Bea in her bonnet

The girls have been doing very well in the hand-made hat department thanks to their Grandma Janet's knitting and now this fabulous crocheted bonnet by one of Dave's talented colleagues. Having previously expressed the view that our darling daughter looks a bit like Eisenhower, it should be noted that this is decidedly not the sort of thing that Ike would have worn (but J. Edgar Hoover on the other hand...).  Grandma Joan came to help out yesterday,and here she is showing the expert technique honed over four children and now her eighth and ninth grandchildren. 

A neighborhood jaunt

With the temperature in the upper 60's, we broke out the stroller for the girls' first cruise through the neighborhood. as one can see, they mostly soaked in the scenery through their pores seeing as how their eyes were shut, the vibrations of the bumpy brick sidewalks working their somnolent magic. A good part of the day was given over to an appointment with the doctor at the apnea clinic at Georgetown. They downloaded the records from both girls' apnea/heart rate monitors with the good news that all of Bea's and most of Maggie's alarms were not real episodes. In Maggie's case, she goes into very deep sleeps during which she breathes so shallowly that the chest monitor doesn't detect the movement, hence an alarm. The even better news is that they no longer have to be hooked up all the time, and we can turn it off when they are awake and actively in our care, precisely the moments when it is most annoying to have to sling the apnea monitor over a shoulder being careful not to trip on the long cord or snag the leads and so forth. Progress, or as the University of Rochester motto puts it, Meliora!

Our 34th President

Bea made it through her first pediatrician check-up, a three-hour marathon as first med student then resident then attending gave her the once-over (the downside of a teaching hospital). She has put on three ounces since leaving the NICU, just what we want to see. While most babies seem to bear at least some resemblance to Winston Churchill, we are coming to the realization that Bea looks quite a bit like Eisenhower. We've taken (okay, Dave's taken) to calling her General. Both the former president and her sister Maggie tried out their new stretch stroller, which is quite cleverly designed to accommodate their carseat buckets. Finally, here is Maggie wrapped up in her bouncy chair. Aww.

I think it's time to feed them again

During Bea's time in the NICU, more than one nurse commented on the quality of her lungs. We should have taken the hint. Said lungs were in full use this morning as our little bundle of joy erupted on a regular basis. Does she need changed? Is she hungry? Did she burp? Or is this new world just a lot to get used to. Fortunately, by afternoon she had settled down and was quite personable just like her less excitable sister. Meanwhile, we began to get a feel for what it is going to be like having two growing girls on our hands. When they are this small, their little stomachs don't have much carrying capacity so feedings are early and often, one input-output cycle merging into the next. These photos represent fairly typical poses for the day. And here comes tomorrow!

All girls home!

With tremendous gratitude for the extraordinary care given to our two little girls at the Georgetown NICU, we bid those wonderful people farewell. As Maggie before her, Bea was unhooked from her NICU wires, rehooked to her new apnea monitor wires, put in a carseat for which she was just barely big enough, and headed out the door. Nurse Janet took the photo of the three of us ready to go, Maggie's carseat sitting in what had been her crib. Next up is a stunned (Excited? Dazed?) Heidi in the backseat in between her two daughters, now fully our responsibility for the first time in just over a month since they made their grand entrance. And finally an image of home, specifically the living room with its custom baby-just-arrived-and-looks-like-a-bomb-went-off design. As one dear visitor remarked: Love what you've done to the place! Now the fun part begins...

Four-pound Bea

As a birthday present to her mother, Bea crested the four-pound mark, a far cry from her 2 pound, 10 ounce start. In all likelihood, she will be coming home tomorrow, a development thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. That means no more visits to the NICU for (five-pound plus) Maggie, shown here slumped in her carseat next to Bea's crib like a sullen teenager while mom attends to her sister. Bea's imminent homecoming forced her parents' hands on the transportation front since both infant carseats will not fit in the back of the trusty Golf without pushing the front seats up to the dashboard. So Bea will be coming home in a far roomier Prius obtained this afternoon. Oh, the irony that two tiny creatures can outstrip the size of a backseat that holds three adults!

Bea tube free and out in the open

Thanks to Missy and Hans who lent us their old camera, here are photos of Bea out of her incubator and into an open crib. But wait, there's more! Bea is finally free of the gavage tube, now getting all her nourishment the old-fashioned way: via her very own mouth. Similar to the feeling when we first saw Maggie out from under the mask of a respirator, we were quite transported to see Bea without any tape or tubes marring her sweet face. She is taking the carseat challenge (an hour of sitting) today and is expected to be released into the wider world (watch out!) on Sunday, ending our sojourn in the NICU. Like Maggie, she will be coming home with an apnea monitor, but that is somewhat reassuring for her nervous parents. And speaking of Maggie, it has been a joy to have her home even if she does tend to focus her fussiness on the hours of 1 to 5 am. Sigh. Fortunately, she is darn cute.