11 month pictures and Easter

If I’m going to get Mikayla’s 11-month pictures posted before she turns ONE, I better hurry!

Kaylie: 11 months old

We had fun getting these pictures.  I held her up by our flowering plum trees, and Micah used my camera to snap the photos.  That was a special privilege for him, and he did a wonderful job!

Somewhere between 11-months and 12-months, my baby became a toddler.  She is walking with confidence now, and very proud of it!  She is such a happy and easy-going little lady, and even though she finds trouble to get into everywhere she goes, she still rewards us with the sweetest smiles and snuggly hugs.

This Easter was the first year we let all 3 boys dye eggs.  It was quite an adventure, but they had a lot of fun.    

Jesse is at a stage now where he refuses to smile for pictures.  If we want a smile, we have to capture a candid.  Our attempts at a family Easter photo were … well … you’ll see:

Jesse’s Eye: All-Clear!

Five months ago, Jesse had a 3rd surgery to clear his clogged tear duct.  The surgeon made an incision to clear out the blockage and scar tissue, and placed a stent that was supposed to stay in for six months.  The experience was traumatic for Jesse, the scar was ugly, the stent only lasted ten days, and we weren’t sure that the whole thing wasn’t a complete failure.

He has done very well since then, though.  His eye has seemed to be draining well, and he hasn’t had any eye infections since his surgery.  (Previously, eye infections seemed to hit him every 3-4 weeks.)

We saw our surgeon for a check-up yesterday, and he gave Jesse the all-clear!  His eye is healed, and we won’t be needing any more procedures.  Hooray!  Our doctor explained that the surgery portion of the procedure has an 85% success rate on its own, and the stent raises that success rate to 95%.  He said if we had tried to only place the stent, it wouldn’t have worked at all (since it didn’t stay in!).

Also, only five months later, his scar is invisible to anyone who doesn’t know it’s there.

We are so thankful.