no longer a preemie

Since McKenna was born three months early, we've had to take her back to St. Luke's every three to six months for developmental check ups. The appointments are to assess her development (i.e. cognitive skills, motor skills, social skills, etc.) against kids her age who were born full term. As you can imagine, her development was delayed at first. Today, we learned that she has not only caught up to kids her age, but that she is advanced for a 21-month old.

As parents of course we think that McKenna is smart, but in the nurses' words she is "amazing" and "brillliant". They said that McKenna has the vocabulary of a 2-1/2 year old. She also impressed them by stacking six blocks versus the two a child her age should be able to stack and by naming a dozen or more body parts compared to the six a child her age should know. All of this was exceptional since her appointment was smack in the middle of her nap time... she didn't even have her game face on!! :)

Seriously, we are so proud of how far McKenna has come. We are thrilled to receive confirmation that she is doing so well after such a rough start.

holiday fun

dancing queen, part deux

conflict of emotions

McKenna thinks that Santa Claus is REALLY cool from afar...



but don't let him get too close.

tummy time, tummy time, tum- tum- tummy time

This is a little evidence of the miracle work our daycare provider, Jessie, is able to achieve. Rhett wasn't holding his head up this well when I started back to work, just one week ago.

will the real rhett cooper please stand up

I don't know how long this will last, but McKenna loves books!! So much so that she took off after breakfast to read to her bear, Rhett. She's also been caught giving "Rhett" a binkie, changing his diaper, and tucking him in for bed. She takes pretty good care of him and the real Rhett too.

it's my potty, and I'll poop if I want to

Okay... I never thought I would EVER get so excited about somebody pooping, but we had a monumental moment today. McKenna pooped in the potty!! We weren't really ready to start potty training yet. We bought her a potty, but that was the extent of it. We figured we would wait until after the holidays to start training. I guess McKenna decided she was ready because today she told us that she had to poo poo. What?! Really?! Okay, we'll give this a try. So we sat her on the potty and waited. I won't go into further detail. Let's just say that I got so excited that I had to take pictures of her sitting on the potty. I'd post them (they're clean), but she'd kill me someday. Yipee! Maybe before long we'll only have one child in diapers.