Hello, I'm here

During the past couple of days, Colin has really stepped up his efforts to interact with Veronica. John reports that he is quite often trying to get her attention or to touch her. And for the most part, she seems to ignore him.

Today, however, he found the right way to get her to pay attention to him — at that moment at least. He was apparently playing with Veronica’s hair, and it was making her laugh and laugh. I’m sure that made Colin happy. Finally, a reward for all that effort. She finally noticed that Colin is here. 

(Okay, she has been aware of Colin for a long time, and loves to do things like grab his face or pull his hair. But this was noticing him in a fun way, so it’s different.)

Veronica’s typical response to Colin trying to get her attention.

Hide and seek and cobra pose

The babies are developing at a rapid pace these days. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up (both mentally and physically). 

Colin appears to have recovered pretty much completely from his surgery. He is still regenerating a lot of tissue, so his surgeon wants to see him again in three months, but the surgeon is pleased with how everything looks so far. Colin certainly has not suffered any decrease in mobility as a result of having surgery. He has mastered the army crawl and occasionally works to get his knees under him while he’s motoring around. 

Colin still is not sitting unsupported. Both his occupational therapist and his physical therapist are both working with him on this (as are John and I). We’re getting closer … but still no success. I am hoping we’ll get him sitting by his first birthday, but as that’s just around the corner, I am suspecting disappointment. 

Colin has, however, completely gotten over his dislike of being on his tummy. In fact, for a larger portion of the day, Colin looks as if he is showing off his perfect cobra pose. My little yoga master. It’s become the complete opposite of his previous habits — now if you lay him down on his back, he almost immediately flips onto his stomach. That is a nice change.

Veronica is determined to become a big girl in all aspects of life. She is losing interest in drinking from her bottle during the day (but has not quite gained an interest in taking her milk from a sippy — but we’re working on that). She also prefers finger foods over purees; wants to sleep in the big bed, not her crib; and will crawl off and amuse herself on her own. 

This last habit caused me a bit of a fright the other day. I had gone into the bathroom and left her playing with her toys in the living room. When I came out again a minute later, she was gone. I called her and looked everywhere for her, but she seemed to have vanished.

Just as I was starting to get a little worried, I finally found her in Ethan’s bedroom, where she had crawled and closed the door behind her. (More incentive for Ethan to keep his room picked up.)

The babies are much more aware of each other now, too. They have started to fight over toys, and each will get very upset when the other takes a favorite away. They also are thinking farther ahead now.

Veronica has discovered that as a sitter, all she needs to do to keep toys away from Colin is turn her back to him. She spent a good 10 minutes playing with something he wanted and every time he would crawl around to try and grab it, she would just turn a little so he was behind her again.

Colin, on the other hand, has a couple of times (that I’ve been here to witness at least) seen Veronica look at a toy, and then race over to get it before she does.

They do sometimes also play nicely together. They both love our LeapFrog music table (we had the same model for Ethan, and he also loved it). Right now we have the legs off so it sits on the floor (so Colin can reach it), and Colin and Veronica will often play at the table together.

I spent a good 15 minutes the other evening trying to capture the moment on film: Colin was on his side, pushed up high like he was getting ready to sit up, playing on one side of the table, and Veronica was standing with her butt up in the air, bent double playing on the other side.

Unfortunately, Veronica seems to have a built-in camera detector. Even though I was behind her, the minute I picked up the camera, she turned and crawled over to me to try and grab it. We repeated this scene several times before I gave up. I’m sneakier than they know, however, and I will succeed at some point.

Mobile Mable and Marvin

Well, other than seeing his urine bag (from the catheter) peeking out from the bottom of his pants, you wouldn’t know that Colin had surgery to watch him rolling around. We have only been giving him pain medication at night (and probably don‘t even need to do that, but just in case …), and he is moving everywhere. (It’s quite painful for us to watch, but doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.)

In the past two days, Colin seems to have really mastered the art of army crawling. He isn’t quite as fast or mobile as Veronica, but he can really get around right now. He uses a combination of rolling and crawling to get from one side of the room to the other. He also seems to be sitting better suddenly, which is encouraging.

Veronica now will follow us from room to room, and come searching for us if we’ve been out of sight for too long. Suddenly, the house is filled with the thump, thump, thumping of Veronica as she crawls everywhere. And opens every drawer and door in sight.

