She's Growing Up Right Before Our Eyes!!!

Sunday, September 14th was a very busy day for us. It was the day we celebrated TT’s birth, she turned 4 years old!!! We decided not to go with the traditional birthday party nor did we buy her any presents. We felt that celebrating her life by enjoying her company, her smile and her sweet spirit was a much better present than what money can buy. And I know that she enjoyed herself thoroughly because she spent the day with family who loves and cherishes her in every way imaginable.

The pictures only capture a glimpse of what we experienced on Sunday and my words can not describe the love that we felt either. What I want is for you to enjoy seeing us celebrate love flowing from the hearts of my family to yours.

Before we get to the pictures I would like to share with you a little bit about our beautiful princess. It's been 2½ years now since TT has been wearing glasses. She was diagnosed with condition called Strabismus which is a dysfunction of the direction and power of the muscle in the eye. When she was 1½ we started to notice her crossing her eyes and were amazed that she knew how to do that at her age. It took grandma and all of her wisdom to point it out to us that she’s a bit young and shouldn’t know how to do that at her age on her own. Immediately we made an appointment with the ophthalmologist to have her eyes looked at.

I can remember that day coming home and carrying the weight of what we just learned. Our baby, who’s not even 2 as yet has to start wearing glasses and has to keep them on at all times in order for her eyes to stay straight and not permanently cross. As I sat on the living room couch holding her in my arms the tears started to flow and at the same time my heart started to ache. I didn’t want to accept it. Make it go away, is what I told D. looking in to his eyes. How are we going to successfully persuade our baby girl to keep her glasses on at all times? She's still wearing diapers.

The day we took her to pick up the glasses she was excited because we were. She didn't really understand all that was going on and we did our best, believe me, to try and convey it to her. How does a 1 1/2 year old understand that the face she once knew was going to be graced by a beautiful pair of glasses indefinitely? As I said, we did our best. TT put them on and wore them for about 10 minutes (which was pretty good) and then decided that she had enough. Before leaving the Doctors office he couldn't stress to us enough the importance of her keeping them on. The thought of our baby loosing her eye site was unfathomable! What were we going to do to get her to keep them on?

And then our miracle showed up in the form of a beautiful little lady. Our older daughter, Nish, also wears glasses for a common reason one might wear glasses, she’s near sided. Nish was to be the perfect example and partner for little TT to learn from. We taught her to wear and continually wear her glasses by emulating and using her older sister as her goal to aspire towards. With perseverance, patience and love we successfully got TT to wear her glasses with no problem. Her eyes will remain straight as long as she keeps her glasses on. Today she’s even learning how to properly care for her glasses just like her big sister and still looks up to her with admiration. If you happen to catch me tearing up these days it's only from this overwhelming feeling of joy, amazement and peace that I'm feeling when I'm thinking about her.

Now it's time to celebrate with us and enjoy our beautiful little princess, TT :-)