Happy Birthday Suzie!

(Okay, so I've been trying to publish a post for Suzie's birthday ever since last Sunday, but the video option still isn't working right! So I decided to post anyway:)

Last Sunday, our sweet little girl turned two. I just can't believe how big she is! She is more and more fun everyday. We praise God for giving us the past two years with our precious girl. We were reflecting back on two years ago when we weren't sure whether our little girl would survive or be severely disabled. To see her now, her joy and sweetness, we are just so amazed at how much God has blessed us.

Suzie had a great birthday and got a lot of fun new gifts! Here is a little video of her enjoying one of her presents:) You can view the video on You Tube by clicking here, but I'll leave this up in case it starts working.


Her vocabulary grows everyday and she is beginning to speak in sentences now which just amazes us. Here are a few of her most common phrases where she puts a couple words together:
-"Help me Mommy!"
-"I go church"
-"Hold you" or "Hug you"
-"Up please"
-"Chocolate milk"
-"My baby" or "My Daddy"
-"Wreck em' Tech" (thanks to Auntie Debra)
-"Bye bye yucky" (when we throw her diaper away)
Another funny thing is that she has started calling her Daddy, "Kyle." I don't know why, but sometimes she'll be wandering around saying, "Mommy! Kyle!" It's so funny:) I'll try to be better about posting next month:)

Counting and Cookies

Okay, so I am aware that every parent thinks that their child is the most adorable, funny, and brilliant child alive. But I think since we were told that Suzie would be moderately/severely mentally and physically disabled, we are even more prone to gawk at her achievements and think she is the smartest little toddler that ever existed. Especially since she is so far delayed physically, we are just so proud of how she is developing cognitively. We are so thankful for all her progress. So here is a video of our brilliant little Suzie doing one of her new favorite things...counting!



(On a side note, the reason for the blog title is that Suzie's new favorite word is cookie. It is by far her favorite thing to eat, which she is now asking for every time we enter the kitchen or I say it's time to eat. She is also quite fond of the Cookie Monster at Therapy and the ladies at her therapy place have recently dubbed her "The Toy Monster" because she goes through more toys there than any other child:)

Recapping May

The month of May was another wonderful month for the Sanderson Family! Kyle gets to enjoy the next few months of teasing me for no longer being in my 20s as I turned 30 this month and Kyle doesn't join me until October. My parents came out to celebrate with us and we had a great time showing Suzie off. My mom taught her to say "Love you!" when prompted. It's very sweet and you can see how she says it in this little clip:

My parents turned into cowboys while they were here!



We've had some great events with the youth group and look forward to going to summer camp in South Texas in two weeks! We've had a great time getting together with friends and watching our little girl progress. Here's a video of her reading her book. Check out how many words she knows!

We are so thankful for her and so proud of her. The eye doctor hasn't seen much progress her exotropia, so he wanted to give the patches one more month and then we'll consider surgery if there is still no improvement. We pray that the Lord would allow her eyes to correct themselves through the patching, but we trust that He has a perfect plan for our Suzie. Here are a few more pictures!

She loves to stand up on this table and turn on and off the light. She's getting much better at climbing up on things!

Exotropia

Suzie had a follow up appointment with the eye doctor last Tuesday. We felt like the few days preceding the appointment, her eyes had gotten a little worse. The eye doctor immediately saw the issue, diagnosing Suzie with exotropia. Most likely a result from her cerebral palsy, her eyes tend to drift outward, the opposite of cross-eyed. He noticed it in both eyes, although the right eye is stronger than the left one. So he recommended we start patching her eyes for two hours a day. We patch the right eye for two days and then the left eye for one day, and repeat for the next three weeks until we see him again. I was a little skeptical that Suzie would even tolerate the patch, but she does so well! She cries when I pull it out, and will rub it sporadically, but she leaves it on and just gets caught up in playing. I'm so proud of her! I think part of it is that she really doesn't like the way it feels when we pull it off, so she's not in a hurry to remove it herself. I feel like her eyes are already getting better, although she still struggles the most when she is tired. But I am hopeful that this will resolve the issue and she might not need surgery. Here are a couple of pictures and a short video of our little pirate!





The day before her eye appointment we went to meet her new neurosurgeon in Midland. He was very personable (who knew a brain surgeon could be sociable!) and recommended we come back every six months until she is five years old. If I am tempted to be discouraged about Suzie's eyes and how she has another possible surgery looming in her future, I just need to remember many of the children I saw come in and out of the neurosurgeon's office. Many of them in wheelchairs and/or unable to speak or do anything for themselves. God has been SO abundantly merciful to our little girl and to us and we are extremely grateful for how well she is doing. Praise the Lord!

April Showers

We have had a very busy few weeks and it's just getting busier! The past few days have brought a whole lot of rain, which Lubbock, similar to Santa Clarita, is not set up the best for. Our church parking lot, front and back yards, and the roads are just seeping with water. But we are enjoying the rain and things have gone from dead brown to lively green in a matter of days. Spring is here!


Here are some more pictures to recap our last few busy weeks:

Suzie went to her first Red Raider baseball game! She did great and would even clap right along with the rest of us.




We celebrated our first holiday here in Texas and had a great Easter service followed by fellowship, food and an egg hunt with some wonderful new friends.







Nana, Kyle's mom, came in for a weekend visit.



We've been having a blast with the youth group!




The craziness continues these next few weeks. Granddad (Kyle's Dad) is coming in a few hours and the guys hope to go to a football game and a baseball game tomorrow, despite the stormy weather. Then we have a baseball game with the youth this Sunday. Monday we meet with Suzie's neurosurgeon for the first time which is more than a two hour drive for us. Then Tuesday we're back to the eye doctor. That afternoon, one of my best friends, Karyn, and her husband Darby are stopping by for a visit on their way to Georgia. And that weekend we have a campout with the church. And my parents come in a few days after that!

