tawbubby

Daphne’s coming home Saturday!

Many people have been asking for an update.

Big sister first: She got this awesome t-shirt from The Goods. It made her very happy and she is proud to wear it. I am sure it will help her adjust to her new role in life.

Meanwhile she is working on 2 molars. One is almost out and the other is on the way. We’re not sure if she has a cold or it’s teething related gunk.
Other highlights are her new shoes with blinking lights and a clock shape sorter that she asked for at 4 am the other night. Thankfully she went right back to sleep.

And little sister: She’s doing great. She is in their ‘Feed and Grow’ category, which is funny because her nickname through my pregnancy was “Sprout”. She is eating well and we hope she grows fast so she can come home. They’re starting to ask us about things that need to be done before she comes home- car seat test for breathing, a CPR video, etc. It won’t be long and we can’t wait.
Here she is with her pacifier. She loves it- one early difference between Daphne and Amelia. Don’t worry grandmas, we won’t let her turn 3 with a pacifier in her mouth.

She seems to be pretty calm and happy. Hopefully that will stick with her! I got to give her a bath yesterday which was a lot of fun. She slept through the whole thing and wouldn’t even wake up to eat afterwards. She really liked it.
When she gets her last tubing off her left cheek, we will be able to tell if she has a dimple there to match the one on her right cheek. : )

Everybody’s been asking for photos. Here she is!

Tonight was a special treat for me (Ethan) because I held Daphne for about an hour and a half. Daphne & I both loved it. She slept the whole time, mouth wide open. If they allowed flies in the NICU, I’m sure DPJ would have caught dozens.

Bonus AVJ update. Her sentences are getting even longer. Yesterday she looked at my hospital bracelet and observed, “Bracelet for Daddy go see Daphne.” And she’s going out of her way to be extra huggable and kissable, which we are really enjoying. Yesterday she volunteered a hug and mimicked me, sighing, “Ahhhh. Wuv you.”

Yesterday Amelia spontaneously sang the ABC song, all the way to “Next time won’t you sing with me?”

Allison’s OBGYN said that Amelia would know that something momentous had happened. We think she’s reacting with some advanced brain growth. Allison noticed that she’s speaking in longer sentences than last week. Long naps, too.

In related news, AVJ has been an absolute gem since her mama came home. Sweet as can be. She’s a bright little star.

Today was a pigtail day.

I’m not going to give you all a play-by-play of Daphne’s care in the NICU. It’s not really appropriate for a public blog and I’m not sure I could explain everything correctly, anyway. I will tell you that we’re sure she’s getting great care at the hospital. She has stuff going on. I hesitate to call it “problems”, because everything that’s she’s experiencing is normal and nothing is unexpected.

Yesterday I went to see her for about an hour after work. Just put my hand on her back and talked to her about a bunch of nonsense. the nurse said that she could tell DPJ liked it. Otherwise she would have been complaining and her heart rate would have moved up and down. But for an hour os so I kept a hand on her back and she held on to two of my fingers with her other hand. It was sweet.

I’ve been trying to hip Amelia to the “sister” concept. Thanks to Bebe, if you ask her who her baby sister is, she’ll say, “Daphne”. And if you ask her who Daphne is, she’ll say, “sister”. And she knows that the hospital wristband is so that I can go see Daphne. But I’m sure it’s not all fitting together yet. (She can’t go see Daphne herself… gotta be at least two).

But I might have made some progress yesterday, teaching her about sister pairs that she knows. It went like this:

E: Amelia. Listen to this. Emma, Stella. Hannah, Zoe. Amelia, Daphne.

A: (serious pause). Again?

We went through it five times.

In other AVJ news, she told her first lie on Saturday. We were at a cousin’s house and she really wanted to get to a basket of candy. I pulled her away and she cried, “I go see Momma!” Now, I knew that she really just wanted to go back to the candy, so I grabbed the basket, put it behind me, and let her go. Which caused her to pat the spot where the basket had been and cry, “Put it back! put it back!”.

So, she lied that she wanted me to let her go so she could go see Momma. Big day.

They took Daphne off ventilation yesterday. She still has an air hose, but that’s just to maintain pressure in the lungs. She’s breathing on her own now. The great news is that now Al & I can hold her, which is special.

Here’s a little photo.

Surprise! Daphne arrived a bit earlier than her Sept.21 due date. Allison’s water broke at 5:30am on Sunday which led to her starting a hospital stay. The average stay for an early water break is 2.5 weeks, so I was a bit flatfooted when I got the call after 2am this morning. Here are the vitals:

8/7/06
2:18am
4 pounds, 15 ounces
18″

Everyone at the hospital is very happy with her birth weight… pretty high for a 33-weeker. She is in NICU and will stay there for “a while”. She’s a in great shape. Breathing with a little help of a ventilator, but that’s very common for a premie. She looks great. Currently has darkish curly hair.

Allison is also doing very well. Better than you might expect, actually, since it was a very fast labor… 30 minutes from first contraction. Now before you moms start to secretly hate her the birth was a full breach natural delivery. You read that right and maybe now you’re not so jealous.

But, seriously, everybody’s great. We’ll get pictures up when we can.

Amelia’s great grandma is visiting for 10 days, and that is how Amelia says her name. She is quite fond of Grandma and I know they will both be sad when Grandma goes back home on Sunday. To me, she is having a brain explosion, learning a lot of things from a new person.

My favorite pic with Amelia wearing Grandma’s glasses:

An early introduction to Scrabble is sure to make her competitive soon, watch out!

We enjoyed some icepops and her back yard pool this afternoon.

She’s not going very far or very fast.

PS who gave us the “My World” book? Let us know! I think that is the main force behind her identifying everything by owner- mama’s chair, daddy’s chair, yaya’s chair (or my chair), for example.

Pigtails!

Funny moments this week:

I think she played a good joke on us at dinner yesterday when she closed her eyes and said “Where’s Grandma?”, you know, because she couldn’t see Grandma.

That smart girl handed Grandma a Scrabble tile. Grandma asked what letter it was, and she said “doggie”, and it was the letter D.

Some of you know she loves clocks. Grandma showed her her watch and she likes to listen to it “tick tock”.

She is singing a lot. Grandma taught her “Ring around the Rosie” today, and did it with her maybe six times. We heard her singing that to herself as she went to sleep tonight. She also likes to sing “Old McDonald” (sometimes the pig says Moo), “Go to sleep”, and some random songs that she makes up while she plays.