Happy Adjusted First Birthday/Playdates for Hallie

I'm going to try to post separately about this later on, but knowing how hard it is to get even one post written a day (who am I kidding? A week), I didn't want to neglect to mention that today is Hallie's first corrected birthday. Today is the day that Sharon was due to have the twins; this being a twin pregnancy, we did not think that she'd be able to carry them that long, so our goal was anything past Labor Day. Needless to say, we didn't even make it to the 4th of July. So today carries with it more than a tinge of the bittersweet. On the one hand, it signifies more of what wasn't---a normal twin pregnancy with a typical twin birth and raising two sweet little girls who would each be turning one just around now and who would not be subjected to poking, prodding, and lots of early intervention---than what was. On the other hand, we rely on this benchmark right now as a gauge for Hallie's development. I know that, over time, as we stop correcting we'll probably stop thinking about this particular milestone. But today, even as we think of what wasn't and what we lost, we will still celeberate our funny little girl who is acting like a toddler more and more each day. And for us, who missed out on her babyhood and instead experienced her micropreemiehood, this is a good thing.

So Happy Adjusted Birthday, my funny little girl! Your mommy and I love you tremendously!
****

Onto another topic altogether: Hallie's playdates. Hallie has been a social butterfly recently. On Monday she got a visit from her friend Maya and Maya's mommy and daddy, Rachel and Dan. These are our friends from the ICN--Maya and her sister Elana were born a month before our girls and Hallie and Maya share the bond of being surviving twins. We bid adieu to our friends back in August when they moved to San Diego (where Dan is from) but they came East (unfortunately due to an illness in the family) and stopped in on Monday to see us. The girls had a great time. Hallie was pretty aggressive (not in a mean way, just in a not-aware-of-her-own-strength way) with Maya; I think she's used to patting Ethan and Karina and grabbing at them and isn't quite aware that Maya is a lot smaller than Ethan and Karina are. Hallie started babbling and shouting furiously the second Maya came into the room and then chased her, patted her, grabbed at her hair, and was clearly thrilled to see her old pal. Maya warmed up to Hallie after a few minutes (and after we kept cautioning Hallie to be 'gentle, gentle') and then began to return the shrieks and pats. The two kids were a study of babies in motion. So, unlike every other time we've gotten together, it was impossible to get a decent shot of the two of them looking in the same direction (at the camera) and holding still. This was the best I could do, and I am hoping that Rachel and Dan got better shots.



This second image is more indicative of the kind of pictures I was able to take:


While Maya was here, we decided to see if Hallie would tolerate a real food snack: we had been giving her very tiny bites of very mushy mozarella cheese with some success, and this time we decided to attempt a piece of considerably harder string cheese. And, guess what, it worked! We did break off the cheese for her into small bites, but nowhere near as small as the bites of cheese that we had been giving her. Hallie seemed to like the cheese a lot--she takes after Sharon but has a much broader palate where cheese is concerned. Sharon will eat cheddar (mostly), swiss (with ham on sandwiches), blue cheese (but only in dressing), and occasionally a piece of smoked gouda or manchego. Hallie takes after me, and Uncle Mark (Karina's daddy) and is an equal opportunity cheese eater. We are grateful for the fact that her eating issues are not food aversions, but swallowing problems. And, to come back to our experiment, it seems that having 8 teeth instead of 2 has really helped with this. We will go very slow, but I think that progress is possible and that Hallie might not have to have a smoothie on her first date (or take that smoothie while sleeping, either...We were trying to give Hallie her thickened nutren from an open cup but the little bugger had learned how to avert her mouth just in time for us to spill the formula everywhere. This was disheartening since she had done so well with this approach for a whole day and a half. Anyway, in a fit of desperation yesterday (Hallie refused her second nap and had drunk all of 5 ounces of nutren during the course of the day), Sharon tried the Honey Bear straw cup I had recently purchased (we own all sorts of speech and feeding therapy devices; I keep hoping one of them works and it at least keeps me feeling like I am doing something. And, guess what, it worked? So now we are going to try to give her formula this way AWAKE and see if we can't start getting her to do all of her own sucking on the straw (and let back pressure on squeezing the bear). We hope this works beyond just this first day, but so far, so good.



Yesterday, Hallie had fun with mommy and was visited by our friend Sheila, who brought over yet more excellent hand me downs from Alex (This has been the source of most of Hallie's wonderful wardrobe; Thank you Sheila!). Hallie did the 'more' sign for Sheila when she wanted to have her book read to her again; apparently, she can do this with other people and not us because shrieking and throwing the book at us seems to work where her mommies are concerned. We'll try to teach this out of her since throwing books and shrieking does not make for an attractive toddler.

Then, later on in the day, our neighbor Gianna watched Hallie for an hour while Sharon was on an interview and I was not yet home. They had a lot of fun together.

And, finally, we had an impromptu visit from Aunt Vanessa and Karina last night (they are golf widow and golf orphan respectively). This really got Hallie babbling and led to the articulation of all sorts of jargon from Karina (she really does sound like she is talking, and she thinks that what she is saying has meaning, and I imagine it DOES have meaning for her; it's just that I cannot understand it. But I do think that it's very cute). Hallie and Karina had a blast together, as usual, and were even more physical with one another than typical. Here's a great shot of Karina climbing on Hallie:



And here's a lovely shot of them wrestling. Hallie is the orange blob peeking out:


And, finally, we have a shot of champion Hallie. Doesn't she look chubby? And this is one of our favorite onesies---largely because it expresses a very dominant sentiment around here.