We are all doing really well and loving life here in Texas. Suzie continues to progress and grow and we are continually amazed at God's mercy to us. She is such a joy. She is talking up a storm and now says more words than I can count. Here are a few of her new words: yellow, red, blue, green, three, sit, bubble, cheek, toe, my, church, catch. She is also beginning to put two words together. The other day when Kyle picked her up from nursery, she said, "My daddy!" and at therapy the other day when she saw herself in the mirror she said, "Hi Suzie!" And when you ask her what color something is, she always says, "yellow" first, so I have been correcting her by saying, "It's not yellow, it's red." So when I asked her what color something was she said, "Not yellow.":)

She's also progressing very well physically. Her therapists really want her to use both her hands at the same time to engage both sides of the brain together. One of her favorite activities in doing this is catching the ball like this video shows. She is also starting to be able to inch forward on this car using her legs.


One day, Suzie discovered that she can use this toy to walk around the house. She just started doing it all on her own! This video only shows her walking a few steps. She actually will walk around for much longer, but I chose this one because it also shows her crawling correctly for a bit and putting on a "necklace" which is one of her other favorite two handed activities.


Well, thanks for keeping up with us! God bless!

As Promised...

Well, I finally have some pictures and videos to share! Thank you to my wonderful hubby for staying with SueSue while she is napping so I can spend some time on the computer:)

Therapy is going so well. We have already seen an improvement in Suzie's posture and extension in her right arm. She is starting to stand much better as well, not leaning on furniture as much, although she still isn't standing on her own. We are so thankful for the great service she is getting.

She is chatting a ton too! Here are some of her new words: Mommy (instead of Mama) and Daddy, walk, yuck, neigh (horse sound), shoe, sock, play, go, Mary (her video), hippo, bath, two. She is so social...all the therapists know her because she is always saying "hi" to them.

Let me quickly paint a picture of what it looks like every time I go to the store with Suzie. Suzie says, "Hi....hi...hi....hi...hi" to everyone she sees. Even if they say "hi" back, she just keeps chatting. Then they will say, "what beautiful red hair! Where did she get that hair from." I will tell them that neither of her parents have red hair, but she has an aunt on Daddy's side with it and a great-grandma on Mama's side. Meanwhile, Suzie is persistently saying "hi" the whole time:) I can't remember the last time we were out where this did not happen...seriously.

We had so much fun painting the youth room with the kids last week. Here are a few pictures. The whole room was painted in the blue that is on the top. We added the orange on the bottom, the white stripe, and painted all the door jams and border on the whiteboard white. We think it turned out pretty well!




This is what happens when I let Suzie feed herself...

Now we're just hanging outside with our neighbors and enjoying the sunshine!



Suzie is frequently doing more of the correct crawling rather than army crawling. She is so fast combat crawling though, it's no wonder why she prefers it!




Here's a video of Suzie in her big girl pigtails doing her favorite thing ever...watching a video of Mary Rice Hopkins.

And here is is kissing her baby...so sweet!


Thanks to all for your prayers and encouragement. We are so blessed!

Prayer Request

Okay, okay. I know that I have not been faithful to blog since we moved. We opted to save $50/month by not getting internet in our home since the church is just steps away. However, it does make blogging, emailing, and other internet functions much more difficult. I do have a few new pictures and videos to post but Suzie is going to wake up any minute and I need to let Kyle get back to work. However, I did want to post a prayer request while I have a few minutes.

I took Suzie to the eye doctor on Tuesday for a bi-annual check-up following her laser eye surgery. (On a side note, our appointment was at 8:45am so I naively assumed we would be able to make it to Suzie's 10:30am therapy, or at least her 11:00am session. Not the case. We finally left the office around 12:30pm. Officially goes on record as Suzie's longest doctors appointment to date. And she has had a lot!) Anyway, the good news is that there are no concerns about her ROP at this point meaning the surgery did exactly what it was supposed to do. The sad news is that the doctor is concerned that she might not be using both of her eyes properly. We have noticed for some time that that occasionally it seems like her eyes are looking a slightly different direction for just a moment. We really didn't have too much concern because it is so subtle and she seems to see everything just fine. But the doctor thinks that her brain might be shutting off one or both eyes for a time. He asked us to pay attention to try to determine if it is one eye or both eyes and the frequency it occurs. He wants to see her in five weeks to see how she is doing and mentioned the possibility of patching one eye or even doing muscle surgery on one or both eyes. After watching her more carefully for the past few days and getting her therapists perspective, it seems like her left eye is the eye that is affected. 75% of the time, she is looking with both eyes correctly, but the other 25% of the time, her left eye will drift a little too far to the left and have to correct itself, which it does after only a second. The therapist suggested that her left eye is just slightly less controlled and is more affected when she is tired. The prayer is that we would be able to get her to strengthen her eye muscles without surgery. Please continue to pray for our family!

Another prayer request would be how the new health care reform is going to affect Suzie, and of course so many others! It has been a good week for me to lay my requests before the Lord and know that He is in complete control over every detail of our lives, even our government. He has provided amazingly for our little Suzie thus far and we can trust Him to continue to do so. Suzie is on medicare so there is concern that she might lose her insurance all together, and if not, most likely she would lose the amazing coverage that she is getting especially in regards to therapy. There is a also a concern that should she have a shunt malfunction and need emergency surgery, she might not be able to be treated in a timely manner. These are the specific requests that we are bringing before our God right now even though much of this may not be an issue for several years. Of course we are also praying for all the unborn children as well as the elderly and many others. We are so thankful that we can trust in a good, sovereign, loving and omniscient God in these times! Thank you also for your prayers!