Oliana's first pair of eyes and her first birthday!!

Oliana finally recieved her first pair of prosthetic eyes in May. Right before her first birthday! We were so excited. The whole trip down to L.A. I just kept trying to imagine what my baby girl would look like with eyes. What a strange concept, huh. We thought she was only going to recieve the painted eye on the right side, but suprise, our occularist Beverly decided to do the left too!

She put the one that she had made for her right eye first. It was just such a surreal experience. I just kept starring at her. Oohhing and Aahhing. She was making faces at Seth and I like, what are you two googling at? She was just so beautiful. Even though I know she doesn't see me with them, it's really nice looking into them. I find that I don't focus on her eyes as much as I do her other features to tell her expressions. I still concentrate on her eyebrows and mouth to tell what she's thinking. They do make a difference in her appearance though.

We went outside the occularist's building after Beverly put in her right eye to wait while she constructed and painted her left eye. Seth and I could not stop ourselves from just staring at her. She just looked so different to us. I didn't think it would make that big of a difference, but it did. We went back upstairs and Beverly put in the left eye. As much as a difference as having one eye in, imagine what two looked like! It was just amazing. It took a while to get used to them. We were just so used to seeing blank eyes. I only wish she could see through them. We still do think that she can see some light. She squints in the sun, which is a very good sign!! We're happy with that.

For Oli's first birthday we had a small party at our house for her with family. She had two cakes. One was a flower and one was a heart with her name brailled on it. It was so cute. We put the cake on her tray and she heard us set something down. So immediately those little hands stretched out to discover what treat we had put before her. She grabbed a huge handful and shoved it in her mouth. Her eyes lit up and she just kept shoveling it in as we quickly sang happy birthday. There was no way we could take it away from her. She loved it!!

That night Seth and I took her to the Las Vegas Philharmonic. She really enjoyed that. She listened for a whole hour. When the music started she just sat so quiet and intent and then started bobbing her head. She probably would have listened longer,but the next set was really slow and the music was integrated with a narrative. Our Oli likes loud fast music. We had a really nice day and I think she really enjoyed her first birthday.