(*in case the print is too small, the shirt says "Caution: May Cause Sleepless Nights"---boy is that an understatement. And, yes, that is a vomit stain on the shirt. Hallie ate dinner nicely but then chomped down on some Pirates Booty and vomited up a bit of her nutren. Not too much, though, and she had taken it while awake so we think of it as 'free food')

It's the Playoffs, Baby!

Hallie wore her team colors proudly today. As many of you baseball Phanatics know, today was the last day of the regular season for the Philadelphia Phillies and three or four weeks ago, those of us who root for the beleaguered home team were ready to hang up our cleats and hope for a better season next April. Not Jimmy Rollins (who predicted a post-season back in January) and not Hallie.

We got our girl all decked out in her red-and-blue and took her for a ride in the new similarly colored Maclaren Triumph this afternoon just as the Phils were up around 4-1. By the time our ride was over, we had beaten the Nationals 6-1 and had miraculously pulled an NL East championship out of the hat.

Hallie celebrated by giving her new baby doll a big hug and kiss. We think that it's totally cute that she loves her baby as much as she does (she was even patting it and rocking it today):



Here's Hallie with her new goofy full-of-beans look:



Needless to say, our girl is not going to let this one get away!



And, in other Hallie news, babbling----real babbling---has begun in earnest and she now proudly says "Ga, Ga, Ga" and mimics us when we do, too. I know that sounds like a small milestone, but for us, it's as large as a milestone as, say, the NL East title is for the Phils.

Next week, maybe Hallie can work some magic for our forlorn Eagles!

Aunt Ney and Aunt Kim's Big Day

Last Saturday was a big day for Aunt Ney and Aunt Kim, and hence for our entire family. Hallie's lovely aunts, and patron saints, saviors, and medical transport team, decided to tie the knot. Happily, Renee works in New Jersey, one of the few states that currently has legal civil unions for same-sex partners, and so we all tooled out to lovely Haddonfield a week and a half ago and visited the very friendly folks in the Municipal Building who were happy to get the ball rolling. While I was the official witness they provided, Hallie did a good job of corroborating my testimony with a few "ahs" and "gahs" and a couple of quick games of peekaboo with the administrators who filled out the form. For this she was duly rewarded with a few nice-sized licks of whipped cream from Renee's venti mocha frappuccino (or whatever it was that Neystice ordered).

A week later, we all gathered in a lovely garden in Haddonfield for the casual but festive occasion:




The wedding party itself was quite small and consisted of me, Sharon, the officiant (Trisha) and her partner (Trish), and, of course, our little ringbearer, Miss Hallie Rose.




Here are the beautiful rings:



Aunt Kim fashioned a little bag for Hallie to hold them in:



Here's Hallie posing with Aunt Neystice:


And with Aunt Kim:


And here's Hallie annointing the glass that her aunts would later break:


This is a nice picture of Ney and Kim as they take their vows:



And here they are putting the rings on each other's fingers:






And, finally, breaking the glass (this wasn't easy in sandals, but between Renee and Kim, they got the job done. They'll keep the pieces in a lovely glass vessel as a momento).



After the ceremony, we all went out for a lovely lunch (all of us ate except Hallie, who played with toys, watched the ceiling fan, and fussed a bit until I took her out for a several block stroll through downtown Collingswood). Amazingly enough, even though she's not been eating really well and we cut out the 4 am bottle, she still put on a ton of weight this past week and was 20 lbs. 13 ounces at her last feeding clinic appointment on Wednesday. I'm not sure how she manages it, but her weight is great and she's at the 10th-25th percentil for her ACTUAl age. Yay, Hallie!

TMX Hallie

...or our incredibly, increasingly interactive little girl.

Over the past couple of weeks, Hallie has become even more interactive. Which, if you know her, is quite something, since she has always been an amazingly social busy-body. But something has changed, and her personality is emerging more and more each day.

First, the TMX reference. As anyone who has been to our home knows (or as anyone whose home we have been to for a Hallie feeding session also knows), our girl has a big, big thing for Sesame Street. She eats to any one of five or six Sesame Street DVDs, she seems to follow along with the plot lines even when there is just dialogue and no songs. Since she's not much of a verbalizer, we don't know what she gets from these plots, but she breaks out in laughter, gets excited in anticipation of seeing her favorite characters pop onto the screen, and the like. Anyway, the other afternoon, Hallie was in her room playing with her books and I noticed that it was 1:30pm, so I switched on Sesame Street (we pick up four or five PBS channels in the Philly market, which is great, since it gives us multiple opportunities to watch our show). A few minutes later, it was time for Elmo's World. The first few bars of that rather famous (in our home, ubiquitous) tune sounded and Hallie gasped---literally gasped---screeched, threw her books down, and high tailed it over to the television screen. She stood there the entire time Elmo introduced his audience to dinosaurs patting the TV screen, trying to pull on Elmo's nose and making all sorts of cute screechy noises. I swear, they must have test marketed Elmo for the toddler set before releasing him to the world---they have got the perfect recipe for toddler addiction all wrapped up in a cute, red, furry monster suit.

