Crap. Croup.

Both babies got sick over the weekend — Colin had a fever and Veronica was just “off” on Sunday morning. By Monday, she started coughing. We canceled the babies’ 15-month check-up appointment, which was supposed to be on Tuesday. They were supposed to get shots, and with Colin’s fever we knew that wasn’t going to happy. 

On Monday night, Colin’s fever broke and he started to feel better. But by Tuesday morning it was clear that a trip to the doctor for a sick baby visit with Veronica was in order. 

So I canceled my morning conference calls and Colin and I hung out while John took Veronica to the doctor. He was the third person in line when the doors opened, and the waiting room was full in no time, which is why I kept Colin at home with me. Our doctor is on vacation, but substitute doctor was actually the one we had seen before (the doctor who was surprised when we said that Colin and Veronica were preemies). 


Turns out Veronica has croup, which, of course, is contagious. So Veronica got a prescription for dexamethasone — a strong oral steroid, and ironically, the same steroid I was given before the twins were born to help develop their lungs. Unfortunately, the strength the doctor prescribed didn’t come in a liquid. So John had to crush up the three little pills and feed them to Veronica in some yogurt.  


Her cough is sounding better now, but little girl clearly is not feeling well. And, consequently, she is not sleeping well either. This afternoon, she napped for a whopping 15 minutes. I walked with her in the stroller for more than an hour, hoping she would nod off. She was definitely in a zone, but no sleep. 


The doctor also wanted us to keep Colin and Veronica separated, so Colin wouldn’t get sick. Well, aside from the fact that they’d been sharing toys before we found out what Veronica had, we discovered that even with both of us home it’s nearly impossible to keep two 15 month old babies apart. They want to be with each other, and they always want what the other one is playing with. 

So now we’re watching Colin closely to see if he’s going to end up with croup too. Fingers crossed that he doesn’t, since it potentially could be much worse for him. And here’s hoping Veronica feels better tomorrow and is a little happier.

The amazing Mr. (and Ms.) Fiegel

Despite my occasional worries, Colin continues to amaze me with his leaps forward and his determination to get what he wants. He is one determined little dude! And right now, every fiber of his being is focused on figuring out this walking thing. 

On Saturday, I was playing with the babies in the living room while John and Ethan were at a birthday party. Veronica was showing off her newly minted walking skills (more on that in a minute), and Colin was working on his cruising. He just started really cruising around the room on the furniture about a week ago, and now he uses that skill a lot. 

While I was watching and thinking how much more confident Colin was getting with his cruising, he suddenly let go of the coffee table and reached across the gap to the couch — successfully — and continued his cruising from there. I was very impressed.

He also is trying very hard to find his balance point while standing. When I walk with him holding my hands, he will regularly stop, lean against my legs and let go of my hands. Tonight he even started trying to push away from my legs and balance on his own. (He’s not quite there yet.)

Of course, after a block of doing the walking and trying to balance thing, he got tired of the challenge and raced Veronica by crawling (he won) back home.

And, as you may have guessed, Veronica has fully embraced the walking life. She is now walking every where, including half way to Trader Joe's yesterday, and all the way down the block today. She also is capable of getting pretty close to a run, especially if she sees a dog. 

Not content with just being an official toddler now, she also keeps upping the ante by doing things like working on turning corners, or walking while carrying ever-bigger objects. She also is very proud of her ability to climb the stairs (a trick Colin actually mastered first), which means we have to keep a gate up at both ends of the staircase. 

There is never a dull moment in our house, and it’s getting more exciting every week. 

The other shoe

After having a month without doctor appointments, we’re back in the throws of juggling schedules to make all of our appointments fit. (We’re not doing so well with it — poor Colin has two appointments in one day on the 27th.) This week, Colin finally had his six-month follow-up appointment with the pediatric ophthalmologist (only 2.5 months late) and an appointment at the high-risk clinic at the hospital.

The ophthalmologist appointment went well. John took Colin, who was very quiet and snuggly throughout the visit. His vision is fine, and he does not need glass nor does he need to see an eye doctor again until he’s five, unless we suspect he’s having trouble seeing. 

The appointment today at the hospital was a mixed bag. I always enjoy going back to the hospital with one of the babies. People there still remember us, and it’s nice to be able to chat again with so many of the people who helped keep us sane while we were practically living there last year. 

