We aren't quite done celebrating Christmas yet so I'm hoping that baby Young gives us another week or two before she arrives so I can do another update going into the new year. As most of you know 2010 was a very eventful year for us from beginning to end, and we are very much looking forward to beginning 2011 with such a wonderful (and planned) change for our family.
Since my last update was while Autumn was still in her cast, I'll start with a progress report on that. The cast came off after 6 weeks, which we were thrilled about! That was on September 29th, so by Halloween she had been a free woman for about a month. The process of taking off the cast was quite an ordeal, and not something she enjoyed, but as soon as it was done she was totally giddy and didn't stop smiling and laughing for days. It was pretty weird watching her legs move around involuntarily for a while - she had no strength or muscle control and they wiggled like jello. The best way to describe the rehab process is like having an infant all over again and watching them go through all the normal stages, but at an excellerated pace. First she could only scoot or army crawl, then a few days later she started crawling on her knees. The next week she began pulling herself up on furniture and eventually walking along side of things. Overall it took about a month before she could stand on her own and take some steps by herself. (Most of our trick-or-treating was done in the wagon). After about 6 weeks she was walking and running a little bit, but it probably took 8-10 weeks to really feel like she was back to normal. We are very thankful to have that experience behind us :)
With Autumn's new found freedom we were all looking forward to the holidays. For Halloween we did the usual pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, etc. We were also able to spend some time with both families including going to pumpkin patches with both sets of grandparents and cousins. For Thanksgiving we spent time both in Napoleon and Toledo eating way too much as usual. We also had a special weekend in November at Great Wolf Lodge with my parents and my sister and her family to celebrate my parents 35th anniversary and my dad's 60th birthday.
Here are some pictures, mainly from Halloween. I guess I didn't do such a great job of capturing Thanksgiving this year...oops!
We went to Boo at the Zoo with Grandma and Grandpa Latta and the Howmans. It was fitting since all the kids were wild animals this year. Who are we kidding though - regardless of their costumes they fit right in at the zoo :)
Happy girl with her chocolate!
Happy girl with her chocolate!
After we were done trick-or-treating, Autumn did a great job of helping daddy pass out candy to all the other kids.
We weren't able to trick-or-treat with Brady this year, but that didn't stop the kids from wearing their costumes for half a day.
The first weekend in November Autumn graduated to her big girl bed! We were just getting ready to make the transition before she broke her leg, and then had to delay it for a few months, so she was more than ready by the time we felt comfortable doing it. It was a big weekend because the way she earned her big girl bed was to give up her pacifiers. We sat down and wrote a letter to Santa telling him that she was a big girl now and she was mailing her pacifiers to him so he could give them to a baby girl or boy who needed them for Christmas. It went much better than we could have imagined and two months in she still won't get out of her bed until we come get her. Gotta love that!
