Bennett is 14 months old!

Bennett turned 14 months old two days ago, so I wanted to give an update on all the fun things she is doing and how things are going with her eyes!

Bennett started walking about a month ago and has not stopped since! She is so good at standing up without holding onto things... once she gets up she tots around and kind of keeps up with the boys! She is our little climber! Many times a day I find her standing on the top step of the boys' bunk bed or sitting on one of the couches all by herself... she is always so happy when she does it herself!

Bennett loves to eat!! Some of her favorites are bananas, meat, pasta, carrots, broccoli, crackers, chocolate, and ice cream!

One of my most favorite things about Bennett is that she loves to cuddle... I absolutely love her hugs and kisses and cuddle times on the couch! She has a little brown bear that her Aunt Lindy gave her the day she was born that she just adores... she carries her around hugging her and patting on its back... so cute!

I also am in love with her hair... the longer it gets the more curls she gets.... I love playing with it! I will definitely be waiting a long time to cut it!

Bennett waves hi and bye, gives high fives, hugs, kisses, and also signs some words (please, more, thank you, and all done). She also has a growing vocabulary... whenever she says hi it always comes out hi dad, she also says all done, banana, and jabbers all the time!

Things are going really well with her eyes! Back in June we had her first appointment at the UofI Children's hospital. Basically the only way to fix her crossed eye is surgery, but in order to do the surgery her vision in both of her eyes need to be the same. At the first appointment she was not using her left eye (the crossed eye) at all... in other words her brain was not recognizing it, therefor not using it. We were told to start patching her right eye 6-8 hrs per day to strengthen the left eye. By putting a patch over the good eye we are forcing her brain to use the bad eye and make those connections so that when we do the surgery the connections are made and her brain won't ignore the fixed eye.

So we patched for 4 weeks and just had our second appointment on Monday. The Dr. is seeing really good progress!! She is using her left now, which means the patching is working!! We go back in 2 two and it sounds like her eye may be ready for surgery then!! Once her eye is ready we can schedule her surgery... it will be two or three months out (they are pretty busy at the UofI !) Thank you all so much for praying for Bennett and please continue to pray that this process would be successful! I will do my best to keep you all updated!