Happy Birthday, Karina!

This weekend, Karina celebrated her second birthday. Time really does fly around here. We can still remember visiting Vanessa (with some yummy Capogiro gelato) right after Karina was born. I was so afraid to hold her--Karina was less than a day old and I'd never held a baby so small. Little did we know that in three short months, Hallie and Olivia would redefine "small" for us in ways unimaginable at the time.

Anyway, Karina had a stellar birthday weekend. On Friday night, the whole commune went out to Chuck-e-Cheese for dinner and entertainment. The bigger kids (Ethan and Karina are both two, so they get to be called big kids now) had a blast, Hallie had a pretty good time, but was a bit overwhelmed---she enjoyed going on the merry go round and riding in the Barney car and the like and kept signing 'more' for us to deposit another token, but refused to smile the whole time. We're going to try to get her out more so that we begin to redress this social fear to whatever extent we can.





Here's a great picture of Karina with her daddy, Mark, who is very intensely at play:


Hallie got to play with Karina on Saturday night, too, and was thrilled at the prospect. In addition to the Chuck-e-Cheese adventure, the girls had an impromptu playdate on Friday afternoon as well---they had not seen each other all week at that point. Basically, the more Hallie sees Karina, the more she wants to see Karina. I hear the feeling is quite mutual and that Karina spends considerable time at home asking to see Hallie. Hallie doesn't use words to ask for Karina, but she goes over to the party wall that we share and bangs it, or goes to the door and rattles it and begins to whine. It's pretty clear what she wants. And every time I take her down the block on foot or in her little car, she walks up the steps to Karina's house and begs to be let in. Very cute.

Sunday was Karina's big party day. This is the sort of smile that entering Karina's house elicits from Hallie:



All the kids had fun playing and being read to by various adult guests:





And Hallie had a great time devising alternative uses for chopsticks (the rest of us used them for very yummy dim sum):


And while Hallie's stay at the party was cut a bit short by an altercation with blue jello (her difficulty with this texture really makes me think that a big part of her eating problem is sensory in nature), she did get to see Karina for dinner again on Sunday and Monday nights. Hallie was in seventh heaven and we have some great pictures/video footage of Hallie having an extensive conversation with Karina last night. Generally speaking, Hallie is happier to talk to Karina than to anyone else in the world and we are beginning to think that we should put Karina on the payroll as our private speech therapist. Karina may or may not want this job, though. While she adores Hallie, Hallie did boink Karina on the head pretty hard last night while leaning in to kiss her best friend (and I also think Karina may be a bit creeped out by Hallie's slobbery open mouth kisses, to boot!). This had Karina beating a hasty retreat when Hallie leaned in again a few minutes later. Nothing like a good Hallie boink (the kid really has a hard head!) to make you summon all possible self-protective measures against future head boinking.

I'll try to get around to uploading the video later on, since it really was a nice exchange (and hopefully we will be able to hear all of Hallie's very soft chattering throughout the conversation). But meanwhile, I just wanted to close by saying that Hallie has definitely been speaking more the past couple of days. This may or may not be related to the new fish oil dose (10 ml), and the upsurge in vomiting also may or may not be somewhat related to this increase. But she has been speaking more and last night kept repeating "wada" (water) and doing the sign for "water" over and over again. Let's see if we still hear it today. "Mama" is being used very sparingly and "kitty" "whas dat?" and "teddy" seem to still be the most stable words in Hallie's rather thin repertoire. Meanwhile, we got the write-up of her speech eval, complete with a long list of goals that neither of us can imagine Hallie achieving, and certainly not within the next three months. This was pretty shocking and depressing but we're doing what we can to get her into private therapy as quickly as possible and we're reading up on alternative techniques for providing therapy to an apraxic child and these might be helping some, too. We'll take it one day at a time, hope we can make some reasonable progress and pray hard that the words Hallie is saying become second-nature to her and that we hear them all the time.

