Catching up and Giving Thanks

Well, it's a darned good thing that I didn't jump on the NaBloPoMo bandwagon (this is a pact you make with the cybergods or some other web-based deity to post a post every day for a month. I am not sure what happens if you don't--perhaps Charlton Heston returns to part your computer with one stern raise of a hand and all of your previous posts drown in a sea of red jello?). Anyway, it's been quite a long couple of weeks around here. Between my conference (finishing the paper, shortening the paper, delivering the paper, explaining to all those in attendance who knew me back in the days why I haven't given any other papers or visited an archive or researched things unrelated to microprematurity, allergies, and reflux in the past three years) and the onset of VomitFest 2008 (TM), we've been busy. To say the least.

Indeed, as it turns out, even too busy to take pictures of our kid, which is too bad since our kid, through it all, remains exceedingly cute. (As one of my fellow micropreemie moms put it to me on the phone just now, our kids may vomit more than average but they really are lookers. I suppose that this is a good thing because, when one clears out an entire Gymboree after a particularly bad incident, at least the other parents, after screeching "Ewwww gross," can say something like: "but it does look like that little girl is probably going to grow up to be a supermodel."

Anyway, I digress. We do have a few cute shots of Hallie. The first couple are from Charlie's fire-house birthday party (which was super fun). Hallie had a great time sitting on the front of the fire truck ringing the bell (loudly in my ear).



She would have been content to hang out there for the whole party, but we convinced her to let the other kids have a turn. She went exploring the inside of the fire truck from every angle imaginable, but sadly the sun's reflection in the windshield of the truck bouncing off the lens of our camera meant that none of the photos I took of that turned out terribly well.

Hallie did groove on the firehats that Sara and Alex got for all the kids. Here she's wearing it at the party:



It continues to be one of her favorite head gear items at home. Indeed, she would wear only that if we let her (we do not: we frown upon Hallie taking off her diaper on her own. Which of course does not prevent her from doing so. She is quite the expert undresser these days):



To be fair, though, she is also getting pretty good at getting clothing on. She's begun to try to put on her own socks and gets the idea behind it but doesn't quite know how to bunch them up and open them sufficiently to get her toes jammed into them (she does, however, like to count her toes as we jam them into her little socks). And she's been putting her arms into the sleeves of her sweaters and pajamas, just not always the correct arm into the matching sleeve, so the results are a bit funny looking. And she has been putting her own shoes on for quite some time now, and is getting very good at putting on *our* shoes and actually managing to walk upright in them (her gait, though, looks sort of Frankensteinian).

But this is one of the funniest things she's donned in a long time:


Yes, that is a swim-diaper-as-a-do-rag and, yes, that is her bathtub as a boat. What a silly little girl!

Anyway, we are very grateful for all the silliness that Hallie brings into our lives. She's a very funny kid who very much enjoys her life, and loves teasing us and loving us. And we love that we have the opportunity to love her as fiercely as we do. Of course, there are a bunch of things we would like to have the power to change (beginning with the circumstances of her and Olivia's birth and ending most recently with the inexplicable upsurge in gurgly refluxing and food intolerance and middle-of-the-night coughing and vomiting), but we are grateful for what we have, will do all in our power to make things as easy for Hallie as possible and to get to the bottom of what's going on with her, and to make her home and every other space that she negotiates as safe and stimulating as possible.

And we are grateful that the Great Expectation is staying put where she is (as of the last OB appointment this past Monday, no signs of cervical dilation or softening) and are hoping that she avoids some of the problems that plague Hallie's GI tract just by virtue of NOT being a micropreemie.

And, finally, we are thankful for our family and friends, both those in real life and those on this journey with us in a virtual manner. We hope that everyone has a safe and sound holiday, wherever you are (and regardless of whether you celebrate Thanksgiving)!