Wilkesboro in February

This post is a bit overdue as it has been a few weeks since we visited the McNeill clan in Wilkesboro. Better late than never, right?

Camille had a wonderful time seeing the family. She bonded with Gran over her facination with birds and loved looking out Gran's back door as the birds came to eat. Gran enjoyed feeding Camille a banana, as she was shocked that Camille will take your finger off if you aren't careful.

The weather was warm for Wilkesboro, but a little chilly for us. We still managed to make it to the park for some swinging and sliding which Camille loved. She watched her first live basketball game as Daniel had his last game of the season. He won the game, and Camille won over the crowd :)

These are pics of Camille playing in Gran's yard. She enjoyed the nerf "balls" as she called them.

15 Months Old

Camille turned 15 months old today!! I guess I have to start referring to her as a toddler instead of a baby :(

She had a checkup at the doctor today which went very well. She weighs 21 lbs 2oz (25th percentile). Her height is 29 1/4" (20th percentile) and her head circumference is 18 1/2" (78th percentile). So she has had a little growth spurt to get her up in the percentiles! She did get 3 shots while there- DTaP, Hib, & Pneumococcal so of course there was crying. The nurse gave her a puppy dog sticker to help her to feel better- Camille threw it back at her. Luckily, I was prepared with some goldfish to snack on. She quickly forgot about the tears.

Camille can be so quiet with people she doesn't see often. I wouldn't call it shy, b/c she doesn't hide or get upset, she just won't say anything. So Camille waited until we had gotten back in the car to start her talking and waving bye bye. She is quite the entertainer and has a great sense of humor already.

Camille's new things this month are defnitely words. She is more focused on watching people's mouths as they talk and then tries to make the same sounds. Her words this month are "uh-oh" and "ball." She still loves to say "bye bye" and "da-da." She will tell me "hot" sometimes when I am blowing on her oatmeal and we think her "side" means outside. Camille knows her no's and yes' already too.... she will quickly shake her head in answer to a question. Usually its always a "yes" nod for anything regarding food and a "no" nod for everything else. She is getting so much more fun to play with b/c she really interacts and entertains. Her favorite toys this month are her kitchen (especially the spoons) and her baby doll. The funniest thing she does is what we call her mean face. She was in trouble one day and I gave her my mean look and she did it right back to me. So much for that intimidation. So now, we say, "mean face!" and she squints her eyes and gives you "the look." She also seems to understand everything we tell her these days...... some examples of things I tell her & she responds to: put it in the trash, go to your room, go upstairs, go outside, bath time, bring me the baby, etc...... very fun! She is still very loving which is so cute. She will just give me a hug or want to be held at random times and she loves to come sit in our laps if we are sitting on the floor. When she gets super excited she will run and give us a big squeeze :) Precious!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Camille had a fun filled day at school today celebrating Valentine's Day. She came home with lots of sweet cards from her friends :) She even got a suprise this morning when her buddy Corey hand delivered his Valentine card to her- it was a picture of the two of them :) So sweet!

Here are some pictures I took when we got home from school today. Daddy was grilling our Valentine's Day dinner while Camille & I played.

Camille enjoyed watching Daddy from the door as he grilled.

Camille got to enjoy a yummy Valentine's meal of squash, zucchini, potatoes, & banana- her favs!

She even got a special Valentine's treat- M&M's :)

Hard to believe this little sweetie turns 15 months old this week!!

Bye Bye ACL

So after many weeks of waiting to figure out what is wrong with my knee.... I finally got some results on Friday. The doctor suspected early on that it was ACL related, but I had to get an MRI to know for sure. Well, the doc was right... unfortunately :) Turns out my ACL is completely torn. The good news of that is that no other ligaments are injured. Usually with ACL injuries, there is also damage to the meniscus or the posterior cruciate ligament. I do have some bad bone bruising, but that will heal over time.

So, I will be needing surgery to reconstruct my ACL. Luckily, I'm not in any pain and can get around well for the most part- so there is no rush on the surgery. They do require pre-op physical therapy, which I will start this month. The crazy thing is that they want you going into surgery feeling as if you don't need it. Weird, huh? They said that the closer they can get my knee to full motion now, the easier my recovery will be after the surgery.
There are different options to consider with the ACL recontruction- mainly what tissue I want to use to reconstruct it- my own, a donor's, or a combo of both. There are of course pros and cons to each method, but the doctor has been very helpful in letting me know what those are.
The surgery should only have me out of pocket for about 2 weeks, after that, I will be able to get around on crutches until about week 6. By week 8, I should be close to feeling 100% for day to day activities. It usually takes 3-5 months to be ready to be "active" again with running, etc. The skiing, hiking, etc should be possible around month 9- which I am fine to give that lots more time! :)

So, we'll keep you posted on things. Right now we are just going to play things by ear and see how the physical therapy goes before we start deciding on when to do surgery.