On the eating front: no progress. Last week was one of the worst refund weeks ever (Sunday was a record bad day for 2008 with 5 separate vomit-cleaning occasions and the average has been twice a day for the rest of the week). We're not really sure what is going on, but it could be the extra calories in Hallie's food, it could be too much in the way of banana and not enough in the way of liquids to move things through her system, but whatever it is, we are officially tired of it and want it to go away so that we can rest a little and not have to refeed our kid five to seven times a day. And in terms of feeding, our new OT will try to work with Hallie on this some. So Friday we have a date with some mashed potatoes and rigatoni. I can only imagine what that's going to be like, but at least I'll have a professional around to keep Hallie distracted while I clean up the mess!

To not end on such a sour (stomach) note, I'll leave you with a cute picture of Hallie's belly. Our girl can now completely undress herself as long as there is no onesie involved, and perhaps even if there is. Isn't her tummy cute?

Let Them Eat Cake...the (Adjusted) Birthday Suit Edition

Last night, we celebrated Hallie's first adjusted birthday. I don't know whether we will continue to do this, but this time around, we decided to do something nice and low-key to celebrate the fact that Hallie is nearing her entry into toddlerhood.

Hallie did seem to enjoy this party more fully than she enjoyed her birthday party back in June. Maybe it was the size of the celebration, which consisted of 8 adults, including our commune--Mark and Vanessa, and Josh and Nancie, who was also celebrating her birthday--and Renee and Kim, and 2 kids (Karina and Ethan), and its scale/location (at home). Maybe it was the fact that she is now truly acting like a near-toddler (more active, mobile, and alert) and maybe it was that she was actually feeling well (back in June she was in the throes of what would end up being a 14 week long illness/sinus infection) that made the difference. It certainly helped that she did not throw up three times before her party (she did this back in June; and to put things into further perspective, that party was held at 1pm and this one at 8:30pm).



In any event, Hallie had a nice day with Ami, her nanny, yesterday and played hard and ate well. (Aside: we're finding it very odd to think that Hallie has this whole other life of going to cafes and such that we are not privy to... It makes us aware of how lucky we were to have been able to spend the entire first year of Hallie's life at home with her. Other than a few dinners out, the ill-fated trip to Las Vegas, and one minor surgical procedure that I underwent, one or the other of us was with our girl 24 hours a day during that first year home. Most people don't get to do this, and so, even through all of the illnesses and vomit and oxygen and the like, we count ourselves as lucky. This all changes in a couple of weeks when Sharon goes back to work full time, but I am sure that this will open a whole new chapter in our lives as a family).

It was great to see Hallie at the end of the day yesterday. Even if she couldn't keep our Phitin' Phils' from sinking deeper into a playoffs hole, she could lift my mood. When I walked in the door yesterday evening, Hallie let out a squeal and demanded that I pick her up and hug her. She gave me the tightest, best hugs I have ever felt and nuzzled my neck and made these very happy cooing noises and, from what Sharon and Ami reported, flashed huge smiles. She then demanded that I read her her favorite books (the Baby Face book---the second copy I recently purchased after she ripped up the first one--and the Oh David! board book). And, instead of just throwing them at me or even bringing them to me and opening them suggestively, she actually signed "more" over and over when she wanted another reading. Something has clicked with Hallie in terms of language and communication this past week, and we are all really proud of her. Her Speech Therapist, Jenny, was actually so happy about this that she began to cry. She admitted to us the other night that she was having trouble sleeping because she was so worried about Hallie's speech (or lack thereof) and that she was considering not having us wait until December to see the SLPs at CHOP to get Hallie officially diagnosed with apraxia and to figure out whether this was some alternative approach we might take to Hallie's speech. That's all off of the table now, which is a relief to us, as well. Yes, Hallie is speech delayed, but it seems to be a delay and not a disorder that affects motor processing and might be indicative of some larger neurological problem (there's the specter of Hallie's IVH---it was a small one, but still head bleeds are worrisome). We don't really know how quickly Hallie's speech will progress, but Jenny's point is that we're seeing progress.