The appointments at the high risk clinic (at least at our hospital) are always the same routine: Colin gets weighed (he’s up to 17 pounds, but I think their scale tends to weigh a bit light), measured (he's 27.5 inches now) and has his blood pressure taken. Then we see an occupational therapist, and finally one of the neonatologists from the hospital. They assess the babies as preemies (whereas their pediatrician assesses them as babies), and make recommendations about specialists or extra services we may want to pursue. 

Occupational therapy assessment has gone quite quickly for us the last two visits, because Colin’s therapist is also the therapist at the clinic right now. When she walked into the room, Colin’s eyes lit up and he reached out to her. He had fun “playing” the games she presented him with, and was very proud of himself. Since she already knows him well, this ends up almost being like an extra session.

Colin is very advanced in his fine motor skills — testing between 14 and 15 months (at and above his actual age). However, he is still only at a six- to seven-month equivalent in his gross motor skills. He also remains high tone (especially in his shoulders and ankles) and has slight torticollis (his head favors one side/doesn’t rotate fully to the other side). 

As a result, he presents a mixed bag, from a developmental standpoint. His coordination and fine motor skills are very good, and he’s making progress (very slowly) on his gross motor skills. But at the same time, his tone is not improving much (or at all) in two of the key areas. So Colin is now adding another specialist to his collection: a neurologist.

This is that proverbial “other shoe” dropping that people always talk about waiting for, and in a way I have been waiting for it. While no one said it, what they’re having Colin evaluated for is cerebral palsy. And honestly, part of me is surprised it hadn’t come up sooner. He is at very high risk for cerebral palsy, and has several of the classic “symptoms” or signs. 

Now, in reality, a diagnosis of CP doesn’t really affect anything — it’s not a degenerative or progressive disease. It is what it is. And if Colin really has CP, he isn’t going to be any different after labeling it as such. He’s still going to be our gung ho, into everything, working on learning how to walk and ignoring sitting little guy. It just means it isn’t likely to get any easier for him as he gets older. He’s not going to just grow out of the need to work twice as hard to accomplish these milestones.

Of course, Colin doesn’t present a classic case, because of the strong coordination and fine motor skills. So the neurologist may say it’s nothing to worry about, or that we should wait until he’s older to do an assessment. We won’t know for sure until next month. But in the mean time, that tender shoot of normalcy has again been squashed under foot. We’ve been reminded that our babies aren’t normal — they’re preemies.

12 Steps

No, not a recovery program. That’s Roni’s current record for steps taken in a row. She did that today — walking across the living room to get to John and Colin. (Ethan and I were at Ikea, so we missed it.) Tonight before dinner, she took another 10 steps in the kitchen. And she has been doing shorter “walks” all day long. I have a feeling it won’t be long now … her confidence is growing. 

Colin too is making leaps forward again. He is rapidly mastering the art of standing up (and more slowly mastering the art of getting back down again). He doesn’t do it “right,” which only poses a problem because his style for standing could stretch out the ligaments in his feet, which would make running and jumping (later) harder. 

As a result, we have switched gears in PT, and are helping Colin learn how to stand properly rather than focusing so much on sitting. We’re still trying to help him learn how to get into a sitting position, and spending a little time on getting out of sitting with a bit more grace (and fewer bumps to the head). But with Colin, you’ve really got to go where his interest lies, and right now that’s with standing.

Both babies are making progress in the communication department. Colin now signs “please” and “more” in addition to waving and doing high fives. He isn’t really speaking any words consistently, but he does make the full range of sounds so we’re not concerned about his speech (yet anyway). Veronica now says “uh oh” and “bye-bye” and has many signs (fan, please, banana, more, up, out, down … I really should make a list at some point). 

Colin’s insatiable curiosity and dogged persistence are running us ragged. When he’s awake, Colin is invariably trying to do something he’s not supposed to. I feel like every five minutes we’re having to pull him down from the shelves, or off the ledge under the table, or off the treadmill, or out of the kitchen cabinets. 

And two minutes later, he’s right back at it again. And again. And again. We’ve run out of gates to block things off. Maybe we’ll just buy a big cage … just kidding.

Look at me Mom!

“Hey!”

“Colin, it’s 4:00 in the morning.”

“Hey! Hey!”

“Okay, okay. I’m coming in.”

I had been sleeping on the couch (because my back hurts and the couch makes it hurt less, for whatever reason) when Colin started shouting what sounded very much like “Hey!” from his crib at 4:00 this morning. I tried to ignore him for a little while to see if he would go back to sleep, but he just kept getting louder, so I gave up and went in to see what he needed.

And there he stood, in his crib, leaning over the side rail all proud of his little self. 

