Happy Birthday to our darling little girl!
To our dear friends and family,
Saying, "thank you", can never fully express our gratitude to you all for your support to our family this past year. You've given us food, prayers, food, gift cards, food, time, companionship and more food! Thank you for caring for us so well! As we've been approaching this miraculous one-year milestone, we've been experiencing so many mixed emotions. It feels like it was just yesterday that Lucie Pie was in the hospital and at the same time it feels like such a long time ago and that it's been a looooooong year. It's definitely overwhelming and difficult to try to understand why Lucie was born so extremely prematurely, why she had to spend almost four months in the hospital, why Drea didn't get to experience a full pregnancy so that Lucie could grow big and strong inside of her and so that Drea could keep drinking all the milk she was craving like crazy! It's difficult to know that as Lucie continues to grow she will need many sessions of therapy to learn to do what comes "naturally" to others and that it will still be several years before we know the "full story" of how her prematurity and her brain bleeds impacted her. But in all of this, we know God never abandoned us or our sweet, fierce little Lucille. We know that He continues to work in and through her and that He has guided us through what could have been even more painful and difficult. We are SO humbled and thankful that we get to be this little girl's parents.
As we celebrate our Lucie turning one (which will pretty much be a month-long celebration), we wanted to share some of what she has been up to this past month. Lucille has been creeping and crawling every day as she tries to reach for her toys and for us. She climbs up our laps, so we can hold her as she sits and plays, and if she's feeling really adventurous, she will climb up our body to get up to the couch. She pulls her self up to stand and will hold on to our fingers as we help her balance to take a few steps!! As you know, Lucie is on her own timeline and meets her milestones in her own order, so even though she has been making these AMAZING strides, up until yesterday, she wasn't able to go from her back to sitting up on her own. We set her down for a nap in the afternoon and noticed on the monitor, that she was sitting up in the play pen all on her own! Woohoo, Lucie-Lyn! Looks like it's time to lower her crib mattress once we get back to NYC.
This time of year has brought up so many memories that we want to hold on to and remember but we can also sense God bringing closure and healing to a lot of things too. We wanted to repost Lucie's monthly photos from the past 11 months as well as this month's so you can see Lucie's amazing journey up to now. Once again thank you all for blessing us in the many ways you have loved and continue to care for us. We want to wish you a VERY Merry Christmas, from our little family to yours. Enjoy the "Flash Back Friday" photos.
Love,
Los Hicksons
Lucille, just a couple hours old.
12 Months!