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.

Our 1-year-old

Laine and I took Tuesday off from work to celebrate Linden's 1st birthday. Though the weather didn't allow us to spend time outside like we planned, we still had a great time enjoying the company of our birthday girl.

Maybe it's because we knew she was about to turn one, but Linden seems to be growing up so fast these past couple of weeks. She's full of moxie and is always on the go. It would be exhausting if she weren't so much fun.

Linden loves drinking from a straw, so we knew just what to get her for her first birthday -- a straw sippy-cup. She absolutely loves it. We filled it with water and she stopped playing to sit and drink it all the way down.

Laine decorated the house with paper poms, which was another big hit. Linden sat back and admired them, giggling and pointing.

We took LB to the doctor this morning for her one year check up. She's in the 50th % of height, 60th % of weight, 85% of head size, and 87th % of cuteness. We had her dressed in pajamas for the visit, so we may have brought that last score down a bit.

Laine started a tradition of giving flowers to Linden on her birthday, but this year we decided to go with paper flowers that stuck on the wall so that she could play with them. You can just barely see them giving her bunny ears in this picture, where she's just fully accepted the fact that she's turned one year old.

Birthday girl!

Linden is one year old today! I'll be updating the blog with some fun pictures from her birthday celebrations soon. Shortly after Linden was born, I joined a Facebook group of families who were going through the same experience as we were -- having a child in the NICU. I was always uplifted by posts from other families who'd shared our journey, so it was fun for me to have a chance to share a fun update with the group today. Here's what I posted:

Our daughter is 1 year old today and what an amazing year it's been! She was 9 weeks early and spent 45 days in the NICU. She was 2 pounds 13 ounces at birth and I hardly recognize the 21+ pound rough-and-tumble girl who lives with us now. It's been both the longest and fastest year of our lives. For those of you who are where we were one year ago today, know there will be great outcomes and a lot of fun in your future!

On the move

It's been too long since my last post but time was hard to come by these past few months.

Since returning from Canada Linden has mastered crawling and pulling up, which keeps us on the move. The evenings were long as we worked on teaching Linden to fall asleep for the night on her own. She caught on quickly though and now sleeps through the night consistently. Work has been busy these past few months but is slowing down now. I'm not promising that I'll post more regularly, but that's my goal.

Tired, red eyes from rubbing

As I mentioned, Linden is crawling like a champ, pulling up on things with one hand and she just started to shuffle walk while holding onto a piece of furniture yesterday. She loves holding onto the outside of her jumper and jumping up and down. I swear I've seen both feet leave the ground at the same time.

She sleeps hard at night but this may because she fights sleep all day long. Ideally, LB would sleep an hour in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Yesterday at Dee's, she slept 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in he afternoon. Then slept from 4:30-5:30 and again from 8pm - 7:45 am. That's great for us since we can get a full night's sleep, but she gets crabby during the day without her nap.

Sleeping at Dee's

The reason she doesn't like to nap is because she doesn't want to miss out on playing. She is thrilled to go to daycare each morning. She literally shrieks with excitement when we open the door and she sees the other kids. She can't contain her excitement. One great thing about having daycare across the street is that sometimes when I go to pick LB up, she'll be sleeping and Dee just tells me she'll text me when she wakes up. But even when it's just us on the weekends, she only naps when we push her in the jogging stroller. The good news is that Laine and I are taking lots of walks.

So big

"So Big" is big, so we play that game a lot. She also flexes her muscles very aggressively from time to time but I can't quite figure out why she chooses to do that when she does.

As you can tell, Linden's hair has been growing as fast as the rest of her. At 10 months, she officially caught up physically. We'd been told that it could take as long as two years for her to catch up to her birth age, so we were surprised to hear that she was already in the 50+% of height, weight, etc. at 10 months.

Linden chats quite a bit but doesn't say many words. Two weeks ago she spent a lot of time working on "doo-aaa...dohhh-aaa" etc. Last week I heard her say "No!" clear as day. I had to remind myself that she doesn't likely know what she's saying (dohh-aaa doesn't mean anything), so we try not to react to it. That, or we try to turn it into another word. So when she says "no" we say "noel" or "nobody is home."

LB has always laughed but it's like she just learned to mimic laughter. Here's a video to illustrate what I mean.

We're having a ton of fun with our little bean and know that there's plenty more fun in our future.

The Road to Walking

They say that you need to learn to crawl before you learn to walk. Linden is a bit disgruntled about this but is finding it to be true. She loves to stand and jump but hasn't shown much interest in crawling until recently. Even now, her crawl appears to be a failed attempt at walking. She often starts out in a bear crawl (hands and feet on the ground, bottom in the air) before falling into the traditional crawl. Here's one of her first attempts.

Oh, Canada!

LB thrilled to arrive
in Canada

Linden is already an international traveler at 9 months old. Last week, our family took a trip to Alberta and British Columbia to visit Linden's great aunt and uncle, cousins and great grandma.

Laine and I had flights booked to attend a family wedding in Calgary in September but, with Linden arriving ahead of schedule, we weren't able to make it. My dad spoke with the airline though and got us a voucher to travel another time so we had one year to use them. We thought we'd go in August but Graeme and Nina were planning a trip for June so we jumped at the chance to travel with them because they're fun and, well, we knew we could probably use the extra hands. That proved to be a good choice.