Anyway, while I was playing with Hallie, I told her that she was going to be having a party that night and that her friend Karina was going to be coming over. As soon as she heard Karina's name, Hallie sped-crawled over to the door to our foyer, pulled to stand, began to bang on it, and started babbling "da, da, daddy, da, da" over and over. It was so cute! She knew that her friend Karina comes to visit her by coming through that door (or that, conversely, she needs to open the door to leave the house to go next door to Karina's). So I decided to indulge Hallie and picked her up and take her next door to see Karina. Karina was still getting ready for Hallie's party but Vanessa let us in, and as soon as Karina heard that Hallie was over, she made Lindsey, her nanny, bring her downstairs. The two girls squealed in delight (it was as if they hadn't seen each other for weeks, not hours) and hugged and kissed. Hallie, however, still needed to eat her dinner before everyone else came over (feeding her in front of anyone but Elmo and co. is a bit of a disaster), so we needed to bring her back home. As soon as we walked out the door, Hallie began to bawl...Quite the drama queen, our girl, and totally an at-risk child where being spoiled is concerned.

Sharon did manage to get dinner into Hallie and got her dressed in the lovely dress that my mom got her for her first birthday:


In this second shot, Hallie is holding her bowl and spoon. But note: they are empty. Self feeding with utensils is quite a ways off for us:


A little bit later, everyone came over for pizza and cake. The kids had a lot of fun and the girls were inseparable all night.


And after a nice play, it was time for cake:



As with everything else related to this adjusted birthday party, Hallie also seemed to enjoy her cake a whole lot more. I am sure that Aunt Ellen (Hallie's primary nurse) will attribute it to this being a chocolate cake (Uncle Mark would agree), but I think that she's just more into food than she ever was before. She smeared cake all over herself (we had stripped her and Karina down to their diapers) and even managed to get a bite or two into her mouth.




Notice how nicely Karina holds her fork. Now those are some fine fine motor skills!

Here's a silly video (not the best one I've ever taken, admittedly) of Hallie smearing herself with cake and perhaps getting a bite or two in her mouth:


And, of course, no birthday is complete without some new Sesame DVDs, including the Country one I have been secretly coveting. Thank you, Uncle Mark, Aunt Vanessa, and Karina for enhancing our dining pleasure!

Hallie's Birthday Bash

It's been a crazy, hectic week and I haven't had much time to post, unfortunately. The week started out with a small birthday party at home for the girls. Then we went into high gear to prepare for Hallie's party this past Sunday. Leave it up to two fatherless mommies to schedule it on Father's Day! We'll be more careful next year, but despite this, we had a very large turnout of about 40 adults and 18 or so kids. In the middle of the week (Wednesday), we took Hallie to Sears for her first professional photos. This process took MUCH longer than anyone expected but we're pretty pleased with the results (at least the electronic/digital ones; we don't pick up the pictures until next week).

Needless to say, by the end of it all, we were quite exhausted. I told Sharon that the next time we plan something like this will be Hallie's Sweet Sixteen, or at the very earliest, her Bat Mitzvah.

Our little rowhouse is way too small to host the number of people we were inviting to Hallie's party, so a few months ago, we began to search for a space away from home for the big first year bash. We very quickly decided on holding the party at Smith Memorial Playground in Fairmount Park. Not only would this provide built in entertainment in the shape of a playhouse for the 0-5 set and a playground for older kids, but the venue also seemed symbolically appropriate---it had been built in 1898 by the Smiths, who had lost their child and who wanted to commemorate him by providing a play space to all of Philly's kids that would always remain free.



Unfortunately, the staff that works at Smith Playground is somewhat inept. Sharon visited the site a couple of months ago to plan the party; when we found out that the only room available was a very small one that holds fewer than ten kids and not nearly the same number of adults, we moved the party from the original date of June 9th to June 17th and reserved a very large outdoor porch instead. We made the reservation for the afternoon slot since neither of us are really morning people by nature and Hallie, alas, takes after both of us. The idea of a party that begins at 10am was hence an anathema to us.

After a few weeks, I asked Sharon whether we should have received paperwork and when we had to pay our deposit, or pay for the rental in full. She wasn't sure what the policies were, so I tracked down the events coordinators there. They assured me that the paperwork had been sent, but promised to resend it just in case. Needless to say, we did not receive that second batch of papers either. We would have to go down there in person to pick them up.

Meanwhile, June was fast approaching and so I ordered the invites so that we'd approximate Emily Post's manners and have them in the mail three weeks in advance of the big birthday bash.

