The pureed pears went everywhere but her mouth.

“You’re not sticking that food anywhere near my mouth”

Tobie here: I finally surrendered to our weekend nanny and slept when she worked. So far I’m not feeling ill, woohoo! Eric and I were able to watch a movie last night (taking care of babies in the duller scenes). We saw Sixteen Blocks and for those of you who haven’t seen it…it was pretty good. The interesting part of this story is that there was a lot of gunfire throughout the movie which seriously made the babies jump and act very frightened. Just another pre-babies thing that Eric is going to miss as there will be no more gun-related movies or TV in our house (Eric here: son of a…).

So another exciting thing that happened today for me is that Eric watched the babies so I could go swimming in our backyard pool. It was the first time I’ve actually been in the backyard (by the way thanks to the Bowie’s, Ross’s, and Lien’s–very sweet guys). When I entered the pool I saw a white mass in the pool, instinctively thinking a great white shark was in the pool with me, I swam to the edge only to discover that the great white mass was my own disgustingly white legs which haven’t seen the sun all summer. Yikes! Eric found some pictures of us from our DC days and we are discussing ways to get back to our pre-babies weight. We both apparently were on the high calorie diet…and those habits are hard to break post-pregnancy.

So enough of Eric and I…here’s the updates on the babies:

Paige: Her hair is growing back nicely. It appears that her new hair is much lighter than her baby hair. It’s not blonde, but a really pretty light brown. I did trim her mohawk as it was becoming more Donald Trump than Travis Barker. She is still working on her smiles…they are not as easy to produce as Cole’s…but so cute when she feels up to it. She is still eating crazy amounts and we gave her baby food just to see what she would do with it today. We’re not sure she liked it or not as she looked perplexed that there was a new sensation in her mouth.

Cole: I almost took him to the ER again yesterday. I called our on-call RN from the Dr’s office to console me. His daily minimum intake is 600cc and yesterday he ate only 320cc total for the day and roughly the same the day before. Feeding after feeding resulted in him thrashing and crying if we attempted to put the bottle anywhere near his mouth. It was so frustrating! The RN on-call said he might be starting to teethe and his mouth might hurt so he wouldn’t want anything near his mouth. Luckily today he seems to be taking normal amounts once again.

Other baby news: the EI people finally called me on Friday to say that they just sent in our paperwork and the approvals for services should be ready to go this week. My grandma arrived today (aka G-G-ma). She instantly bonded with both babies and she’ll be around a lot the next 2 weeks to help out so we’re really excited.

Praxair came by to switch out the O2. The guy was told that he wasn’t to bring the tank upstairs anymore. He said it was a liability issue. Liability issue? Umm… you guys have put the big tank upstairs 3 times already, how is it all of the sudden an issue? He asked us how long we were going to keep Cole on O2. I don’t know, I really haven’t brought it up with Cole yet. Cole, this is daddy, how long do you want to be on O2? What, only a few more days? Well, problem solved. Tobie asked what they do for other clients who have a 2 story house. He said that they normally use a very long O2 hose. Tobie pointed to the dogs and asked if that was a wise idea in this case? We trip over the 12 foot hose as it is. I’m curious what they do for clients who live on the 2nd floor of an apartment building without an elevator (put the tank on the first floor and run a hose up through the window?). Anyways, Tobie told the guy to just leave it at the base of the stairs and she would take it up. He was like, “It’s 160 pounds, there is no way”. She was like, don’t worry about it, it’s my problem and I’ll take care of it. I guess the guy felt guilty and moved it upstairs. He said don’t count on him doing that again. Right buddy!

Thanks for all the comments about Early Intervention. To be honest, I’m a little doubtful they will be of any help (I’ve now heard more negative comments than positive about EI in different states). But even if they help a little with things, it’s what’s best for the babies. Cole has feeding issues and Paige is behind developmentally. I can only wonder if we had therapy this whole time, we wouldn’t have these issues. It’s frustrating. We had called a few weeks ago and asked what the hold up was. Apparently they needed to have another interview with us before they could finalize the paperwork. Umm..who’s responsibility is it to tell us? Anyways we had that interview and it was the same exact questions we had in the first interview. Needless to say, they said they would finalize the paperwork and get the wheels in motion. 2 weeks later we are still waiting for a phone call. The NICU developmental team did an awesome job with the babies while we lived there. There definitely is a need for therapy. I wish the same team would follow up 6 months post discharge. Could somebody get on that ASAP? Thanks

Grandma left for TX yesterday. It’s back to the daily grind with the babies. Luckily to help pick up the slack, Aunt Nikki will be coming for a few days starting Sunday.

We went for a follow-up eye appointment today. We had both babies checked this time. Cole is still all good, Paige is the same as last time. We see the eye doc again next week for just Paige. He did mention that we will have to patch one of Paige’s eyes for a while. Super. She was just telling me the other day how she wanted to be a pirate for Halloween. I guess Halloween comes early this year.

Cole continues to be Mr. Interactive. We have introduced him to Baby Einstein. His eyes get so big watching it. He even started crying when it was over, telling mommy to turn it back on (is this a good habit to have so young?). He has asked to have a TV in his room (okay, I already bought one for his room, but that was for me and the 2 am feed). Paige is definitely behind developmentally than Cole. She doesn’t really smile and doesn’t interact much. This raises the question, “Where the heck is Early Intervention”? It’s been well over a month since we had our evaluation. Should they change their name to “When we get around to it intervention”? If I find out that something was held up again because of paper work…well there is nothing I can do, but I’m going to be very mad, and you don’t want to see Eric mad (turns green like the Hulk). Hopefully we will hear from someone next week.

Oh, almost forgot, Praxair called and left a message today. They do not want to bring the big O2 tank upstairs anymore for the babies room. Not sure how this one is going to play out. Stay tuned.