The Creature Song

The day after Thanksgiving, as we were eating breakfast, Claire wanted to sing "the creature song." I was at a loss, but Jen soon remembered that we had sung the Doxology the day before, so we sang it again. And we've sung it every meal since.

Claire's verbal skills continue to increase. We were talking about going to a museum yesterday and Claire specified, "Natural History Museum." That's three 3-syllable words in a row for those counting at home. She's more self-aware all the time. Papa was laughing at Claire's "contraction" of "Claire wants" into "C'wants" and Claire's response was, "Claire's teasing Papa... Claire wants!"

Emily is doing well also, it is just that she is less "quotable." She did giggle twice yesterday though. I feel like I really got to bond with her this vacation time. She fell asleep in my arms several times, and I'm re-learning the infant soothing techniques. These few extra days around Thanksgiving are the first extended time I've got to spend with here since she came home from the hospital. My work was extra busy at that time, so I agreed to delay the rest of my family leave for a bit. (Hopefully I can take off a few weeks in December.)

First smiles. I captured one on camera this morning but can't post it until I have help from Mark.
Emily is such a sweet easy going baby. I am really enjoying her. She is trying out the bouncy seat with the vibrating motion for the first time. I think she likes it. She also sucked her thumb for the first time this morning.

Emily's cardiologist

Emily's cardiologist is actually the same as Claire's. He is a really nice guy with great kid-rapport. Today was our first follow-up after the Emily's cardiac exams in the NICU. Coincidentally, we ran out of her heart medication yesterday, so we anticipated having Dr. Burke refill the prescription. But after listening to her heart with his stethoscope, he started shaking his head saying, "Her murmur isn't that bad, why did they put her on these meds?"

It sounded like good news, but I couldn't understand why his opinion would contradict his colleague's. But then a confirmation of good news in the next room as he diagnosed Emily with the ultrasound machine. He showed us plainly on the screen that the hole between her lower chambers is healing up. It is developing an aneurysm now, which normally sounds bad, but in this case it is a stage along the way towards healing. He was pleased enough with the state of things now, that he decided to take her off the medications. Follow-up appointment in 3 weeks to see progress. Pray. Praise.

week 3+

As you may have guessed, we are pretty busy with 2 little kids in the house. Thankfully, Grandpa was here this week to take over just as Nanu left. But this weekend we are officially on our own until Thanksgiving when we travel to AZ. One major area of improvement is that Claire has been both going to sleep easier, and SLEEPING TROUGH THE NIGHT!! Hooray! Hallelujah!

Claire's language skills continue to improve and we take great joy in hearing her volunteer observations about daily household life such as, "the kitty made a little crying sound," (when Franky was spooked by a neighborhood cat.) Also her pronouns are getting better.

Jen picked up a "sand box" at the thrift store this week, and Claire and I went shopping for sand at Home Depot the very next day. The sandbox is round and red plastic shaped like a lady-bug. Claire really enjoys this--we'd been looking at them in stores, but they seem kind of expensive, and we don't really like buying big plastic toys anyway. So to find a "recycled" one for a fraction of the price really fit the bill.

There are a few new pictures on flickr. Please pardon our lack of posts. The good news about Claire's sleep improvement is somewhat tempered by Emily still needing several feeds throughout the night. I might sleep in the den tonight, especially since I want to get onto an earlier work schedule so I can be home in time to help with the daughters at home in the evening.

P.S. I'm experimenting with some context-sensitive ads on this blog site. Let me know if you think it is too obnoxious. (My first impression honestly is that it looks a little silly.) The good news is that the way I have it set up, it will drop off at the end of the month anyway.

week 2

Well, it certainly is busy with two little ones. Also, I moved my pump away from the computer and am pumping less, hence the lack of blog posts.
Emily seems to be gaining weight steadily now. She is 2390 grams (5 pounds 4 ounces). She in nursing really well. She tends to get tired and hungry in the late afternoon or early evening so we give her a "catch up" feeding by bottle. Her hemoglobin is up a bit--now at 11. It had dropped as low as 8.6 in the NICU and was at 10 when she came home. They doubled her dose of iron supplement which should help to increase hemoglobin over time. Last night Emily slept 3 hour stretches and Claire only woke up once at 10pm so we all rested better than usual.
It has been great having my mom here. Claire adores her and is having a good time. the three of us made scones on Monday. Today Nanu took her for a walk to the park while I cooked lunch. I am expecting a delivery of organic produce today from Paradiseo.com. Yay. This is the first time I've used this particular service.