Regularly scheduled programming

This week was the first week when we all went and did what we'll usually be going and doing. Ben went to work, I took the girls to playdates and worked, Fiona did some daycare. It was a long, tiring week, but we managed to fit everything in. Here's the three of us ready to face the week...

Fiona managed to catch yet another cold, and this one's a doozy. Luckily she seems to be in a pretty good mood despite it, but unfortunately she also gave it to Adele. Adele's really congested and can't breathe well lying on her back which causes problems when it comes to bedtime. After getting almost no sleep on Thursday night we finally gave in on Friday night and let her sleep on her tummy. Every healthcare professional that has even seen Fiona or Adele has stressed the importance of babies sleeping on their back to reduce the risk of SIDS, so I kept expecting a team of flying monkeys to burst in the window and carry me off to live in eternal shame on bad parent island. Luckily that didn't happen, and we all slept a little better. She's still on the heartrate and breathing monitor too, so that gave us a little more peace of mind.

Adele has also been working on her pushups. She's getting bigger and stronger every day, and when doing some tummy time managed to push herself up a little with her arms and reposition her head. Her neck is much stronger, and she has so much more head control. She's really doing well!

Fiona is still in love with Elmo, and is growing up right before our eyes. She will lie him on the changing mat, lift his legs up and say 'butt, butt' as she wipes his bottom with a baby wipe. I think it mush have been Daddy she learned that word from! Her biggest achievement this week was learning how to change the DVD's in the player. We watch part of either Elmo or Finding Nemo while I'm stuck sitting on the couch and need to distract her, and she will choose the one she wants, open the drawer, put the disc in, close the drawer, and bring me the remote control. It's a very useful skill!

My new job is going fine. One of the funny things about it is that I occasionally send out emails to a list of thousands of recipients, and part of my job is to act as a human spam filter and approve emails sent to this list by other people before they're sent. This way we can avoid random companies who happened to get hold of the group email address sending their spam to thousands of people. Usually they are just boring adverts, but the one I filtered out today made me laugh... there are some excerpts below...

"To be slim is something very important nowadays. In order to play with your child, to go with pleasure at work, or just to take care of your garden, you need to spend a lot of energy. But this energy can take all your health sometimes.

I have some experience with this problem. I was a fat guy and it was hard for me to work or just to go around the shops. My girlfriend advised me to go to the gym. I tried this, but every time I went home I was exhausted. So, this was not for me. Then, I tried running. It was successful, but I was as exhausted as the first thing (the gym). Then, I tried to forget everything and to be fat, I was exhausted without any result.

However, I have tried more than 5 ways to burn fats. Finally, I found one very great way to lose weight. I was very sceptic how it works. Then, I phoned a friend, who had just tried this way to be slim, and he recommended this product for me. I tried it and in no more than 4 weeks, I was slim. LIKE A MAGIC".

Like a magic. I'm sold. Where do I sign up?

There isn't really much more news. I'll try to do something more exciting next week!

First Week Home

This is a very non-exciting update, but I thought I should update anyway. We've had a really nice week with our new tiniest love. Fiona calls her "Dell" which already spawned the nicknames "Delly-Bean" and "Dellerson". Fiona likes her a lot, and keeps trying to feed her her bottle and stick her sooky (pacifier) back in her mouth. When Adele cries Fiona says 'Uh-Oh, Dell' and thinks I should go and help her. Occasionally she will try to do things like sit on top of Adele when she's in a spot that Fiona would like to be in, but for the most part she's being a great big sister.

So we've spent some time cuddling...

Adele realised that cuddling is much nicer than being alone in her bed, so insists on being cuddled all day. This can be inconvenient so I made her her own moby (using the same technique I used for Fiona's, only with fabric that doesn't need to be hemmed and is much stretchier).

I tried to take some nice pictures of her, but she just got angry when I disturbed her, and all I got were pictures of her being irritated, very irritated, and angry...

I'll have to try again another time.

Fiona was her usual goofy self, doing things like putting her trousers on her head...

And trying to put diapers on Elmo and feed him juice...

We really haven't been doing much. Everything is good. We're just enjoying hanging out with our beautiful, silly girls.

Next week Ben has to go back to work, and I'm sure messing with the one on one kid to adult ratio will cause some problems, but hopefully we'll muddle through!

Six weeks old and HOME!!

Exactly six weeks ago Adele made her gand entrance. Today she was discharged and we are so happy to have her home! It's strange to not be going to the hospital any more, and to have a tiny baby at home, and the lack of nurses to call is a little unnerving, but so far we're coping. She's asleep on my chest right now, and it is the most wonderful feeling!

She last had an A/B spell 5 days ago, so came home on an apnea monitor just in case. It monitors her heartrate and breathing, and has an alarm so loud it makes your ears bleed. She'll probably have it for 2 weeks to a month. She has to wear it when she's sleeping or unattended, but she doesn't have to wear it when we're awake and paying attention to her. It's reassuring to have it because otherwise, I don't think we'd sleep!

After we got home and I called Ben to come home from work to help me keep Adele alive, and Grandma and Grandpa dropped Fiona off. She wasn't as excited to see Adele at home as she was in the hospital (which I now think she might have confused with a Zoo due to the viewing through the window) but she did try to poke her in the eye a lot, so I'm taking that as a good sign ;-)

So now here we are. Two little girls. In our house. Our family is complete! Here we go!

