Walking, Walking Everywhere!

Showing us what a big girl she is!

Lucy's been walking for awhile, but we really couldn't call her a toddler until this week.  She has definitely passed the threshold of preferring to walk versus crawl (even though she is still a way faster crawler!!).  She is doing awesome at walking and loves the freedom it gives her to have her hands free to get into more stuff!

Ready for the Hydro walk!

As I mentioned previously, we participated in the MN Chapter of the Hydrocephalus Walk earlier this month.  THANK YOU again to everyone who helped us meet our fundraising goal.  Your support is overwhelming to us and we so appreciate having you in our lives.  It was nice to meet some other families in the area who have children with hydrocephalus or are dealing with it as adults.  We were reminded of how blessed we are to have Lucy and thankful that her hydrocephalus has been under control so far.

"Helping" us unload the dishwasher - she likes to get up close and personal with it

Lucy's been busy exploring all nook and crannies of the house - she still loves the bathroom (sort of embarrassing, really, since she follows people into the bathroom and if they shut the door on her, she'll bang on it until they open it.  She does not limit this behavior to Jason and I - really anyone that visits is free game, hahaha!).  She got to spend all day with grandma this week when my mom came to watch her on Tuesday so that Jason and I could have a date night and celebrate his birthday.  We found the birthday card that the nurses in the NICU made for him last year - it was signed with her footprint, which I cannot believe was ever that small!!  Her favorite word is currently "Arf," as in what a puppy says.  It is often the first word she greets us with after naps and she has been very into her books with animals in them.

Hanging out with the neighbor's cats...she also thinks they say "Arf"

We had a follow-up ENT visit on Friday.  Since her tracheomalacia (a.k.a. noisy breathing) is getting better, they don't have too much of a concern for her and we only have to visit as needed (Woo Hoo!).  Our doctor did say that if she has any aspiration at her next swallow study, there is a procedure he can do  to inject a temporary molding in her her throat to help close it off more tightly when she swallows.  It not something we had ever even heard of before last week, but good to know that it is an option if we needed.  However, if you have been a blog follower for awhile, you know our thoughts on swallow studies - so far they have not been very "natural" so we take the results with a grain of salt!

Lucy continues to delight us with her fun personality, silly giggle and melts my heart with a simple whispered "mama" right before she nods off to sleep.  Love this little girl!