A day or two after ordering them, we took a drive to Fairmount Park and visited the playground in person. The staff person on duty pulled up our files; we were shocked when we found out that we were in the small room at 10am, and that they had re-rented the porch to someone else.

Sharon, who is generally mild mannered about most everything, went ballistic. For her, this signified yet another thing in a long chain of things that went wrong, timing-wise, in Hallie's life. She was ready to call off the whole thing. I talked her down from this, spoke to the staff woman, and she assured me that we could rent out the porch that they do not normally rent out (since it overlooks a construction zone) instead of the enclosed porch on the other side of the house that is far more elegant. I said okay, sent in my check, and thought that all was in order.

Fast forward to Sunday (the party date): when we showed up, we were told that our party was supposed to be at 10am in the small party room. They had never changed the calendar. I was hopping mad, and thankfully I was not the only one there. Luckily, our friend Vanessa (commune member, and presider over both our check in at L&D that fateful night and of the girls' birth four days later) was there to help us out once more. Vanessa has good negotiating skills (ones that I sorely lack) and managed to talk the staff woman into letting us having the porch and relocating a different party to the small room. And the commune, plus Laura Hawley and Ellen, really did a great job of helping us set up and get everything to the venue for the party. We could not have done any of this without their never-ending support.

Hence, all's well that ends well. But I must say that, even though the facility is great and I can't wait to take Hallie there when she can enjoy it more than she could this Sunday, there's no way in the world that I'd ever host another party there. Good thing that Hallie gets no more big parties for the next 15, or at least 11, years!

Anyway, the event came off OK. Our decorations were lovely, the food was good, and most importantly, we enjoyed the company.

Here are a few shots from Hallie's party.

First, we have a nice shot of cousin Hannah greeting Hallie, who was then still wearing her party dress.



Next up, there's Meghan, Hallie's daytime primary. She was amazed at how big Hallie has gotten. Meghan saw Hallie back in May when I brought her into the ICN for an impromptu visit, but our girl has put on at least two pounds and has become even more alert since then.



The party was kind of a mini reunion. We were really happy that so many of the people who took care of Sharon and Hallie and so many of Hallie's micropreemie pals (and their wonderful parents) were able to make it to the party. The nurse who was on duty the night that Sharon went into labor and her partner and little boy came to the party, as did Eric, the neonatologist who was oncall that same night and who was there for the delivery as well. Eric was also around to stabilize Hallie for the PDA ligation that saved Hallie's life. We were thrilled that he called on Monday to wish Hallie a happy first birthday. Two of Hallie's primary nurses, Ellen and Meghan, were there to celebrate their girl's big day, as was Nicole, who took care of her a lot initially. And Katie, one of the respiratory therapists whom Hallie scared the bejeezus out of during her days of frequently extubating herself brought her little girl to the party. Four other little muffins that spent time with us in the ICN were also there with their family (Benjamin; Maya; and Sydney and Payton, 23 weekers who were born a month before our girls).

We got a great group shot of the Pennsylvania Hospital crowd:



Here's Hallie with Eric Mallow and her Bubbe Jean (my mom):


And here's a nice shot of Polly, Rachel, and Maya. Polly's son Benjamin, who also just turned one, was off somewhere with his dad, Chris.



After her training last week, Hallie knew exactly want to do with the cake.



Good thing we changed her out of her fancy birthday dress!

And here is a nice shot of Hallie and her mommies. I have no idea what my hair is doing, but maybe Sharon can find a way of airbrushing it into place.



After everyone had left the party and we cleaned up, we took the balloons down to a clearing in the park and released a dozen of the latex balloons (safely, so as not to harm the environment and wildlife) for Olivia. Hallie held and kissed each one as we let them go flying up to her sister:









It was an emotional moment for us, and of course we had Vanessa there to share it with us. We'll also be commemorating Olivia on the 28th of June at Pastorius Park.

Afterwards, we got home and were too exhausted to open Hallie's presents. So our living room looks like it might at Christmas time, minus the tree and the menorah and plus some air conditioning so that we don't boil in our hot and humid heatwave. So stay posted for some great shots of Hallie eating paper. I think that she thinks that the yellow paper tastes best...