Yes, our boy who can’t get into a sitting position on his own (or out of it for that matter) has figured out how the pull himself up in his crib. 

To be honest, it wasn’t a surprise. He had done the same thing once during the day with John, and is pulling up on everything in sight. But I was kind of hoping we could skip the pull-up-in-the-crib-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing. Oh well.

First on our agenda for today — lower the crib mattress. We didn’t need to rush into moving the mattress with Veronica. She’s not likely to vault herself over the side of the crib. That’s just not her style. 

Colin, on the other hand, is the baby most likely to take up sky diving before the age of 7. The boy has no fear (and consequently, no sense of danger). So he spent the rest of the night (awake) in bed with me, so I could keep him from going airborne.

So I’m tired, he’s proud of himself, and we’re on our way to having the first baby who started walking before he could sit. (Okay, probably not the first. But one of the few, I would guess.)

Crazy kid.

The cheese stands alone …

And so does Veronica. Yes, our girl has mastered the art of balancing on two feet. She is cruising all over now, and loves to walk around (as long as you’re holding her hands). She even took a single step on her own a couple of times. It won’t be long now before she realizes she can do it (walking that is) all by herself.

And this has made Colin jealous, so he is working on standing alone too. (We’ll just skip the whole sitting up thing, Mom. This standing and walking bit looks so much more interesting.) Now that we’ve gotten the constipation problem mostly under control (thank you Miralax), Colin is doing much better with sitting — he can sit on his own for as much as 20 minutes, but he can’t get into or out of the sitting position on his own. But he no longer wants to be put into the sitting position, he wants to stand or kneel. And he can get there on his own. He just can’t always get back down.

Both babies also are making strides in communication as well. Veronica is regularly signing “more.” It is her go-to sign for everything, in fact. If she wants something, she signs “more.” If she’s happy, she signs “more.” So we’ve been trying hard to get her to pick up some additional signs to make our lives easier.

Finally, she has added some new signs to her repertoire. She will now sign milk; banana (sometimes); please (started doing this for ice cream); up; and today, spontaneously, she added bath.

I say spontaneously because we haven’t shown her the sign for bath. But this morning, when I was changing the babies’ diapers on the bed, Veronica sat up, pointed to the bathroom and started moving her hands across her body like she was bathing. When I asked if she wanted a bath, she started signing “more.”

Colin isn’t quite as far along with the signing, but he now will regularly sign “more,” and has done what we think might be his attempt at “milk” a couple of times. As with everything, I’m sure Colin will pick up the signs when he feels like he’ll benefit from using them and ignore us until then. He’s very practical that way.

Life continues to get more interesting, chasing two mobile and independent babies around the house. But in many ways, it is getting more fun too.

Piddles and puddles and piles, oh my!

I sometimes let the babies crawl around naked during the last diaper change before bedtime. They enjoy the freedom and I think it’s good for their little tushies to air out a bit. Occasionally I’ve had to clean up a little puddle, but nothing much.

Until last night.

I had both Colin and Veronica upstairs while John was down doing something (dishes, making a bottle, working … already I don’t remember), so I decided I would strip them both down for bed. I took Veronica’s diaper off first, and she immediately crawled to the bedroom door, peed on the carpet and went out to play in the living room. 

So I cleaned up the little piddle on the carpet and went to change Colin. As soon as I set him down, he headed into the bathroom to play with the scale, so I quick went to check on Veronica. 

They were both doing fine, so I put a couple of clothes away and went to check on them again. I shouldn’t have waited. 

Veronica was standing at her big cube, looking very excitedly at the ground. I went to see what she was getting so happy about. It was a GIANT. Pile. of. Poop. 

GIANT! I mean, I don’t know where it all came from. It never would have all fit into a diaper. And there was my baby girl, reaching for it. Argh! I managed to snatch her up before her hand made contact, and took her into the bathroom to clean her up. 

And there I found Colin, happily rolling around in the biggest puddle of pee imaginable. It was a freaking lake. He was covered from head to toe in pee, and giggling away as he rolled through it again. (Did I mention John was downstairs?)

My hands were full of poopy Veronica, so how was I supposed to pick up pee-covered Colin? I decided pee was less of an issue, and quickly cleaned Veronica up first. By the time I got back into the bathroom for Colin, he had managed to spread the pee-puddle pretty thoroughly around the bathroom. 

At this point, John came up and after seeing the poo pile and the soaking wet Colin, figured out pretty quickly what happened — and laughed at me. But he did help clean up the mess, so I’ll forgive him. 

Oh, the joys of parenting twins.