For a while I had wondered how I would feel on Veronica's birthday. I wondered if I would really want to celebrate one of the most difficult days of my life. I was fairly certain it would be a hard day, but when the day finally arrived, all I wanted to do was celebrate. Did I think about the trauma of that day one year earlier? Of course. Did I shed a few tears? Sure. But those moments were overshadowed by the realization of how far Veronica has come. We feel so blessed that she is doing as well as she is. And it has been wonderful to celebrate her progress this year as she has reached new milestones.
On her birthday, it was important for me to return to the place where it all started. I took Veronica back to the NICU for a quick visit. I was so proud to be able to show her off and to report how well she is doing. And it was great seeing some of the nurses - they will always have a special place in our hearts. I wish I had taken more photos but for part of our visit, my camera was buried under about 40 boxes of Girl Scout cookies which were donated by Liesl's Girl Scout troop.
At Veronica's doctor's appointment earlier in the day she weighed in at exactly 19 lbs - 15 times more than she weighed on the day she was born! Wow, what a year!
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| Beverly, Vivan and Cynthia - three of our favorite NICU nurses. |
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| Out to dinner. |
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| Opening presents. |
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| We surprised our older children with a Wii but Veronica seemed pretty happy about it as well. |
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| With big brother, Linus. |
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| With Applejack. (We have quite the assortment of My Little Ponies in our house.) |
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| A little tired from all of the celebrating. |
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| Getting ready for cake. |
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| Happy Birthday! |
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| Notice there are only 5. Poor Josephine fell asleep in the car ride home from dinner and missed presents and cake. |
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| Looks interesting.... |
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| Hhmm.... |
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| Yum! |
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| This feels awesome! |
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| Playing with her new bath toys. |
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| All clean. |
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| Ready for bed. If you took the time to look through all of the photos above, you may (or may not!) be interested in seeing a cute video that Liesl took while Veronica was eating her birthday cake - she actually waved! |
OH MY GOODNESS!! She is SO cute!! I love the pictures! Looks like she enjoyed her cake!! What a miracle she is! I'm happy she had such a good time! I shed a few tears, and relived some painful memories on Bella's birthday a few weeks ago too, but my happiness of how far she had come overshadowed the sadness. One day we'll look back, and all of those horrible days and they'll just be distant memories. One day we'll try to explain to Veronica & Bella how small they were...and they won't believe us! :)
ReplyDeleteWow, she can wave her hand! That's awesome!! Looks like she loved her birthday cake.
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