Second, Hallie has a new obsession: her books. We had to pack away all of the books made of paper since she was ripping and eating them, but this gave her a new free reign over the considerable collection of board books that she owns. Her old favorites, Peek a Who and the Baby Faces book, are now in shreds---she has mauled them, kissed them, bent them, sat on them, and now begun to eat them. We will replace them. Meanwhile, she is a new fan of Elmo Loves You (her favorite part is kissing Elmo at the end---she is quite a kisser, our kid), Oh David (with whom she identifies strongly since she is also prone to making a mess, having a stinky butt, being a wiggle worm, standing up in her crib, refusing to open her mouth, and, last but not least, being swept up in her mommies' arms and told 'oh Hallie, we love you') and the That's not my fill-in-the-blank series of books. She also has a demonstrated soft spot for The Nose Book and Hop on Pop. She's such a big fan of her books that, like most toddlers, she insists on multiple readings of each. And she has taken to pointing to creatures (sometimes demonstrating knowledge---like when she points to Big Bird when we ask her where Big Bird is---and sometimes demonstrating a random capacity to point and separate her digits but not much else). But she has also manifested her stubborn streak where books are concerned and, rather than use the sign for more (which we are pretty sure she knows), she literally throws the book at us. She got the corner of my eye the other day, and bopped Sharon yesterday. Our next lesson (which we are certain she will also resist) is to teach her "gentle, gentle."

Third, Hallie's crush on our neighbor Karina deepens and grows more complex. Hallie and Karina both screeched and squealed with delight the last few times they were in each other's presence, and the other night, when we told Hallie to "kiss, kiss Karina," she crawled up to her, pulled to stand, put her arms around Karina and gave her a kiss. She did this again last night. Poor Karina, though. Hallie insists on chasing and following her everywhere and won't let her out of her sight. It's all very sweet to see and we wish we could even see more of Karina. We fear that Hallie is a bit bored at home and even if she's in a bad mood all day, the second she sees Karina (and our friend, Ethan, too) everything gets better.

And speaking of bad moods, let's not forget Hallie's new teeth. Way back when in May, Hallie got her first two bottom teeth. They were very cute and took a while to grow in. We thought that this was the beginning of a trend since she continued to have very extensive teething symptoms. But leave it up to Hallie to take an untraditional approach to teething. She spent all summer growing those two itty bitty bottom teeth into quite nice-sized chompers but added no new ones until this past week or so, when she acquired at least SIX more. She now has a full set of four on the bottom, a fifth on the bottom that she is working on, and four on the top. And we're pretty certain that she's working on her first year molars, too, since she always has something shoved in the back of her mouth (fingers, toys, tags, etc). Her teeth are quite sharp and we have to be increasingly vigilant about her use of them in inappropriate ways (like chewing off the cape of an Elmo beanie doll, which she did last week). We're hoping that she starts using them in more appropriate ways (like eating). Perhaps more on this later, since she has a followup appointment at St. Joseph's in Paterson with the Feeding Clinic.

Well, that's all for now. I hope to write more later or tomorrow, and maybe even get some pictures up!

What Do You Suppose Miss Hallie Rose Knows?

Hallie is a hilarious little kid. Every day, we discover new things about her and new tricks (for lack of a better term; yes, I know it sounds like a trained monkey and, yeah, right now we sort of are).

Here's a smattering of her latest repertoire, most recent one first:

1. Yesterday, Hallie started to play ball with me. Really play ball. She picked up her little yellow ball with the red stars on it (it's a nice size---bigger than a superball and smaller than a beach ball---so she can grasp it firmly. Then she threw it at me (overhand--the kid has a nice throw--so that it bounced once before it reached me). I caught it and threw it back. And then she did this again. And again. Sometimes rollling it, sometimes throwing it, but nearly always aiming correctly so that the ball reached me (this even though she was crawling about and hence throwing the ball from different locations. We did this for about fifteen minutes, which is bordering on forever in the mind of a one-year-old.

2. Hallie's receptive language seems to be exploding to an extent even we are unaware. In addition to Curious George (also known as "k") and Elmo, she's able to identify Big Bird. But her vocabularly, happily, is not confined to TV or cartoon characters. She also knows bear, book, ball, up, open, hi, block, bye-bye and probably a few other words. She definitely knows 'no' but still ignores this one! It's so hard to tell what she knows, frankly, since she is still so non-verbal. This has us worried but I am trying here to focus on the half-full glass.

3. How big is Hallie? "So Big!" I have to get a picture of this one, since she doesn't quite do it in the conventional way. Last weekend, Sharon taught this to Hallie, and now Hallie loves to perform this trick. But instead of stretching her arms way up over her head, she clasps the top of her head and holds it, making it seem like she is worried. Very cute.

4. Waving. We have a virtual waving machine here. She wakes up every morning waving at us, which makes us happy. She still does that cute little-kid wave where she curls her fingers in to her palm, sometimes holding her arm down, and sometimes raising it up.

5. FIrst signs of some desire to let go and walk. She thought about it yesterday and nearly took one step, squatted down, held that position for a bit, and then thought better of the whole enterprise. But you can tell that, finally, she is considering that walking might be an option. And in terms of things that we did not think she knew, the other afternoon when our friends Sheila and Brett and their adorable nearly-three-year old daughter, Alex, were hanging out here, Sheila asked Hallie to take a step toward her. And Hallie looked at Sheila and actively shook her head 'no.' We didn't know she knew that, and, like her words, we probably won't experience that one again for a while, but it's nice to know she can just say 'no' when she needs to.

6. And finally, Hallie loves to interact with her Sesame Street DVDs. The 35th anniversary celebration ("What's the name of that song?") is the reigning favorite around here and, amazingly enough, even after a gazillion viewings, Hallie finds the thing fresh and exciting. She laughs at SuperGrover's flying superhero antics; squeals every time Elmo comes on the screen, but especially in the lead up to the Operatic Lullaby segment; and claps heartily during numerous numbers. But, as they say, "nothing is better than a song about letters," and the best song of all is the Gospel ABC with lovely Philadelphia native Miss Patti LaBelle:



And, because I've been remiss about posting pictures, here's a few recent shots of our girl at the park:

Hallie loves sliding. I've even considered letting go and letting her do it all herself; I suspect she'd be fine with that, but I know that I won't until she can walk on her own.