I'm sure Camille is counting down until mommy can run around with her again.... :)

14 Months Old and Walking!

Camille is officially a walker! While she has been taking many steps for awhile, she is finally at the the point of gettting back up any time she falls and takes several laps around the house for fun each day. :) She especially loves to try and run away if it is time to get dressed or go to bed. At least we are still faster than she is... for now.

Here are some pictures we took of her today- on her 14th month birthday. It was a special day. We got to celebrate the 100yrs of Nanny's life. While it is always sad to have to say goodbye and attend a funeral, it was amazing that Nanny had such a full, long life. AND she got to live long enough to become a great, great grandmother. Camille was her first and only great great grandchild. What an honor!

Camille loves to ride on her Daddy's shoulders. She also loves snuggling up to mommy or pretending to wrestle. She was cuddling up to me while we were taking pictures and we thought it was hilarious the way she positions herself next to me- especially with that big belly poking out!

She loves her "fairy mobile" still. She pushes it around herself and hits all the buttons with the music, but she also loves to sit on it and be pushed around the house. And check out the hair. Every night after her bath, we comb & comb to straighten the back, but no matter what- it flips right out. I think this is the baby Justin Bieber look :)

This chair is about 75yrs old. I had some pictures taken in it when I was close to Camille's age. Mimi let us have it for Camille. She looks so cute sitting in it and she loves that it is her size. It is hard to capture a picture of her sitting because she loves to stand up and then sit back down, over and over and over :)

Camille's New Class

Camille was moved up to the "big girls" class at school this week. We knew the move was coming, but didn't think much of it, since her new teacher & classroom were just next door to where she is used to. She had the opportunity to bond with her new teacher Mrs. Margaret last week when there weren't many kids at school due to the holidays. Camille's new class is still all girls and one of which she new from her infant class.

Mrs. Margaret has sent comments home each day saying what a cutie pie Camille is and how she is such a sweet child. I wish I could take the credit for that, but she was just born that way :) Mrs. Margaret said she knew she would love Camille once she served her her first meal. She was very impressed with Camille's appetite and love of food- she said they had that in common. She loves that she is such a great eater and will try just about anything. Let's hope she keeps that up.

With my injury, Nick has had to take & pick up Camille from school everyday this week. He said one day when he picked her up, she was just walking around from table to table..... She won't do that at home!! So we see she shows off her big girl skills at school and then resorts back to laziness at home :)

We have noticed a complete change in her demeanor this week though! She is super energetic when she gets home & happy as can be. She wants to play up until bedtime and even doesn't act sleepy then either! Her playing is more like a ball of energy- shaking her head/dancing/going from toy to toy/clapping/waving her arms around. I'm not kidding- she can do this for hours at night! She is also starting to be even more independent than usual- hard to imagine. She wants to feed herself with her spoon and doesn't want you to hold it at all. She points to what she wants to eat and pushes what she doesn't want off of her tray. She is pretty much 100% sippy cup now thank goodness! She loves to mimic us and then laughs when we mimic her back. She is still super observant- we can't get anything past that child- especially when we try to sneak a dessert :) She takes about the same amount of steps, but does them with a little more control and confidence. She now just starts walking to us on her own, rather than us encouraging her, but that is only when she wants something. Otherwise, she is fine to keep crawling or hold our hands.

She is getting even more fun with her little personality though I can tell she is going to be hard headed as can be!

I will try and take some updated pictures soon and need to video her with her new found energy- it is quite entertaining!

Ski Getaway.... and an unwanted memento to bring home!

Nick and I got each other a weekend getaway at the Wintergreen Resort in VA for Christmas. We decided to take our trip on New Years eve weekend. What better way to ring in the New Year? Since Mimi's Christmas wish was extra time with Camille, we didn't want to disappoint her :) So Mimi had Camille for the whole weekend- a first for us! We knew she was in great hands. MawMaw & PawPaw even made a visit to Camille too- so she had lots of good care while we were away.

Nick and I loved the 4hr drive to Wintergreen. We took some back roads through many small NC & VA towns- which was so much fun. We were in no rush to get there, so it was very nice to go at our own pace. We got to stop for lunch in Lynchburg and found a great cafe in downtown. We were a bit worried about the temperatures since it was supposed to be such a warm weekend in Raleigh. Though the temps were warmer than usual for the mountains, they were still plenty chilly for us, coupled with the wind! Brrr!