Notice anything different?

What's different here with this sleepy little sweetie?

No feeding tube!! Yesterday they changed her rules so she could eat when she feels is (every 2-4 hours instead of every 3 hours exactly), and how much she feels like. The doctor wanted to see how she'd do and if she'd eat enough on her own. She's been doing great, and today they took her feeding tube out! She has to do well for another day or two, and if she does, she can come home! If she doesn't do well enough, they'll put the tube back, but let's assume that's not going to happen...

It makes me happy to be able to see all of her beautiful tiny face!

Fiona had a new thing too! Today was her first day of daycare. She'll be going for 5 hours a day twice a week to give me some extra time to work. I started a part time job on Monday, and it's almost impossible to get work done with Fiona around, so daycare will be great! She apparently had a good day and even took a nap. I think daycare will be good for her too because she's really picking up on a lot of different things and talking and learning more. Here's a video of her being a smarty pants...

I am just so proud of both of my girls! :-)

Sunday Goals

Sunday is work day in our house. I usually make a list of things that need to be done on Saturday, and then we get maybe one thing done because, you know, we have all weekend, and then spend Sunday working like crazy to get everything done. And it's not extra, optional stuff either, it's stuff that I've been putting off all week because it's a pain to do with Fiona or because I'll get to it at the weekend... like going grocery shopping, or washing socks...

So today I'm making my Sunday goals public in the hope that it will motivate me to actually get all this stuff done today... I'm not sure if it's achievable, but we'll see...

Goal 1. Grocery shopping. We have almost no food in the house. We did have butter, but then Brodie ate that. Seriously. He knocked it off the counter and ate half a tub of butter. SO GROSS. I can't buy anything frozen though because our freezer is almost completely full of breastmilk... this poses kind of a challenge, because pre-made frozen food and bowls of cereal is the only kind of cooking I do...

Goal 2. Laundry. I had to wear Ben's socks for the last few days because it has been so long since I did laundry. My goal is to do all the laundry in the laundry room. Note: not all the laundry that needs to be done, but is in other locations, because that's impossible. I'll get to that next weekend ;-)

(this is not all of it, I couldn't fit it all in the picture...)

Goal 3. Take down Christmas stuff. I know leaving your Christmas stuff up past 12th Night is bad luck, so luckily I am just within the cutoff for that. December 25th to January 10th is 12 days exactly...

Goal 4. Make any kind of start on turning our extra bedroom into Adele's room. I mentioned to the nurse at the hospital that they kind of overestimated Adele's possible coming home date (Friday 8th) and she said that they do that to make sure the parents are prepared for when the baby actually comes home. Aside from the fact that I think this is kind of an awful thing to do to stressed out, emotional parents, it made me realise that we have nothing ready for Adele coming home. I have most of the things we need (clothes, a bed, diapers) but nothing is organised or washed, and her bed is full of laundry (see goal 1). So anything would be an improvement at this point, and that is my goal.

I'll check in this evening and let you know how much I accomplished. And for those of you who might wonder why I am spending time writing about this and not just doing it, I also have to pump every 3 hours (for a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes of the day) so I am totally multitasking here :-) No photo illustrating that goal? You're welcome :-)

Another step closer!

Today Adele had her carseat test. I actually felt nervous for her beforehand! Fortunately, she passed! She had to sit in the seat for an hour and not stop breathing or have any heartate dips. This means that when she's ready to come home, she can come in her normal carseat. Yay!

Here she is taking her test...

She's also doing really well with her bottles. Now she's allowed to have a bottle for each feeding if she can handle it. Yesterday she had 5 out of 8, and they'll keep offering her bottles until she's taking 8 out of 8, and drinking the whole thing each time.

Here's daddy giving her a bottle...

Unfortunately Fiona has the cold again and therefore, so do I. Luckily it's not too bad for me, but Fiona has been very crabby and snotty today, poor thing! Hopefully she'll feel better soon! I got her the Elmo in Grouchland movie because she's still completely in love with Elmo, so if she's still feeling bad tomorrow, at least we can have a nice time cuddled up on the couch together.

Fiona braves arctic temperatures, meets sister.

I'm going to begin this blog post with a tip-o-the-hat to today's weather. Minnesota, you have outdone yourself. January 2nd, 2010... -15 degrees. Yep, farenheit. Yep, that's -26 C. Yep, before windchill. It's COLD.

However, we are brave, and got all bundled up to go the hospital so Adele could meet some special people including her very own big sister...

"Ooh, a baby!!"

First family portrait...

Cathy and Emily came to meet Adele too. Sadly Emily is also not allowed to visit in person, so she had to visit through the glass too...

(Fiona notices that Adele alos has a nose)

Cathy passed the age and health screening and was granted entry to visit in person.

And she held Adele while I took even more photos of her :-)

Snuggled...

Smile!

Tiny hands...

I'll get the rest on flickr as soon as I can...

Health-wise, Adele is still doing great. She's taking 4 out of her 8 feedings by bottles now, and is handling them very well, so they'll keep increasing that. The doctor that came by today thinks that if she keeps progressing at this rate she'll be home by next weekend. I'm not getting my hopes up, but that would be pretty exciting!