We definitely need to get moving on the baby proofing now.

Colin is supposed to go back tomorrow to get the catheter out and the bandages removed. (So far, the thrice-daily baths haven’t done the trick on their own.) Unfortunately, we didn’t call for the appointment early enough, and missed them on Friday. (Darn day before the holiday and early closing.) So I left a message and hope they’ll be able to squeeze us in. Otherwise, I don’t suppose one extra day will really make that much of a difference.

Then it’s just a matter of watching and waiting to make sure everything heals properly. I suspect we’ll have a couple of follow up visits during the first month to make sure there aren’t any problems, but I don’t know that for sure. I guess I’ll know better tomorrow.

In surgery now [updated]

The anesthesiologist just wheeled Colin away for his surgery. It’s a long surgery — his surgeon is expecting four hours — so they need to intubate Colin for the anesthesia. And while I certainly don’t want my little guy's anesthesia to wear off before they’re done the surgery, it does make me nervous having him intubated again. After being on the ventilator for so long, I have the (irrational) fear that he’s going to have trouble getting off again.

So now I sit and wait, and wait, and wait. And hope that God is guiding the surgeon’s hands, and all will go well.

++++

After one blood transfusion and four plus hours in the operating room, Colin’s surgeon emerged to tell me that the surgery ended up being more complicated than they anticipated (and they were anticipating a complicated surgery), but in the end all the pieces came together just right. Now, we just have to hope everything heals well.

Because he had the transfusion, and because they had to do more extensive work than anticipated, Colin is having to stay in the hospital overnight. Unfortunately, that means another night of basically no sleep for John in the surgical observation unit — three walls and a curtain does not a quiet room make.

The anesthesiologist was happy with Colin’s recovery and didn’t need to observe him any longer for breathing issues. But the surgeon told me that he will check on Colin in the morning, and may decide he needs to stay longer. (If so, I hope they’ll be able to get him a real room so he and John can rest.) I am hoping, however, to have my baby back home tomorrow. 

He's in the army now

Not one to be left behind, Colin has decided to join the crawling revolution in our house. But of course, being Colin, he has to take his own approach: He has discovered the army crawl.

How Colin crawls right now, minus the gun, of course.

I first noticed him doing it earlier this week: he gets on his stomach and pulls himself along using his forearms. It looks kind of funny, but it works. 

And he’s getting better at it every day, thanks to a lot of practice. John said he was crawling a lot today. Which is good, because that will help build his upper body strength — something he needs if he’s ever going to sit on his own.

Keeping the rivalry alive, Veronica is getting serious about crawling on all fours. She has several times in the past two days actually gotten on her hands and knees and moved herself forward. (Of course, it’s not nearly as fast as bouncing across the floor or going backward, but there’s no challenge left in that.)

So far, prayers answered

All those months ago, as we struggled with the decision about when to deliver the twins, our overriding hope was that Veronica would not suffer because of any decisions we made to benefit Colin. 

Today, Veronica had another appointment at the NICU follow-up clinic at the hospital. Here they follow the babies to make sure they are getting the services they need for any delays they might have (our occupational therapist currently sees babies at the clinic) and to keep an eye on any preemie-specific health issues they may have.

I had no real concerns going in to the appointment, other than to call to the doctor’s attention that our occupational therapist had noticed that Veronica’s left leg seems to be turning out more than it should at the hip. (He checked, and she doesn’t seem to have any range of motion problems, so right now it’s nothing to worry about. We’ll just keep an eye on it.)

Even so, I was happy to hear that Veronica is on target or ahead on everything — both size and development — for her actual age. So in just over 10 months, she has overcome the disadvantages of being born so early, and is developing just like any other baby born at the beginning of July.

Deb, our occupational therapist, said she is doing things an 11 month old baby should be doing with fine motor skills, and is at 10 months in her gross motor skills. She is an average height for a 10 month old (and at about the 25th percentile for weight), and is growing just fine. 

In short, she is now normal. 

(Of course, something could always arise later as a problem, but we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn’t.)

And she's off

I came home to the news that Veronica actually crawled a couple of times today. She has been scooting backward for a while now, but hasn’t really done much actual “crawling” in the more traditional sense yet. Until today. 

I’m looking forward to seeing her crawl myself. Maybe tomorrow she’ll “perform” for me.