Callie's First Trip to WV

Last weekend we made our first family trip to West Virginia! Mommy's friend from college, Kelly, was visiting with her beautiful baby, Casen!

Callie was very interested in Baby Casen! She also enjoyed spending time with the other kids, Robey, Tenley and Talan!

While we were in West Virginia, we decided to visit Mommy's Alma Mater, West Virginia Wesleyan College!

Callie really enjoyed walking around the beautiful campus! It was a great day!

First Day of School

Today was Callie's first day of daycare at the Goddard School. She did great! She didn't cry once-we can't say the same for Mommy! We had taken Callie in for a couple of hours last week and she really enjoyed being with her "friends" and I think that helped with the transition today.

She is in a classroom with a total of 6 Toddlers, ages 12-24 months, with two teachers. The Director made Mommy feel better by calling her halfway through the day to let her know how well Callie was doing!

They have a lot of great activities for the children. Callie even came home with artwork today-how cute is that! We have been so fortunate to have been able to have Callie at home for the last 15 months. We are confident that Callie is ready for this change, especially developmentally...now we just need to do our best to keep her healthy with all of the germs!

We want to take a moment to again thank all of those that have helped to take care of Callie since she came home from the Hospital. We especially want to thank Callie's BFF, Aunt Calise! We have been so lucky to have her living with us and taking care of all of us since December. We love you!!

Our First Family Vacation!

What a wonderful vacation at the beach! This was our first official family vacation and we couldn't have asked for anything more!

Callie was full of smiles!

As always, Callie absolutely loved the water...

And trying on Aunt Brenna's sunglasses...

And swimming in the pool Poppop dug for her in the sand...

And spending quality time with Daddy!

These are a couple of "Tired Callie" pictures! She literally went non-stop all day. We would have to take her away from the water to get her to take any nap at all!

Most of our days were spent watching her explore the beach! And we can't wait to do it again next year!

Callie even made her first trip to the zoo! I think it was more fun for us! But we did get some smiles at the bigger animals, like the Buffalo, Bear and Tiger!

Nicu Reunions

This week Callie had two NICU reunions. The first was an informal get together with another miracle baby from St. Joe's, Ailyn. It was so nice to finally get a chance to meet up with Ailyn's family after so long. We spent a lot of time talking with Ailyn's parents while our girls were gaining strength at St. Joe's and it was nice to finally catch up out of the Hospital.

Ailyn and Callie spent time checking each other out-too cute!

Even Ailyn's older brother, Camden, spent time cuddling with Callie.

Later in the week Johns Hopkins had their annual NICU Reunion.

It was so nice to catch up with so many wonderful families that we had gotten to know during Callie's time at Johns Hopkins. Callie was even able to catch up with her Primary Nurse, Mary, and many other people that took such great care of her. How can we ever thank them enough?!?

New Interactions

Callie has had some "firsts" over the last couple of weeks! We caught her feeding our Dog, Riley. Which I am sure is going to be a first of many for her! We know we should have stopped her, but it was SO cute, we had to get it on film!!

Callie has also learned to stand up on her own. Up until now, she was either pulling herself up on someone, the couch, the table, etc or crawling over to the step and standing up. Now she can do it all on her own!! Such a big girl!!



Callie also finally got to meet some of her cousins! We spent Saturday spending some quality family time in New Jersey. It was so cute to have a new generation playing together, and despite them all being different ages, they all got along so well! Callie's younger cousin, Connor, is only 4 months old and almost weighs as much as Callie!

Callie was very excited to end her trip to New Jersey in the swimming pool!! As always, she was a little water bug and loved every second!

Water Baby

Callie's summer is off to a great start! Callie has certainly become our water baby! She loves being in the water every chance she gets! The pictures above are from Father's Day when we were invited to a neighbors pool-thank you! Callie was in the water for three hours straight. She would cry every time that we tried to take her out.

Callie has also started to get more vocal in the past couple of weeks. She is saying lots of "Dada's", "up", and "help". She had been communicating well with the sign's that we had tought her, but we are happy that her voice is starting to get more usage!

Callie is also walking a lot more. She is iniatiating it herself and if she doesn't get too excited, she can make it across the room on her own! She was evaluated by Physical Therapy last week and they are thrilled with her progress. Her therapist said that her development was "textbook". I asked if that was textbook for a micropreemie and she said, no, textbook for childhood development! That was SO nice to hear!!

Callie made her first visit to Ocean City, NJ for the 4th of July! She absolutely loved it!

Mommy and Daddy couldn't believe how much she loved the water. Everytime we would try to walk her towards the beach, she would turn us around back into the water! We never sat down the whole time we were there!!

After a long day splashing in the ocean, Callie finally took a nap on the boardwalk! We hope everyone had a wonderful fourth of July!