Success!!

I love chili!!

Abbie has officially gone one entire month without using her feeding tube!! We are so excited and so happy with her progress! She's still on the small side, weighing in at just under 20 lbs, but she's still on the growth charts and she's still gaining weight (very slowly, but at least she's gaining). Her favorite foods are Mac'n'cheese, chili, jam sandwiches, green beans, broccoli, chicken and rice, and cheese. She's really not very picky, but it takes a lot of effort every day to make sure she gets enough food. Hopefully things will continue to get better and she'll start eating more by herself, without so much help from mom. As for the drinking, she is doing excellent! She drinks 2-3 cups of milk mixed with pediasure from her sippy cup with no problem. Sometimes, I think back to the days when we were happy because she drank one ounce from her bottle and I can't believe we finally made it to this point! We don't know how long Abbie will need to go tube-free before they'll take the actual tube out, but that's not really a big deal for us right now.

Yummy mac'n'cheese!

On another note, Abbie had a cardiology appointment a week ago and everything was just great. In fact, the doctor took Abbie off of her last medicine, so we are officially medicine-free! Yipee! So Abbie is pretty much a normal, happy little girl. We are so proud to be the parents of such a little fighter! We love you Abbie!!

My sippy is my best friend!

First Trip to the Zoo!

Abbie would NOT look at the camera all day!

About a month ago, Lance took off early from work so we could go on a little outing to the zoo. Abbie loves animals and we were so excited to see her reaction to the animals at the zoo. It was a little dissapointing because a lot of the bigger animals, like the elephants and zebras, weren't outside. We did get to see lots of monkeys, which were definitely Abbie's favorite. We also got to go inside the giraffe house and Abbie was fascinated with them.

This little monkey loved Abbie and wanted to kiss her!

Wow, look at that tongue!

Abbie liked the animals but she was more excited to be able to get out of the stroller and play at the little park. She liked going down the slide and sitting on the play animals. She also loved playing in the fountain. All in all, it was a fun little trip. We're looking forward to lots more adventures this summer.

Gabby Abbie

Lately, Abbie has been jabbering a lot. And by a lot, I mean nonstop all day long! It's so cute because she acts like she's really having a conversation with us. She has started saying several understandable words like mama, dada, ball, dog, bye-bye, cheese, shoes, pants, bath, box, dance, and outside. Of course, to most people they still sound like jibberish, but we can tell. She also enjoys making animal noises and has about 6 or 7 animals in her repetoire. She likes screaming, growling, and using her tongue to make silly sounds. This is a little video we took at dinner when she was making sure her utensils knew that she was the boss.

Easter Fever!

This picture is from Easter last year. Abbie was still in the hospital but it was just that morning that we recieved the news that Abbie would be going home the next day!! What a wonderful Easter miracle that was! This is one of the few times she wore clothes while in the hospital, but it wouldn't be Easter without a pretty Easter dress! We've come so far and we feel so blessed that Abbie is doing so well. This year, however, Easter didn't quite turn out as we expected. We had planned to go down to Beaver for the weekend for the Annual Moss Easter Egg Hunt. We were so excited for Abbie to run around with her cousins and find eggs. I guess she had different plans though, when she decided to have a fever, and do nothing but sleep and cry for four days. Poor thing! We had to nix our Beaver plans and have a quiet weekend at home instead. She was starting to feel better late Saturday and Sunday so we did get to do a little Easter celebrating. We decorated some eggs and tried to have some Easter egg hunts but she didn't really have the energy to walk around to find the eggs. Luckily, we had a ward Easter egg hunt the week before so she still got to have that experience. We also had a nice Easter dinner at G & G Johnson's house and then went to visit Great Grandma Johnson. Abbie even let us enjoy most of General Conference. Overall, it was a good Easter. We really missed seeing all of our family down in Beaver but fortunately we'll get to see them in a few months for the Moss Family Reunion! Yay! Hope everyone had a great Easter and Conference weekend!

Here are some pics from last weekend:

Abbie wasn't quite fast enough at first

She got one!

Calling her girlfriends to tell them about her pretty Easter dress

Now some pics from this weekend:

This is what she was doing for 85% of the weekend

What a hairdo!



Abbie's version of egg decorating

Visiting Great Grandma J

Family Easter Pic

Pigtails: Attempt #1

So Abbie's hair is getting kind of long, but only in the back. She looks like she has a mullet. Anyway, I thought I would try my hand at some little pigtails. Poor little thing had to suffer through her mother's lack of hair-doing skill. It turned out cute enough but I don't think Abbie will ever let me do it again. Plus, it made her look like a boy from the front because you couldn't even see the pigtails. Oh well! We'll try again someday!

From the Front: You can't even see them and it looks like she has boy hair

From the Side: Cuter, but see how she has no hair on the sides?

From the Back: Cutest. I think they turned out pretty good (at least from this view)

St. Patrick's Day Memories

For some reason, I have a distinct memory of last year's St. Patrick's Day of all days. I probably remember it because Abbie's nurses made her all of these really cute bows and I was so excited to use the pretty green one for Abbie's first official "holiday" St. Patrick's Day. Anyway, I just thought it would be fun to do some comparison photos from last year to this year.

The famous green bow

Sitting up in a chair for the first time

One year later...man what a difference a year makes!

Hope everybody had a great St. Patty's Day!

Happy Birthday Abbie!!!

Birthday Girl loved the balloons!

Yesterday Abbie got to celebrate her first birthday with lots of cake, balloons, presents, and family! We had pizza for dinner, cause what's a party without pizza? Abbie loves pizza crusts, so it worked out great. Next, we opened presents and she loved every one of them. It took awhile, but you can't expect a one year old to open a new toy and then just move on to the next present without playing with it first. She got some cute new dresses and outfits for Spring, new books, some stuffed animals, a beautiful toy chest (made by Grandpa J), some cool new toys, and a play tent. After presents came the cake. She took a couple of swipes at the frosting and decided she didn't like getting messy. Oh well! More undamaged cake for the rest of us to eat! Here's a little video of Abbie going at the cake.

While we were eating cake, we watched a couple of slideshows with pictures from Abbie's first year. The kids were kind of bored so Abbie and her cousins went to play with her tent. I was sitting there, watching the slideshow when I noticed that it had gotten kind of quiet and both of Abbie's cousins were sitting there watching too. I asked Haley where Abbie was and she said, "I think she's trying to climb the stairs." Yikes! We all got up and ran to the stairs. Lance's brother Ren was the closest but we were all just a little too late. We don't really know what happened, but I think she fell from the 2nd or 3rd step up and bonked her head pretty good. She had a big goose-egg and was crying pretty hard for a few minutes. We knew she was okay though, because after the initial scare, she wanted to get down to play with her new toys. Poor girl! What a birthday present!

Can you see the red bump on her forehead?

Anyway, thank you to all of our family for making Abbie's birthday special. This year has been a challenging one for us, but we are so happy to have this sweet little angel as part of our family. She makes us smile and reminds us that life is precious. Happy Birthday Abbie! We love you!

Loving the party hats!

Playing in her tent