And clearly, she is getting there:


The outfit in which Hallie was dressed on this fine early September day was one that I had discovered in her closet during the great Labor Day clean up. I discovered a lot of outfits that had somehow gotten lost in the shuffle and hence remained unworn. Six boxes of clothes ended up in the basement, but this was too cute to put away and I figure that she might get two or three wearings out of it before it gets too small on her or (more likely), the weather turns too chilly.

Anyway, the outfit includes the most adorable hat and Sharon and I were trying desperately to get her to wear it. Hallie, however, has a mind of her own:




I'm not sure what we're going to do once winter comes. She's going to be awfully cold without a hat and shoes on!

Make it a Double...

...ear infection.

At least we scored us some amoxicillin and have an explanation for why Hallie is ailing (and hopefully a cure that should kick in in the none too distant future).

The not so great news is that Hallie has lost a bit of weight again. She weighed in at 19 lbs. 11.9 ounces, which is about an ounce less than she weighed three weeks ago. At least she did not weigh any less than that. It's been a rough couple of eating weeks in these here parts (in contrast, it's been a great couple of weeks to own stock in Scott Paper Towels and Woolite Upholstery foam).

After Hallie's enormous weight gain of earlier in August, we were actually advised to back off on her bottle calories, so we were beginning to mix in some whole milk with her Pediasure/Neosure concoction. Needless to say, that's going to end!

Hallie and the Surf(s) and Congestion Redux

On Labor Day weekend, Hallie had a grand time at the beach...



...followed by a grand time at the ball game. It was only the AC Surfs, but at least they won. (For those of you following sports here in the fine City of Brotherly Love, let's just say that we are known for our unreasonable loyalty to our teams that always let us down. The Phillies will break a lot of hearts again this year (maybe next year they could get a better and deeper bullpen? There's an idea for you) and the Eagles season opener yesterday does not bode well for the birds. Needless to say, our home teams get pretty far...just far enough to maintain audience and fan interest into the late season and often the post season. They just don't play like champions. I've heard it said that part of the problem is that we're a one-team kind of town. Back in New York (where I am from), there are usually two teams in the city (Yankees/Mets; Jets/Giants; Islanders/Rangers...you get the picture) and that this helps keep the teams on their toes if they want to sell seats and make revenue. I am sure that having a GM who can buy the whole team doesn't hurt the Yankees either.

Anyway, Hallie had fun at the Surfs game, though it's not clear from these shots that she really took in any of the on-field action:




The shots were taken at night with Sharon's phone, which explain why they are not as clear as they could be.

On other fronts: Hallie had a great time at the block party on our block on Saturday, but has been having a rough week all around so far. I spoke too soon when I suggested in the previous post that our end of summer is turning out to be rather uneventful. As a matter of fact, the whole family has been felled by a pretty nasty cold that none of us really want or can afford right now (since we're very generous folks around here, we've also shared it with Karina, Mark, and Vanessa next door and hope that Josh, Nancie, and Ethan are immune to it. Particularly Nancie, since she is around 35 weeks pregnant).

Hallie came down with the sniffles last Wednesday, it turned into one of those colds that is accompanied by intermitten fevers and that produces nasty green and yellow boogers by Friday night, and by Saturday, the dreaded vomiting had begun again. She has been vomiting up pretty much one bottle a day (and they are now 6-7 ounce bottles, so they really count, not to mention that they are really productive of copious amounts of pink pediasure puke). She isn't choking on the bottle and then refunding it; rather, she waits until she has finished the bottle and is seemingly asleep. At this point, whatever mom is feeding her is generally lulled into a complacent place where she thinks that Hallie is beyond the point of all return and that the bottle is down for good. Then the coughing, choking, sputtering, and puking begin. They don't end until mom and baby are in a state of real distress, with Hallie screaming (often in hunger and exhaustion).

This is oh so very un-fun and we need it to end, pretty much immediately. I hate to think that what we experienced was a whole 3 weeks of congestion-free living, rather than an end to the chronic congestion of this summer altogether. We'll bring her in to the ped. on Wednesday. Our pediatrician basically said that a sinus infection can't be diagnosed until a cold has lasted beyond 10 days, but we are hoping that they take pity on us at the end of day 8. If things get worse than they are now, we'll obviously take her in before that (like tomorrow). This is a nasty, nasty bug that has given both Sharon and me major sinus headaches and has led to the rise in Kleenex's stock considerably, so we can only imagine how horrible Hallie feels.

Anyway, please keep your fingers crossed that this runs its course without any real intervention or that, in the event that it drags on and on, that we can get Hallie on amoxicillin ASAP to help clear things up.

*Note: this post was started on Saturday September 8th but not finished until Monday September 10th.

EI, Eating, and Hanging Out at the Beach

I can't believe that it's taken me all week just to contemplate sitting down to write another update; I have to say that starting up work again has really cut into my blogging time...

All in all, it's been a fairly uneventful end-of-summer for Hallie. (We LOVE uneventful; it's bad enough that her mamas can be major drama queens! I hate to be cryptic, but those of you who know us in real life may--or may not--know what we mean).

