One Year Later - Part 2

It was one year ago that I wrote an entry about our first week with Linden at home. She'd been in the NICU for 40+ days before we were able to bring her home, and that first week home was amazing.

After so much time visiting our daughter in Peoria, we didn't quite know what to expect having her home. But absence does make the heart grow fonder and we absolutely loved that first week home together as a family.

One year later, it's incredible how much has changed. Not only is she no longer tethered to a monitor, she's no longer tethered to anything! When Laine came home from work today, Linden walked halfway across the room to give her a big hug.

She's constantly trying new things. Balancing and climbing are two of her favorite things to practice. Riding on her little pink car is fun, but so is balancing on top of it or using it as a step to climb higher. She's already reaching for doorknobs even though they're still a foot higher than her reach.

And boy is she stubborn. As illustrated by this photo, she naps on her own terms. If it means she falls face-first into the chair, still on her toes, that's just how it's going to be.

We've tried to take advantage of the nice fall weather and one weekend we visited Rader Farms' pumpkin patch. There were lots of activities and animals, but Linden most loved leaning on and climbing the pumpkins.

Last weekend, Linden served as the flower girl for our friend's wedding. She rode in a wagon because, while she could take some steps, she wasn't quite a walker yet. But she absolutely loved riding in that wagon. So much so that it helped her learn another word: GO. If we ever stopped pulling the cart for more than about 3 seconds, Linden would start saying "go...go..go.go...go" until we started back up again, bringing a big smile to her face.

During the actual wedding ceremony, she really turned it on. She pulled leaves out of the burlap purse that Lexy and Eddie gave her, which is exactly what she was supposed to do but had never done in practice. Linden knows how to perform when it counts.

One Year Later

When talking with family and friends who are familiar with Linden's story and this blog, one of the most common things we hear is how moved people were by the photo of Linden holding my wedding ring in the NICU. It's difficult to imagine how small a 2 lb. 13 oz. baby is and even though she didn't look very small to us, when I look back at this picture it's fun to see how much she has grown this first year.

Now, one year later, we wanted to be sure to re-create this photo in an effort to once again provide some illustration for how much our little bean has grown.
Linden's eating solid foods and is very curious, so the trick this time was to figure out how to photograph her with my ring when she was least likely to pop it into her mouth. Not sure if that time would ever come, we tied dental floss to the ring so that if she did try to bite it we could end the experiment.

It's difficult to manually focus a camera on such a fast-moving object and equally challenging for an auto-focus camera to fulfill its duty.

We finally wised up and decided to snap a couple pictures right before we put Linden to bed, when she was too sleepy for any fast movements.