A look back on 2015!

Happy New Year 2016!

Here is a look back on our year 2015

January brought a lot of baby snuggles and some creative kids.

February brought more baby snuggles and Valentine's Day.

March brought a birthday for Eleanor. She is now 8! We had breakfast at Perkins with Grammy and Grandad. Eleanor's favorite place to go on her birthday. We celebrated St. Patrick's Day. We also said goodbye to big George. I don't think Sean has forgiven me for that one, but he was really big and starting to lose his stuffing... :/

April was an exciting month with Tab and Riley coming for a visit! :) Ruth and Riley are just 6 weeks apart and they finally got to meet face to face for the first time. We also celebrated our living Savior on Easter!

May brought even more baby snuggles and some #twinning This was also the month that I finally made the call to have Ruth evaluated by Early Childhood Intervention.

June brought some summer fun and a birthday for Sean. He is 10! This was the month that Ruth officially started therapy with McKids and started being able to sit unassisted.

July brought an Independence Day celebration and a visit from Papa and Grandma. This was the month Ruth started an asymmetrical army crawl and she pulled to stand for the first time! :)

August brought lots of bike riding outside, and a super cute Ruth and Great Grandad Dale picture :) This was the month Ruth learned to get herself into the sitting position on her own and soon after she started crawling on all fours. All thanks to her awesome therapy team!

September was an awesome month! Lily turned 5 and Ruth and I got to fly to Florida to visit Tab and her family! :) We also celebrated Tab's birthday while we were there. It was a super awesome time and I was extremely nervous to fly with a baby, but we did it and we survived and Ruth did amazing on the flights. I felt like a "real" grownup lol. It was so nice to visit my sister and her lovely family. I wish I could have brought all of the kids, but it was also a nice little break away for me too. This was also the month Ruth had her first visit with her pediatric neurologist and he told us that she has mild left hemiplegic cerebral palsy, which means she has weakness and tightness on the left side of her body.

October Was another big month with Ruth turning ONE, Halloween, recognizing World CP Day by wearing green, a visit to the pumpkin patch, a visit to Papa and Grandma's, and lots of fun time playing outdoors. I also started a page on facebook called Ruth's Hemiplegia Journey to document her journey with CP.

November brought Thanksgiving thankfulness, another visit with Papa and Grandma, matching Christmas jammies, Lilyana was in a play at the college directed by daddy! Such a brave girl to be on stage and I think she was pretty proud of herself :) Ruth had her MRI. We found out that she has mild PVL on both sides of her brain, which is what caused her CP. It means that she had inadequate blood flow and oxygen to some areas of her brain, which caused some of the nerves that transmit messages to her muscles to decay and die... I think I am explaining that right.

December brought a birthday for Chloe. She is now 7! We celebrated the birth of our Savior during the Christmas season, and now we look forward to a new year! I think it's easy to see that Ruth was a pretty big highlight of our year ;) We love her to pieces! We expect to see her standing and walking independently this year, possibly in the next few months! She is already a pro at crawling and cruising along the furniture. I think she just needs to get more balance and confidence to let go. We have seen her start to open her left hand and uncurl her left toes. She is using her left hand as a "helper" hand. She is bearing weight on both legs quite well and she is crawling more symmetrically. We are so excited to see how far she has come in the last 6 months. We are going to be focusing on language now as well as her motor skills as she is not saying many words yet.