First, Hallie finally had her third quarterly Early Intervention team meeting. Yes, the math does not add up: Hallie has been in the EI system pretty much since a week after she came home back in October 2006. Since that initial meeting, we've had exactly 2 other follow ups. We requested the first one in December when we added our excellent OT, Amy. We were never told that EI was supposed to evaluate us quarterly, and were thus under the impression that they wouldn't come out again until we were aged-out unless we had an issue. In May, our next issue---Hallie's delayed speech and eating problems--prompted us to call our EI coordinator again. It was then that we found out that Hallie's caseworker had faked her visits to us (purportedly monthly) and quarterly follow-ups. No wonder the system has cracks in it! We're not sure what happened to that caseworker, but hope that she's not been reassigned to other (unsuspecting) families. If we hadn't been pushy enough, who knows how long that would have gone on. Anyway, in June we finally did get the follow up and were approved for Speech. Our current quarterly assessment was done, as is so much of EI, on the fly. First, they did not check with us (or two out of the three team members) and scheduled the evaluation to occur when Hallie was supposed to be hospitalized in August. Then, they never called us back. Finally, I called them again and again since our goal was to increase Hallie's Speech Therapy from once a week to twice since she's made only a little progress in the month that Jenny, a very good ST, has been seeing her. When I eventually got the caseworker on the phone, she said that she would set up something and chose a time three days later. Of course two out of the three team members were unavailable, but at least Jenny could make it. Now that the Labor Day holiday is over, we'll finally begin to ramp up Hallie's speech therapy.

Anyway, we really do adore our whole team. Here's a nice picture of Hallie with Crystal, the Special Instructor who was the first member of Hallie's team (she began working with Hallie back in November, when our girl would hardly tolerate tummy time on a boppy pillow).



As they say, "you've come a long way, Baby!" It's hard for Crystal to believe that Hallie was once so small, so frail, and so attached to oxygen tubing.

Meanwhile, Hallie's speech has picked up a bit on its own. She's still pretty inconsistent about talking and her voice is often very faint (we have just noticed that you can hardly hear her cry when she's actually in a bad situation; she must be missing whatever speech register she is trying to use. This is pretty frightening and unfortunately just reinforces our tendencies not to take our eyes off of the kid at any moment). But on a more positive note, we're hearing more consonants---she definitely has a "g", has been known occassionally to say "woo, woo" and likes to go around saying "dada-dada-daddy." We find this particularly ironic given our status as a two-mommy household.

She's also eating pretty nicely. In addition to her fondness for mozzarella cheese (ripped up finely) and our discovery that she loves mushrooms and olives, she's also done a lot better with tiny bits of pasta. She is very interested in self-feeding, and oreo cookies are one of her favorites:



It's a good thing that we're also working on great oral hygeine skills:


And, like her moms, Hallie has discovered the virtues of multitasking as a means of survival:


It's not all about work, though, around here. Yes, it's true that Labor Day is not a holiday that I or my students are permitted to celebrate (GRRRRR), but at least Hallie and Sharon got to go to the Shore for the long weekend. Hallie, as usual, enjoyed catching some rays. She spent Saturday at the pool and Sunday at the beach, floating on her baby raft in the former, and taking up surfing in the latter:



Doesn't she look cute and sandy? I'll be uploading a video of our girl cavorting with her cousins and posting it, and some pics of Hallie's first baseball game (not the self-immolating Phillies but the far more consistent Atlantic City Surfs) in my next post.

Picture Free Update...

...from one very tired mama.

School started up again this week and I've been up at 5:30am (well, 5:42am) every day for the past three days in a row. Last year, because the school where I teach is very generous, I was able to reduce my normal load by 2 classes. That meant that I had very few students each semester (no more than 20). This year, I am back to teaching a normal load, and have about 60 students. I've kind of forgotten what it is like to be greeted by a sea of 30 unknown faces (and how is it that college students seem to get younger and younger every year? After all, I stay the same age, right?).

Anyway, enough about me. You guys are here to hear about Hallie. But at least this explains the utter and complete lack of photos in this post.

Hallie's doing really well. When last we checked (over a week ago now), she was 19 lbs. 13 ounces. We're thinking that she's got to be around 20 lbs. at this point. This is tremendous. This also has us backing off just a bit on the calories. Sharon is valiantly attempting to get rid of the 3am feeding; alas, it seems that Hallie is a bit dependent on it, and so we're having to get up by 5 or 6am, rock her back to sleep, and are hoping that this doesn't take too long to accomplish. We're also beginning to lighten up on her calories. Since she is pretty dependably eating 4 jars of baby food (one of which is often a baby yogurt) per day and around 18-20 ounces of formula, we're beginning to mix some whole milk in with the pediasure/nutren brew that we're serving up. We'll see if this has a negative impact on her weight gain (a moderating curve is good, but we don't want her to drop back down or anything) and adjust accordingly.

We've also been using our feeding tip of the month (courtesy of St. Joe's in Paterson), which involves getting her to open her mouth and lean in to the spoon, rather than just shoving the spoon into her mouth and hoping for the best. Hallie is doing pretty well with this, especially for the first half-jar of food each feeding and especially when we're able to be consistent about timing her meals, feeding her, etc. Sharon is, of course, better at this than I am, but I manage ok.

We're hoping that the new nanny we hired manages ok, too. We had tried out two people, all of whom were utter and abject failures. The first was nice enough but inexperienced with infants generally (nothing like fastening the diaper the wrong way to make that one clear) and the second was better-trained but utterly inflexible. She didn't really listen to us and tended to dismiss our experience and our tips (and, I suspect, the very fact that Hallie is an ex-23 weeker with GERD and swallowing/aspirating issues) and basically decided to do things her way. Which got her vomited on a couple of times, meant that she failed to feed Hallie, and led her to demand more money of us (A LOT more per hour) because Hallie was "difficult." When we decided to look elsewhere, she got really indignant and essentially accused us of "babying" Hallie and keeping her back. I say good riddance (and that we're really glad that we found this all out before she had the chance to do more damage than good. When we say that Hallie needs to be held after eating, there's a reason for it. It's not that the kid is spoiled, but that the reflux is an issue. And when we say that she needs to be fed carefully due to aspiration problems, we mean that we are keen on keeping her from developing pneumonia and hurting her lungs, which have been good so far, but which were crappy at best and non-existent at worst when she was first born. And when we say we don't give her solids to self-feed yet, we speak from experience that she has an overactive gag and cannot safely tolerate much really solid food unless it's cut up really small and melts in her mouth. We know that Hallie knows how to pick up food and get it in her mouth---that's never been the problem (and certainly wasn't tonight, when she chowed down on tiny slivers of olives and mushrooms and veggie sticks from Whole Foods with great glee). The teeth she's growing will help, but basically, our sense (from lots and lots of experience) is that we need to take things slowly where feeding is concerned.

