normally 18 month molars. Who knew the kid who didn't get her first tooth until she was 10 months old would have 11 teeth so soon! Here's her stats:

Height: 31" long (75th percentile)
Weight: 22 lbs. 5 oz. (55th percentile)
Head Circumference: 15th percentile (she's still my little peanuthead)

What a big girl I am!

We haven't had a whole lot going on since Christmas (thank goodness!) so there's not been a whole lot to share but we had a new development a few nights ago. Wynn fed herself with a big girl fork!

She has really started to become much more independent lately. Here's Wynnie at a glance at 15 months:

- She LOVES books. She reads them all day everyday. She'll either sit in her rocker and read them by herself or say "up" to me or Sam to come up on our laps so we can read to her. She is much more interested in getting through an entire book then she used to be.

- She has about a 25 word vocabulary. Granted some of the words sound like each other but she "thinks" she's saying them so I think that counts. Here are some of her words although there's more I just don't feel like typing them all:

Hi
Bye
Up
Stinky
Mom
Dada
Dog
Cow
Moo
Cat
Jojo
More
Hot
No-this is her favorite right now :)

- She LOVES LOVES LOVES Lucie! I couldn't ask for a better dog with Wynn. They are truly best friends and her new thing is as she's walking and Lucie walks up to her she'll lay her head on her and say "dog" so sweet and hugs her.

- She's recognizing some animals and their sounds. Her fave is definitely cow and moo but she's getting there with the other ones.

- She climbs stairs like she's in a race and she's learned to climb down them backwards. Of course we're always right behind her when she does it but it's an improvement from her old way where she would try to walk down like me and wipe out.

- She has gone on the potty once or twice more but doesn't seem as interested in it lately so we're going to lay off of it until she's a little older so she doesn't get irritated.

- We brush her teeth before bed each night now and she loves to bite my finger when I do it.

- She wears a size 5 shoe!

- She climbs up on EVERYTHING including trying our dining room table and from chair to chair in the family room. She is such a monkey lately and has NO fear.

- We're going for her 15 month well baby visit today so I'll post her stats later but I know she's gotten taller recently as her 12 month clothes are too short on her now. :(

- She has a molar coming in and one more molar that's are trying to pop through. Right now she has 10 teeth now including those two molars!

- Her hair is really growing and she's getting alot better at keeping her hair bands and barrettes in. This was driving me insane so I'm glad she's starting to cooperate. :)

- She's very into body parts now. She knows where her nose, eyes and belly are and we're working on the rest!

Look at how big my girl is!!