Nancy!!! Seriously, it was lovely to get this award even if it's taken me basically forever to write this post. It's been a busy week, and I'm a bit backlogged. If I manage to get this post written, that'll be two of the three that I planned this weekend. Read through to the end of this post for a preview of the third (which will no doubt take another week to finish).
Anyway, we are thrilled that Nancy thought of us, since Caitlyn is one of our micropreemie role models. If you spend any time on our sidebar, you'll probably have noticed that a lot of the kiddos we keep tabs on are in the preschool-and-under set. I'm not sure if this is reflective of the technology at hand---both blogging and NICU practices---or just of the fact that we found out about a lot of these kids via their excellent parents who are fellow members of the micropreemie blog moms group to which we belong. Regardless, blogging your baby does seem to be a fairly au courant thing to do, so it does not surprise me at all that so many parents of babies in (too much of) a rush to get into this world keep electronic records about their kids' milestones, shenanigans, and whatnot.
That said, I want to pass on this award to a few of the bloggers who have been an inspiration to us on this journey.
Billie, mom to Holland and Eden certainly deserves our award. Your blog was one of the first we discovered in those frantic days immediately following the birth of our girls. You gave us hope that we could embark on this journey with grace, fortitude, and a sense of humor.
Then there is Liz. Thank you so much for taking the time to find us. Your invitation to join Preemieblogmoms saved our butt in such a serious way. After we got home from the NICU, we had so many questions and so little support from people who knew what we were going through. By founding this group and helping to create this community, you have done a major service to all of us unlucky enough to have to be members of this society.
Likewise, Liz's intrepid fellow-moderator, Sarah, deserves an award. Not to mention that I always like to send kudos in the direction of fellow academics and social scientists. We don't get the credit we deserve most of the time. Not to mention that keeping abreast of Shoshanna's antics and insights gives me a sense of what's coming down the pipeline from our headstrong little girl.
Laura, a NICU RN and mom of five, the youngest of whom is Daniel, a 24 weeker whom she and her husband adopted, most definitely deserves this award. I love following the story of the Big Tent and very much appreciate the craziness of their daily life, not to mention a peek into the world of competitive dancing and tattooed moms.
Finally, there are Heidi and Kit. They are parents to Bennett, another 23 weeker with lots of spirit, who is sandwiched in the middle between two other brothers and two other sisters. Heidi and Bennett are inspirational parents and there's never a dull moment around their parts.
OK---duty done. Now here's the instructions to all of you who received these awards (and who probably are too busy to follow up immediately, what with your new babies, underway semesters and all that jazz):
Here are the instructions for the following Brillante Weblog Premio award recipients:
1.Place the Logo on your blog
2.Link to the person who awarded you
3.You can nominate up to 5 blogs
4.Add their links to your blog
5.Leave a message in the comment section of their blog to notify the winners.
And finally, a word about Hallie, who needs to be mentioned in every post or else. She's doing nicely right now. We're up to 113 vomit free days (I swear that only other micropreemie parents think it's cool that we keep count. Seriously, is this normal behavior? Probably not, but then 'normal' is not a word we tend to use a lot around here, and that was probably true way before we embarked on parenthood). She seems to be having another language explosion. She is beginning to sing to herself ("Sing, Sing A Song" appropriately enough; she really likes the "La La" part but fills in a lot of the words) and is talking while she plays. This is much more than labeling and I suspect we're about to start seeing sentences of sorts. Some of her words are very clear now (duck, pig, farm, goat--of course, thank you, etc) and some rely on context (was that 'pigeon' or 'chicken'? who can say really unless you have a pigeon book or a farmyard puzzle at hand). She also is beginning to jump---she has cleared maybe a centimeter off the ground, but she's well on her way to impersonating a monkey on a bed. And she is even gigglier than usual.
Good thing she's cute though, because she's been a nightmare to put to sleep. Sharon can no longer rock her in the chair in the room-that-should-be-Hallie's-room-except-for-she-sleeps-with-us. Hallie is way too heavy and kicks like she's got a black belt (Note to self: regardless of aptitude, we're not enrolling Hallie in martial arts until such time as she finds a way of going to sleep that does not involve kicking). So she's just plain dangerous, and we're already in the most dangerous part of the pregnancy and can't afford to make things more precarious right now (Sharon had a back ache this week that ended up with an L&D triage visit yesterday that showed no contractions and a closed cervix, but we need to make sure that she can take things easy, and lifting Hallie and putting her to sleep in her arms does not fit within this game plan). So a few nights ago I pinned down Hallie for the sleep time struggle, which lasted about two hours. And last night we put her to sleep on the couch in front of Classical Baby: The Music Video, which is often how I get Hallie to nap during the day. That was great. Tonight we tried this again and again we struggled for two hours, probably more. We ended up switching to our demo DVD of Baby Signing Time, Volumes Three and Four (look for the review by later this week) and that calmed down Hallie but did not produce any somniferous effects. Indeed, Hallie found the DVDs engaging and riveting and happily signed along with them while she nursed her bedtime bottle. Finally, we brought her upstairs and it only took another twenty minutes to get her to sleep. By this point Sharon and I were delirious and fading in and out of sleep. Of course, now I'm awake again (hence the post). Sigh. Anyway, we hope this phase ends soon because we're not terribly interested in being any more sleep-deprived than we already are!
On that note, off to bed!
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