Happy birthday, Anne!

We celebrated Anne's 1st birthday last week on November 16th. We can't believe she's already a year old. Time seems to go by much more quickly with your second than it does with the first. But at the same time, our days in the NICU with Anne seem like a lifetime ago.
After eleven months with a healthy, happy baby in our home, the pain and heartache of one year ago have softened into tender memories...and feelings of deep gratitude.
Anne has done wonderfully this year. Despite her prematurity, she quickly gained weight and has been in the fifth percentile for her age for most of this year. That is her weight and head size are in the fifth percentile. Her height is in the 50th percentile! (Maybe some Weiler genes in this one?) Her motor skill development has been more consistent with her adjusted age than her actual age. But she is getting around the house on her hands and knees faster than I can keep up with her sometimes, and she stands up and is starting to cruise around more. She started clapping and waving last week. She gets a lot of positive reinforcement for her little tricks, especially from Abigail.

The night of Halloween we discovered Anne has an allergy to eggs (egg whites, more specifically). I had introduced egg yolk to her around 10 months, and she was fine with that. On Halloween I gave her scrambled eggs for dinner. She instantly erupted in hives. We gave her some Benedryl, and she responded well to that. When I picked her up to go get ready for bed, she began vomiting. Erik took her to the ER that night. She's been fine since then. The inconvenience of the allergy really hasn't hit home yet, but fortunately most kids outgrow this allergy by the age of 5. In the meantime, I just have to carry Benedryl around and get creative with egg substitutes!

I made a chocolate "wacky cake" for dessert--no eggs!
Opening birthday presents...with a little help from Abigail

We had a family dinner on Sunday with my family to celebrate Anne and Uncle Joseph's birthdays (Joseph's is the day after Anne's). Those are always so fun for me. I tend to be a little negligent of my children because I'm always chatting away with someone. Good thing there are so many wonderful aunts and uncles around who love to play with them. The other unfortunate thing is I usually don't take any pictures...

Erik's parents came over for dinner on Tuesday, Anne's actual birthday. Here we are singing to the birthday girl. Abigail even donned her Winnie the Pooh costume for the occasion.


Happy birthday, Anne girl. We love you!

Fall Hikes

Hiking is perhaps my favorite fall tradition. This year for my birthday, Erik and I dropped the girls off at my parents' house and hiked the Jones Bridge Trail along the Chattahoochee. It was nice to be outdoors for a while and to have Erik all to myself. And there's nothing like a long hike to work up a good appetite for dinner...especially at my favorite Chinese restaurant.

We also continued our tradition of hiking around Stone Mountain during General Conference weekend.
Here we are Saturday morning before the first session. I think we stopped for a photo op at this same rock last year.

Erik and I always forget that long hikes aren't very realistic for 3-year-olds. I think we made it about as far as we did last year. Not very far.

Erik and I also decided to have a little getaway for one night during his week's vacation in October. We chose Amicalola Falls. We took Anne with us, and Abigail had another sleepover at Grandma's.

I love going camping with Erik. Half the fun for me is just seeing him get so excited about everything. And when you go camping as infrequently as we do, there's always much more adventure involved. We have always enjoyed the challenge of setting up tent and preparing dinner by flashlight in the past. We were proud of ourselves this time, though, for thinking to set up the tent BEFORE we enjoyed our walk in the woods at sunset. We did eat our silver turtles in the dark, though. We also had to get creative for breakfast after realizing we'd left our frying pan and pot on the kitchen table. We made do. No hot chocolate, though. Bummer.
Anne was a happy camper for the most part. The only time she wasn't smiling was for the first hour after we got up. Perhaps the forty degree weather numbed her cheeks a little?

Fortunately it warmed up later on. Here's Anne minus about five layers and smiling again.

Our only concern about this trip was how Anne would fare during the night. She is used to falling asleep on her own around 6. Erik and I envisioned her crawling around the tent until she fell asleep, which would probably take a lot longer than usual since it would still be light outside.

Things ended up going more smoothly than we'd expected. I bundled Anne up in so many layers that she could hardly move. When I packed all the warm layers, I hadn't really thought about the immobilizing effect! It worked really well. She was asleep by 7 and slept soundly all through the night. Yay!