Eye Update

Baby Christina has had many doctors appointments since she was born and will have many more to come. Currently, our priority is preserving her vision which will help maintain her quality of life. Her eyes are almost always open due to her larger eyes and abnormally small facial bone structure. She really only closes them when she is outside in natural light and she squeezes them tightly shut because her eyes are so light sensitive. (Also in the sunlight is the only time she really ever cries.)

You can see in the pictures that Christina's right eye is bigger than her left. This eye has developed glaucoma which causes lots of pressure and can lead to loss of vision. To prevent blindness and to relieve the pressure, Christina is having eye surgery on Friday. We are grateful to have discovered her eye problems right away to prevent any permanent damage.

She is still such a sweet little girl and we love her so much! 

And as a side note, baby Christina has the prettiest color of hair! It is a dark blonde with natural highlights in it! People pay lots of money at salons to get her God-given color!

Where the Wild Things Are

James found this frog costume in the Halloween costume box and to my surprise came downstairs in it! I guess he's testing out his Halloween options. (And disregard the dirt on his face from playing outside and the fact that he needs a bath!)

James has been really fascinated with Halloween this season. I like Fall and Halloween, but I like happy Halloween and pumpkins, not scary Halloween and monsters. But James is fascinated with the scarier stuff and has been begging for us to decorate our house with scary stuff (His words and he even says it in a ghoulish way!) So we got a few things to decorate with, but nothing too spooky!

Happy Sunday

These are our outfits of the day for church. I'm posting this because James made such cute comments about them. After I got baby Christina dressed, James said, "Mom! Sister looks like a princess!" How sweet! Then a few minutes later he hollered, "Mom! Mom! Wook (look) at me! I'm so handsome." No confidence issues here! 

And Brian commented that my post-baby, fuller-figure resembles that of Christina Hendricks. I'll take the compliment but I think that it's just from watching too much Mad Men!

Sorry no OOTD for Brian, but he was dapper in his suit! Also very Mad Men!

Happy Sunday!

Updates on baby & James

James loves to kiss and cuddle baby sister but he needs some supervision as to not smother her with his love! 

James has adjusted very well to having a sister. It was tough when she was in the hospital and I was traveling back and forth several times a day without him. But now that life is more stable and we've found our new normal James is happy to be a big brother! He has started to be quite protective of Christina and will even chastise me for things he thinks I'm doing wrong to sister. Like the other day I had the windows down in the car and he was so worried that baby girl was cold and yelled at me to roll them up!

Baby Christina is quite an easy baby, she is happy just to be held all day! She has been spoiled lately in that she ends up in our bed at night! It's hard to let her cry if she just wants to come cuddle with me in bed!

Her eating is still a daily struggle but we manage and she's improving and increasing in volume of food. It is likely that she will always be very teeny tiny no matter how much she eats! 

Baby Christina at seven weeks:

-Loves to be held and cuddled

-Sleeps most of the day, quite placid but she's alert at feedings and for part of the evening when its dark

-Extremely light sensitive

-Loves to be in the BabyBjorn on walks and outings

-Starting to enjoy bath time

-Enjoys Target and Costco (because besides doctors appointments those are most of her outings!)

-Learning to nurse, more for supplement and bonding, not main source of nutrition

-Desires to eat and cries when hungry (she started to do this at about 4 weeks old, prior to that she couldn't have cared less about eating, that was a little scary, so her desire is a good thing!)

-20.5 in. long and weighs about 7 lbs, 6 oz. (born 18 in. and 5 lbs, 3 oz.)

-Still in newborn size clothes (I'm getting lots of use out of them, unlike with James who outgrew his newborn  clothes before we were even discharged from the hospital!)

We love our two little sweethearts! We are grateful for how both James and Christina are growing and improving. Though their individual achievements will greatly differ, I believe this life is more about the direction we are going than how far we go. 

Throwback Thursday

So not only does James look like this kid that I posted about back in December

But he also looks like this other kid...

I stumbled upon this old gem a couple days ago and yes, that's me. James thought it was himself but was confused by the dress -- as he should have been! Maybe it's just the boy-cut hair that tricked him, but he didn't believe that it was me! 

Enjoy.