So nanny trial number 2 failed. But behind door number 3 was a very wonderful, experienced nanny with very good energy (read: patient and much more zen) and a true soft spot for our little girl and our moderately dysfunctional (in its own way) family. We are hoping that she is able to deal with feeding Hallie because otherwise, she is already pretty excellent. Not to mention, musical (she is a percussionist, keyboardist, and singer songwriter). This is truly cool in its own right, but even cooler because Hallie responds so thoroughly to music. (In fact, one of the things I need to try to capture tomorrow is Hallie grooving to Patti Labelle's Gospel ABC on her new favorite Sesame Street DVD. It's very cute that Hallie copies Miss Patti's and the assorted Muppets' hand motions, even if this makes it harder to feed Hallie during this particular tune).

Anyway, all of this makes me realize how much going with one's gut matters here. Yes, we are hiring someone for a job. But this isn't just a job; we are trusting our baby with someone. Candidate number 2 set off bad energy bells for both of us, something that was based on no hard evidence whatsoever. It's just that both of us felt a certain uneasiness about her that we could not specify, and this led Sharon to even go so far as to think about getting a Nanny Cam. In contrast, we have the warm fuzzies for Candidate number 3 (---did I mention, that, in addition to everything else, she also likes NPR?). So keep fingers crossed for us, because we really want this to work out (not to mention really need it to, since we absolultely cannot manage without one day of childcare/week since both of us have to be at work for 3 days a week each).

I will try to get some cute pics of Hallie for my next update, but meanwhile need to get into bed because I am about to turn into a pumpkin. Which is, alas, sounding pretty seasonal; I cannot believe that Hallowe'en is just around the corner. If anyone has any ideas about costumes that are devoid of headgear (and perhaps even shoes), please let me know. Unless Hallie is playing 'peek-a-boo', she can't stand anything on her head. She is going to have a rude surprise coming this winter...

Photo Retrospective--Mid to Late August

A couple of weeks ago, Hallie got all dolled up in one of the many fine dresses that she inherited from her friend Alex to attend not one, but two birthday parties in the same day.

Here's a shot of her on her way to her friend Adam's party, where she had a lot of fun with all the neighborhood kids. Notice the drool all over the front of her shirt. It's evidence of tooth number 3, which FINALLY just popped:



Later on, she had a great time playing with Ethan (and Karina, who is not in this shot) at Uncle Josh's birthday party. Josh received a great number of bottles of fine single-malt and top shelf bourbon. Happily, Hallie did not partake in any of them.



Later that same week, we had our now-famous hospitalization for Hallie's scopes and swallow study. To cheer up our little girl, we gave her her very first oreo cookie. She knew just what to do with the inside and scraped it clean with those two tiny teeth. She did try to get some of the chocolate cookie in her mouth, but most of it ended up on her:



To reward Hallie for being so brave about all those tests (the worst of which was the IV inserted by the very nice anesthetist who needs to go to phlebotemy school), we took her to Sesame Place again last week. She had a ton of fun in and out of the water, and spent a lot of quality time with her friend Alex.

Hallie really enjoyed the bird bath and toddler pool. She took like a fish to water and seemed to know how to swim quite instinctively.



Of course, all the fun and games came to a screeching (or wretching) halt when Hallie decided to drink some of the pool water. This was not only yucky and unhygeinic, but posed a greater risk to her now that we knew that she aspirates on thin liquids. Too bad they don't thicken up the drink with a bit of Simply Thick. Actually, that sounds at least as bad as Pediasure backwash...

Anyway, we moved back to terra firma and Hallie visited her favorite attraction at Sesame Place--the gym mats.

There, she made a new friend:



And she got buried in rubber blocks by some big kids who thought the prospect of building a fortress around Hallie was hilarious:



At one point, Hallie appealed to an equally pint-sized ally for some assistance:



And ultimately, our little marauder did break free:



And what's a visit to Sesame Place without a meet and greet with your favorite characters?




In the middle of all this Hallie-related fun, we moms got to celebrate our second anniversary (of our ceremony; we've actually been a couple going on six years next month). On Monday, I came home with these flowers for Sharon:




I might have been responsible for the flowers and a yummy assortment from a local chocolatier that is FABULOUS called Naked Chocolate, but Sharon is responsible for the wonderful photography. And the flowers themselves are reminiscent of our wedding flowers (mango calla lillies, salmon and red roses, and irises, which we assembled ourselves---definitely an undertaking but it was worth it).

We actually got to go out together two nights in a row last week. On Monday we were having a trial run for a baby sitter and went to a new and very yummy bistro a couple of blocks away. The raw bar assortment was yummy; the babysitter was not so much.

On Tuesday, Aunt Neystice and Aunt Kim babysat Hallie while we went out for a more formal anniversary celebration. They were much better at taking care of Hallie but sadly are unavailable to watch her this fall.