Nick & I decided to hold off on the skiing for Friday, since we had to check in, get situated and scope everything out. Our accomodations were so nice- we lucked up and got a condo right next to the lodge!! We could walk to EVERYTHING, including the slopes. Very cool! We did spot the ice skating rink, and though it was somewhat small and seemed to be the hangout for a younger crowd, we wanted to try it out. It had been a long time since either of us had skated. We had such a great time! We both picked it right up and had fun dodging all the kids learning to skate for the first time. After about an hour of skating, we were exhausted and sore and ready to call it quits! Since most of the local restaurants were booked for NYE, we decided to stay close and have dinner at The Edge.... a bar that overlooks some of the slopes. It is embarrasing to admit, but we didn't stay out until midnight... we wanted to hit the slopes early and were exhausted from the long work week :) Are we getting old?

We woke up early and ready to ski on Saturday!! We hit the slopes around 8:30am. Most of the other skiiers must have partied hard b/c we were some of the only folks out there! It was so nice to have the slopes & lifts to ourselves for awhile. The snow was fairly slick & icy since the weather had melted the real snow that was there. By mid morning, the ski schools had started up and folks started to come out from hibernation, so it got fairly crowded. After making sure we weren't too rusty.... we moved from the beginner slopes to the intermediates. It was quite fun until our last slope before our lunch break..... Nick had gone down ahead of me, so I got going and before I had gone a few feet down the slope, I had decided to slow myself down just for safe measure. Well... I turned my ski, but the rest of my body went the opposite way. Result- a bad fall at the top of the slope. Ouch!! I thought I broke my leg, so some extra prayers were said as I tried to figure out what to do. Nick was calling out to me, but I was in too much pain to get up. Someone flagged the ski patrol and I was Carroll's first accident of the season :) Lucky me! After some time had passed and I was collecting myself, I realized I hadn't broken anything and the pain was isolated to my knee. The ski patrol wanted to get me checked out and since I couldn't walk, I got taken down the slope in the ski patrol sled. Best part of that was they put me in a body bag looking thing to protect me from the snow. Boy that turned some heads. :) I then got taken by a snowmobile to the ski patrol building. I'm glad I hadn't broken anything b/c that was one bumpy ride. It is the ambulance of the slopes... they blow whistles and wave the ski poles and everyone moves aside. Ski patrol iced my knee and put me in a cardboard splint until Nick could get to me. They urged us to go to the hospital. I knew my injury wasn't an emergency and told Nick once he got me settled in our room, he could go back to skiing for awhile. I was certain nothing was broken so I figured what the heck. Nick got another 2-3 hrs in. I told him to avoid the black diamonds b/c we didn't need both us us layed up with injuries. While he didn't listen to that advice, he figured to call it quits once it got foggy b/c he could envision himself getting hurt and me not being able to do anything :) Good thing. We then made our way to the hospital.

The hospital is 20 miles away in Fisherville. We had to take these steep, narrow roads to get there. Again, glad it wasn't an emergency! We pulled up to the hospital in shock, it was HUGE! I guess I was expecting some small town clinic of some sort... boy was I wrong. We did have to go in the ER, which is always an interesting experience. The people waiting all seemed to know each other and had some interesting dialects. :) I had a guy try and tell me about the show "1000 ways to die"- nice ER conversation! I had some xrays done which confirmed nothing was broken, but revealed the swelling that I felt. The doctor was Dutch and very interesting- we really liked her. She was very honest and very personable. She felt like I had a bad sprain, but nothing torn. Only an MRI would confirm that, but she felt fine with seeing how I did over time before doing that. So, I got a brace & crutches- the unwanted memento from our trip. After getting released at 9pm, tired & hungry, Nick & I enjoyed a New Year's Day dinner at McDonald's. :) We'll have to make up the black eyes & greens later. Nick kindly reminded me that what you do on New Year's is a reflection of the rest of your year... I quickly came back with well, mine will be full of resting with my feet up :)

So, a somewhat crippled Mom is not what Camille was expecting when we got home. She kept pointing to my brace & crutches and then would hold her arms up wanting to be picked up. She was very upset when I couldn't pick her up, and is still angry today about that. Poor thing, can't understand why mommy is walking funny and not playing with her much. So, Nick is Mr. Mom this week :)

I shouldn't be out of commission for more than a week, so I am counting down and hoping for a quick recovery!!!