Jeff & Linden

Raven & Buster

Laine, Linden and I flew out of Chicago on June 21st. We were worried about traveling with a 9 month old (mo) and all her gear but everyone was very helpful. We were fast-tracked through security like we were frequent fliers. The flight was delayed a couple hours because of severe thunderstorms, so we spent a few more hours in the terminal than we were planning. Turned out to be a good thing though because LB had a random puke while waiting for our delayed flight. It was all contained and cleaned up fairly easily, so we felt lucky to have not had to deal with that on the plane.

We didn't arrive in Calgary until after 11 pm and then picked up the minivan, drove to Residence Inn and crashed.

The next morning, we had our first visit with family at the hotel. Laine's cousin Raven moved to Calgary one year ago and her parents, Jeff and Karen Brousseau, just happened to be in town for a visit. Jeff and Karen once told Laine's parents that they looked to them as model parents and there's no question that we now look to Jeff and Karen for the same reason -- they've raised some great kids and we're excited we had a chance to introduce them to Linden on this trip.

Uncle Graeme

After our visit with the Brousseaus, we stopped by Stefanie and Kyle O'Reilly's house -- Laine's cousins whose wedding we missed in September. They have a cute older home similar to ours and we enjoyed relaxing with them on their deck. Stef jumped in our minivan and we all headed to her parents' house to have dinner with Laine's Uncle Marvin and Auntie Terri.

Who's more excited? Nina or Linden?

Marvin is an excellent cook and Terri is an exaggerated version of my own mom so we always love visiting with them. We enjoyed a beautiful Calgary afternoon and a sumptuous supper of Alberta beef, Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes, casserole, etc. Graeme and Nina's flight arrived late that evening so I drove out to pick them up. They got in late so the welcoming party was small but at least they had leftovers from dinner waiting for them.

Dinner with Great Grandma Strachan

The next day was spent packing up and traveling to Invermere, BC -- about a 4 hour drive. Laine's Grandma Myrtle Strachan lives in a retirement community in Invermere and Marvin and Terri have a cabin nearby. We visited Linden's great grandma that evening, which was fun for everyone including all the residents who Linden met at supper.

We spent the next two nights in Invermere at a hotel with Graeme and Nina visiting with Grandma Myrtle and enjoying Invermere.

On Wednesday we had supper with Grandma Myrtle in a private dinning room at her residence and then drove out to Marvin and Terri's cabin for the next two nights. The first full day was a busy, full-day immersion into life at the cabin, led by our guides, James and Jen. We spent the day shooting clay, swimming in a lake, and relaxing by a fire. Linden didn't partake in the shooting or fire but she did dip a toe into her first lake -- a requirement of her mother.

Learning to shoot with James and Jen

We all enjoyed a relaxing day the following day and drove back to Calgary that evening. Our schedules lined up with Raven's once again, so we visited her apartment Friday evening and enjoyed catching up with her and meeting her boyfriend Cole. Linden was honored to be the very first baby that Cole had ever held and she used the opportunity to play peek-a-boo with Raven and Nina.

Our team spent Friday evening in a hotel in downtown Calgary, a beautiful city. We had a bit of free time Saturday morning before heading to the airport and back to Chicago.

As always, we loved visiting Calgary and Invermere and there's no question that Linden did as well. We're already looking forward to our next visit, when Linden will be even more of a handful and even more excited to see everyone.

What a difference 3 weeks makes...

A lot can change in a few weeks. I'm realizing that now that it's about three weeks since the last time I posted.
In that time...

• Linden sprouted a pair of teeth (bottom middle)
• Mastered rolling from her back to her front
• Began grabbing for anything within reach
• Prefers to sit and play instead of play on her back
• Has developed a love of jumping

In addition to all that, she's also started to develop quite a personality. She makes the funniest faces, laughs loudly whenever she sees herself in a mirror, grunts, loves to jump and read books. 

I'll have to post a video of her playing in the jumping gym that her Aunt Jaime and Uncle Jesse let her borrow. She could play in that thing for hours. Even when she's not in the gym, she loves standing and jumping on your lap, a table, or anything she can push against. I have a feeling that she's much more interested in learning to walk than learning to crawl. 

She's quickly making friends in our little neighborhood. The kids (and even the dogs) are very good with her and she loves watching and interacting with them. 

Just this past week, she's started to become a bit shy. I never thought I'd see the day. Usually, if she's having a bad day, the one thing that would improve her mood would be visitors. But just recently she's started to need a few minutes to warm up to the idea of a new place. It doesn't take long, though, before she's smiling like her old self. 

Linden's Great Auntie Lainey came for a visit from Canada recently, bearing gifts. Auntie Lainey is a fabulous quilter. She made an amazing baby quilt for Linden in anticipation of her arrival and recently completed an alphabet quilt for the family. It's a bit of a Twanow family tradition and Laine was so excited to have it join our family that she promptly wrapped herself in it and carried it off to bed. 

I could, and should, go on because it's been awhile since I've last posted, but it's now after 10 p.m. (so way past my bedtime). I'll try to be better about posting shorter, more frequent updates. If life allows. :-)