Then, on Saturday, Sharon, Hallie, and I headed down to the Shore for what we supposed was a last weekend by the pool. I packed accordingly. The weather, sadly, did not comply and the weathermen hadn't the faintest clue on Friday that it was going to be 60 and raining all weekend. Hallie ended up wearing her cousin Adam's 18-month sweatshirt and some pants that I threw in at the last minute.

However, in this shot, she is wearing neither shirt nor sweatshirt. Indeed, what she is wearing is her lunch.



That's what you get when you let the girl feed herself!

That's all for now; we're STILL engaged in our (apparently) never-ending search for someone to take care of Hallie. I go back to school next week, so it's kind of urgent at this point. If anyone out there has any recommendations for finding a nanny/sitter who is patient enough to deal with a somewhat-hard-to-feed micropreemie, by all means let me know. We have a few very good responses to our most recent Craigslist advertisement, but any advice you might have for training caretakers in the fine art of sleep feeding and reflux/laryngomalacia positioning are always appreciated.

And, speaking of laryngomalacia (and vocal cord paralysis), a big shout out of thanks to Laura for her great video of Daniel and his creative and cute antics, not to mention heartfelt renditions of ABC. You can watch for yourself at Adventures in Juggling

Updates and Milestones (just not the typical ones...)

Hi All,

I do promise to add in some pictures later---I realize that I am woefully remiss on uploading them to my computer and then downloading them to the blog. It's not like I haven't taken any lately; it's just that it's been a pretty exhausting few weeks.

Anyway, I wanted to update everyone on Hallie's tests results. When I spoke to the Pulmonologist on Tuesday, she said that, while they did culture a couple of different bacteria from her lung/bronch wash, a. both of the things that they cultured were resistant to Amoxycillin (the antibiotic Hallie was taking) and b. that it was awfully suspicious that these two (unspecified) bacteria were cultured from the same sample. Hence, she (the pulmo) felt that the sample itself was contaminated and didn't really tell us much of anything. If Hallie does get sick again (and we are crossing our fingers that she won't), the pulmonologist will prescribe a different antibiotic. I am sure that this will be fun to give to our little girl. Even the bubble-gum-flavored amoxycillin was sort of a nightmare; Hallie knows what a syringe looks like and her experience with syringes is not a terribly favorable one. I am sure that she still has the taste of the bicarbonate into which they suspend prilosec in her mouth. So we had to mix the amox. into vanilla pudding, yogurt, or at least give it to her by the spoonful to get it down. Fun, fun, fun.

Still, the pulmonologist was not so concerned as to order another bronchoscopy (thank goodness) and feels like Hallie's lungs sound clear; that most of the problems she is having are confined to the upper airway; and that Atrovent might be a nice substitute for Albuterol given that Hallie has laryngomalacia.

The GI samples were much more promising: Hallie shows no sign of damage to her esophagous from the refluxing acid nor any indication of having a milk intolerance or any other food-related allergic reaction. While she still might be aspirating a bit, no one is too concerned about this. Nor are they suggesting that Hallie have a G-tube placed. This is because she is growing so well.

Which brings me to her current stats: our very wiggly girl weighed in at 9,150 grams (give or take a few to account for the wiggling), which is equivalent to 19 pounds 9 ounces. This is phenomenal (and would still be were the scale a whole 100 grams off). Basically, Hallie is at the 50th percentile for her adjusted age in terms of both weight and length and at about the 10 per cent mark for her actual age. So her steep ascent continues.

This does not mean that the vomiting has stopped; indeed, we still have a hugely impressive record of one day of no vomiting in a row. But she is taking more in and keeping more down these days.

More important milestones, however, were attained by Hallie this week:

1. The putting-something-into-a-hole milestone. Hallie has long been resistant to the idea of putting things in things and instead has focused exclusively on taking things out of things. To help remedy her of this defect, Sharon and I bought her the Fisher Price gumball machine:



For the first few weeks that she owned this toy, Hallie could not be bothered to put the balls back into the machine. But yesterday (Thursday), she suddenly put it all together and now she is trying to put EVERYTHING into the gumball machine.

2. The pooping milestone. Hallie has now pooped on the floor to her bedroom (she was sans diaper at the time because Sharon was getting her bath together and had forgotten to fill up the tub so she placed Hallie on the floor in the nursery for a wee second. Which turned out to be just long enough to squeeze out a poop and begin to trail it all over the place. If that were not enough (and I assure you that it was), Hallie also decided to poop in her bathtub tonight. Clearly, she is living up to her nickname of Poopy Lou (which dates back to the NICU days when Hallie would poop 3-4 times a day; she still does!)

3. The first-word-that-suggests-that-the-kid-watches-too-much-Sesame-Street. The word? A highly predictable Elmo, used absolutely appropriately to signify red furry monsters with high pitched voices.

4. The first-attempt-to-let-go-and-walk-milestone. A big one, though still unsuccesful. And what, might you ask, motivated her? Paper, of course, which is the food of choice for Hallie since all that pooping requires a high fiber diet.

OK, that is all for now; I'll try for some real images in my next post.

Update on Hallie's tests

This is going to be brief because the last few days have been exhausting and this mama needs some sleep.

Anyway, we don't know everything yet, but we do know the following:

Hallie's left vocal cord is paralyzed, most likely due to iatrogenic causes, namely the ligation of her PDA. This seems like a small price to pay for life, but we cannot help but wonder what her voice will sound like. More importantly, i need to follow up with ENT to confirm that the paralysis is in the midline position.

Additionally, Hallie has laryngomalacia. This is the most common upper-airway issue that babies have and most often it self resolves by 18 months-2 years. This floppiness in her larynx may explain her speech delays and some of her eating issues. The is a very strong correlation between laryngomalacia and GERD.

