Abby and I went with four other moms to the Waco Zoo last week. I have to say I was very impressed with the zoo for such a small town. We were very close to all the animals and virtually had the zoo to ourselves. We will be going back for sure. We had wonderful weather and all the kids had a great time running around.

Abby and I by the African Savannah exhibit.

Trinity and Madison next to the cougars. The cougars were pacing up and down their enclosure as if saying look at those tasty little kids.

This past weekend one of Abby's NICU nurses came for a visit. We were very excited to see Katie again as we had not seen her in almost 2 years. Katie was Abby's night time primary nurse in level 3 of the NICU. Katie also has a little boy named Miller who shares Abby's birthday.

Happy Halloween everybody! So far we're having a good night. Abby has tolerated being dressed up in her butterfly costume and carted around for some trick or treats. The pumpkins are carved and waiting in the front yard. Molly isn't quite happy with the door bell ringing so much but we're having fun handing out candy. I figure this is the last year to hand out candy as next year Abby will be old enough to figure out what's going on and want to go out and about for fun things.

Here's the pics so far from tonight.

This past weekend, Grandma Wong came for a quick visit. Abby got to play with grandma for a couple hours while I cleaned a little house. Abby was also treated to her first haircut. I have to say she did a very good job and didn't complain about the whole thing. That could also be because she was in her favorite person's lap (dad) but who knows.









Doesn't this face just say "Are we done yet??"

Last month I took Abby to be fitted for Dynamic Ankle Foot Orthoses (DAFO). They are shoe braces to help with her foot alignment and give her more stability while learning to walk. Abby and I went yesterday to pick up her braces and tonight we went to go buy new shoes to wear over them. Poor Abby now has to wear slow boats to china as my family would say. She normally wears a size 3 shoe. I had to buy a size 6 1/2 wide shoe to be able to fit the brace in all the way. It was kinda funny to watch Abby try to walk in them tonight as she was not used to the extra length when trying to walk sideways.

Our usual bedtime routine is as follows. Usually between 10 - 10:30pm I start to warm up Abby's bedtime bottle. Once that is warmed up, Abby and I head to the bedroom. After she drinks her first couple of ounces, it's off to the floor of the room to play for a little while. The new thing to do while playing on the floor is to touch the touch lamp. Touching the touch lamp has wonderful results as the light goes on and off many many times. Then it's a short step to the side to touch the big button to turn on the noise maker. So as I sit in bed to try to read my book, the lights are flickering on and off and the noise maker is being turned on and off. Mind you the noise maker is set to white noise which is basically static noise. Makes for an enjoyable reading experience on my part. During the last book store trip, I bought a two dollar small book light so I can at least see while Abby turns the lamp on an off. The other night after Rick came in to tell us good night, he took her across the room and I turned off the lamp. We were amazed that Abby was able to navigate from the other side of the room in the dark and turn the lamp back on so she could see. I'm constantly amazed at how much Abby can actually see compared to what our expectations of her vision limits are. We ended up turning the lamp on and off a few more times in the dark much to her delight.

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Over the past few weeks, our part of the country has been hit by two hurricanes. The first one was Gustav, that ended up going in the New Orleans area. At first it was projected to go into southwest Louisiana were our families live. My family evacuated to Little Rock, Arkansas where my sister is currently going to school. Rick's family came to stay with us for a few days. Grandma Hoffpauir was quite pleased to have to leave home so she could come visit Abby. Rick's brother, Brent, and his wife Jennifer and baby Sarah along with Jennifer's parents and aunt came to BCS. Here is Abby and Sarah during the visit.


A couple of weeks later, Ike started to move it's way into the Gulf of Mexico and headed towards Galveston, Texas. This time my cousin Duane, his wife Angeline and daughter Emily evacuated from League City to our house. They stayed for two nights before heading back down to their house. Thankfully our families sustained little to no damage during either hurricane. Here is Duane, Emily and Abby.

Abby has always loved her baths. A few months ago, she started to hate her bath and we couldn't figure out why. Since it was summertime, Abby and I have gone to the pool a few times. Abby seemed to really like the pool but that didn't help up with bath time. I tried to fill the tub up all the way one night and Abby seemed more inclined to take a bath. A few full bathtubs later and Abby is back to loving her bath. She loves the water so much, she has searched out an alternate source of water to play in during the day.........the toilet! Even though I have been trying to leave the lid down, she has figured out how to prop up the lid, put her head under the lid to hold it, then pat the water with her other hand.

We had a potluck lunch this week for a few other moms in my mom's group. Of course I ended up forgetting to take pics until everyone but the last baby left. We had a great time over all and I loved watching all the kids interact with each other. Poor Abby had this look on her face like "Who are all these people and why are they playing with my stuff??"

I did end up getting a few shots of Abby and Baby Kyle before they left.

Being that I have been told by my mom friends that "Leslea, you need to do a blog" and then Rick saying "We should do a blog for Abby" we now have a blog. I have no idea what I will blog about but most people seem to blog about the funniest things anyway. First off then, here are some pictures from Abby's 2 year old photo shoot. We had Amy Casas (www.amycasas.com) come over to the house a few weekends back to do the pictures. They turned out great as usual :) Thanks a bunch Amy!