Did I Mention that He's Breathtaking?

One Month Old!

And this girl is 21 months today:

Happy Birthday, Noley Noles!

My sweet nephew will be one tomorrow (Wednesday). I cannot believe it was a year ago that I stood in that surgery room watching them cut my sister open and remove little Nolan.

We traveled this weekend for Nolan's first birthday party. It was Will's first 4.5 hour drive. He and Soph both did great, and we turned over 100,000 miles on our Highlander. Yikes!

Here is the adorable, squishy-faced birthday boy:


Nolan's party was tons of fun. His Daddy had the brilliant idea to do a "crazy-hair" birthday party, since Nolan's hair has always been so out-of-control. Everyone was a really good sport and there were lots of fun hairdos there!

Here is Nolan digging into his cake. He was hilarious, eventually going face first into it.



Below is my cute Daddy and his crazy "hair."


Sophie's crazy hair was a hit. I must admit, though, that I am not this creative. I shamelessly stole this idea from Summer.


Even little Will got in on the action with this fashionable Eurohawk.


Happy birthday, Nolan - we love you!!

Happy Boy

I had my first couple real smiles from Will tonight. I wish, wish, wish I had pictures of it... alas... for now you'll just have to trust me that it was breathtaking.

Four Beautiful Little Hearing Impaired Ears

The lives of our sweet babies would not be complete without a visit to the audiologist. As neither of us have any family history of hearing loss at birth, we assumed Sophie's hearing loss was a "fluke." However, we were shocked two weeks ago when the lady came at the hospital to do Will's newborn hearing screening and told us that he, too, had failed. So today it was off to the audiologist for Will.

After about an hour-and-a-half of testing, we were told - surprise! - that Will has hearing loss as well. Unfortunately, Will's hearing loss is worse than Sophie's; what his audiologist called mild to moderate loss. We are supposed to return in a month to have them run the tests again. If his results stay consistent, as they are expected to, his audiologist will fit him for little hearing aids soon after.

Despite the looming uncertainties I felt on my drive home, I found myself praising our awesome God! We are so thankful that Will's hearing isn't worse and that he doesn't have additional or more severe problems. We're so grateful that we live in an age where this was caught early and will be corrected. We pray that wearing little hearing aids will develop compassion and humility in our sweet little boy as well as in his parents.

Here is a picture of our little lab rat all hooked up for testing. If you're interested, see below for more details about Will's hearing loss.



Below is the same graph I used to describe Sophie's hearing loss. The green line, at the 20 decibel (dB) mark, is where they would ideally like all kiddos to fall for hearing. The lower on the page you go, the worse the level of hearing. The red section is where Sophie's hearing loss falls. The blue line is Will's hearing loss. He hears a little better at lower frequency sounds, and it gradually gets a little worse as the frequency becomes higher. All those pictures and speech sounds (the letters) that are above the blue line are sounds that Will cannot currently hear. When he gets hearing aids his hearing should be corrected at least up to that green 20 dB line.

Two Weeks of Will

Most of these are just random snapshots of our cutie with nothing to explain. The first one, though, I got a kick out of. No less than 30 seconds after I laid Will down on his blanket, Elmo and two baby dolls joined him. His big sister cracks me up.

Enjoy the pics!








*Thanks to my sweet friend Donna for Will's awesome OU blanket! Boomer Sooner!

Perhaps the Dolls Understand...

Double Trouble

I saw pics like these on another blog I read. I never imagined Sophie would participate, but she loved every minute of it and kept asking to do it again. I never want to forget moments like this with my sweet little Sophers. Oh, how I love that girl.
HAPPY
SCOWLING
SURPRISED

It's a Tyson Thang...

At the risk of looking cliche, I had to post pictures of my two children so you all can see the resemblance. Every day Will does little things that remind me of his sister when she was just a babe. It brings back all those same feelings of amazement and new-mom love that I had for her. It's so fun to dream and wonder about what Will might do next - how will he take after sweet Soph, and in what ways will he venture out on his own?

Here are Sophie and then Will, both still at the hospital:


Below - Sophie right before we took her home from the hospital; Will when he was three days old.

Our Beautiful Boy