We did, indeed, have a Modified Barium Swallow Study on Friday and, not terribly surprisingly, it showed aspiration on thin liquids. There was some pooling on thickened liquids (we have been using Simply Thick to thicken her feeds for the past month or so and this has seemed successful to me), but no aspiration. There may have been some penetration into the airway but Hallie managed to push it out. Purees were fine across the board.

Where do we go from here? Unclear to me and I really need Hallie's ped. to put it all together for me. We are still awaiting results to see whether the macrophages in her bronchial lavage fluids are lipid-laden, which would not be a good thing since that would suggest a lot of aspiration. Given how well Hallie is growing, doing developmentally, and the like, we'd like to resist any drastic surgical intervention. My hope is that the GERD and floppy airway will improve and that we can just start acting/being like parents, and not parents of micropreemies.

I don't mean to kvetch; in the larger scheme of things, Hallie is doing really well. I just wish that we could make her more comfrotable and get her over this hurdle.

Hallie at the Beach

Hallie finally made it down to the Shore this weekend. We'd be trying and trying, but our foray to the beach (which is a mere fifteen or so minutes from where Grammy and Aunt Laura live) has been sabotaged by bad weather or bad health or mommies' inability to make it out the door in time with all of our beach gear on various occasions this summer. We're happy to report that none of the above applied on Sunday.

Anyway, we're thrilled to report that Hallie has ocean in her blood and that she was not in the least freaked out by the sand and surf. Instead, she dug right in, so to speak.

Mommy held Hallie at the water's edge and they 'jumped' the waves together (Hallie was in mommy's lap the whole time). The water was impressively choppy since it was pretty windy and just about high tide. Hallie thought the whole experience was a blast.




Meanwhile, the two moms didn't exactly win any parenting awards when they totally forgot to put Hallie into a swim diaper before all of the aforementioned activity. In the past, they had put on the swim diaper too soon and ended up with a puddly mess. This time, they only managed to change Hallie into it after she had a huge blowout diaper that required two or three adults, several diapers, a chuck, and much distraction to be changed. Live and learn. Smile.

Here's Hallie enjoying her first ever ice cream sandwich. More wich than sand, fortunately, since Hallie decided that there IS a non-edible substance she's not terribly interested in putting in her mouth. We were happy to find that to be the case, though we'd like her to not put the seaweed schmutz and pieces of straw and rock that wash up on the shore in her mouth, either.



Late in the day, the sea air had gotten to Hallie and she began to settle in for a bottle and a nap. But before beginning to suck in earnest, Hallie teased mommy, and mama caught it on video:



A good day, indeed a lovely weekend, was had by all (---thanks Grammy for watching Hallie on Saturday night so that the moms could have an all-too-rare night out!), and Hallie wants to do it again, SOON.

Meanwhile, we're gearing up for Hallie's joint ENT/GI/PULMO scopes tomorrow. Everyone here is a bit nervous (well, Hallie doesn't really know what she's in for, thanks goodness, but the moms certainly do. We hate, hate, hate the idea of her quite likely being intubated and placed on the ventilator when we were fighting so hard to extubate her this time last year, and we're a bit concerned that none of this invasive and surgical procedure (complete with general anesthesia) will yield information that we can translate into a way of solving her congestion/reflux issues. But hopefully we'll know something more about the damage to her trachea, her vocal cords, and her GI tract and whether there is evidence of aspiration or allergies that aren't otherwise visible. We've been trying to treat Hallie with shots in the dark and that has obviously not been terribly productive. Hopefully this will help us do something to make her more comfortable.

Play Date with Benjamin

On Friday, Hallie had a play date with Benjamin, who is a fellow ICN graduate (he is a 28 weeker born a couple of days before Hallie).

Hallie thought Benjamin was super cute and was very excited by the idea of playing with him:



Benjamin and his mommy and daddy (Polly and Chris) just moved from Philadelphia to Park Slope, Brooklyn. But we'll be keeping in touch with them and seeing them (Polly's family lives in Philly) because of our special bond.

On The Charts!!!!

Hallie is ON THE CHARTS for her ACTUAL age. She weighed in at 8420 (up from 8150 on Friday--both on the scale she's normally weighed on at the pediatrician's office). That's 18 lbs. 9 ounces, and a 9 ounce gain, from last Friday.

In other words, our girl is HUGE. And has thighs to prove it (they aren't fat so much as strong...)

What's the trick that brought us here? I think that shifting her from prilosec in suspensions to prilosec capsules mixed in a bit of applesauce is really helping her eating a lot. The old method of giving it to her (mixed with enough formula to kill the taste of the bicarb), in tandem with the notoriously unstable and less long-lasting suspension meant that she was benefiting very little from the meds. With the shift, she's feeling much better and is eating better, too. The only thing keeping down her volume is her congestion, and hopefully we'll get that under control soon. Meanwhile, the second key has been increasing the amount of solid baby food (purees) that she's eating---she's now getting over 3 jars a day, which is a huge deal to us.

Still, we have the congestion that remains unimproved, and that may actually be turning into a full blown sinusitis. We're going to admit he voluntarily for a scope that will be watched and evaluated by GI, ENT, and Pulmonology. Hopefully they'll have more answers after that and hopefully we'll be able to get this under control at some point.

Meanwhile, we are thrilled with her size, her progress, and her overall liveliness. This liveliness is getting even cuter now that she is vocalizing all the time and even beginning to make some consonant sounds (g, k, r, and more recently, an attempt at an 'm' that sounds a lot like kissing). We're so proud of Hallie for how far she's come!