May 2006

Thanks to Paul- the babies blog is up and running again and has a very cool new features.  Once again, I am reminded how many people have supported us through our journey with the babies in so many ways ( like this blog that Paul built just because he’s a REALLY nice guy).

Our little Sophie girl wants to walk SO bad and has now taken to spending a great deal of time standing at the coffee table and playing with our very well used coasters.  Much like the tupperware- the coasters provide hours of fun. It’s hard to tell who is going to go first- Trentman or Sophie.  Its becoming very competitive. Hopefully Trent will start to get competitive with her and start babbling as well. They’re now starting to chase each other around when they crawl but each has their favorite things.  Trent LOVES to play with the big rubber balls our friend Jamie brought them while Sophie prerfers to play with their shoes or mine ( clearly my child- she even screams from time to time with excitement at certain shoes)

Unfortunately it looks like the new med Sophie is taking to profolactically prevent urinary tract infections  is something she may be allergic to.   She’s developed small red blotches on various part of her body.  The pharmacist had warned me about a possible reaction ( apparently lots of people react to sulfar based meds) but we had certainly hoped she wouldn’t.  She has such sensative skin that I wasn’t sure if it was really a rash or just her skin ( we haven’t had a rash yet) so I called my neighbor/friend Lisa to ask what she thought.  I felt a little silly calling her but I’d prefer to talk to a friend rather than just worry -and she said yes it sounded like a rash but I should call the advice nurse at our pediatrician which I did tonight.  Although the nurse asked me “if this was my first rash as a new parent” she did say to discontinue the meds and call Stanford tomorrow for a different med.  I wonder if I’ll ever get to the point where I truly feel like I know what I’m doing.

Today the physical therapist came to see the babies.  We’re still concerned about the amount of belly crawling Sophie’s doing but the therapist seemed to think her upper body strength was improving and everyday we’d see more and crawling on all fours and less belly movements.  However, she did say that she sees more equal movements in Sophie and her favoring of one side is almost gone.  She’s also gotten quite a bit chattier.  Her babbling just makes me smile.  Her voice is so sweet and she just goes on and on like she’s just so happy to be Sophie.   It is so heart warming to watch.

Our Trentman continues to do well with his crawling and attempted walking.  Although he’s still a bit stiff when he tries something new (and you can see the determination in his face) – he quickly relaxes as he gets the movement down that he’s trying for.  The babies have definitely discovered each other too.  Tonight we were watching Trent crawl right up to Sophie and laugh- then Sophie would attempt to pull his hair (an on going issue with Sophie girl) and then he’s crawl away as fast as he could with her chasing him.  Aaron and I just laughed and laughed watching them.  Everything is new for them and they’re so happy just to play with Tupperware, their plastic dinosaur or their rubber balls.  We are having so much fun being a family.  I never thought we’d get here.

We had quite an active, but nice weekend with the babies. Three-day weekends are so nice. On Saturday night they attended their first ” Keger” . Not even a year old (technically) and have already been to a Keger. Wow. The party was in celebration for our neighbor/friend Jean’s graduation from San Jose State University. We felt so fortunate to be included in such a great celebration. We did learn though that now that the babies are mobile – they have no interest in hanging out in the stroller. No matter where they are – they want to be mobile. It was funny, once we let him out of the stroller- Trent went right for the cooler with the beer. Who knew that a cooler was the perfect height for one learning how to walk? Another baby at the party – Gianna- was going for the cooler with ice cream in it. I guess that’s the difference in a boy and girl. The boy wanted the beer and the girl wanted the ice cream. On Sunday my sister Liz came to visit. She wanted to see a demo of the babies crawling and their attempts to walk. She also watched them Sunday night so we were able to go out. They certainly kept her busy and she said that she totally thought it was a good idea that she had her children when she wasn’t in her mid forties. They sure did loves seeing their Aunt Liz though. Sophie girl continues to struggle though with sleeping. I can’t figure what’s going on. Every other night or so she’s wide-awake at 3:15am. Miss chatty, wanting to play- and has no interest in being in the crib. Unfortunately last night I didn’t get to the nursery before she had been crying for a bit and she woke up her brother as well. Needless to say I was very glad Aunt Liz was visiting and today wasn’t a workday since both babies ended up being away for over 2 1/2 hours. Sophie girl has started on new meds to prevent urinary tract infections. The good news about the new meds is that it last for more than four weeks and doesn’t have to be refrigerated. The previous meds only were good for 14 days and had to be refrigerated- which required many frequent visits to the local pharmacy. Unfortunately the new meds are sulfur based and they pharmacists warned me to be on guard for a possible allergic reaction. The new meds are just two days old so we can’t tie them to the disrupted sleep pattern but it’s still something we’re watching closely.
Today we celebrated Memorial Day with the kick off the neighborhood “Monday night” dinner kick offs. From now until September, several of the neighbors gather on Jean’s lawn for dinner- bringing leftovers and barbequing. It’s quite a nice event and something we all look forward to year round. It was so nice to have our babies participate in this years (along with Grandpa and Grandma) kick off and be able to play with everyone. Although there was a strong desire on both babies part to try to eat camper tree leaves, we were able to convince them instead to go for the potato salad and fruit instead.

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Sophie girl has moved into an odd phase and for the last two days and has had problems sleeping in her crib. She seems tired but when we put her down she just cries and cries. Last night I moved her from the crib to the swing, to the jumpy chair to my lap and finally to our bed- nothing calming her down for more than an hour. She and I finally ended up watching the early morning movie ” Ode to Billy Joe (for which the song – Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge) was written for. Needless to say- the movie didn’t seem quite as lame when I first saw it in 1978 but the song still stuck in my brain and I sung it all day long today. Thank goodness people were mostly out of the office today so it didn’t really matter than my brain wasn’t 100% – due to lack of sleep. I wonder if I’ll ever get the point where I don’t worry about her. On Thursday the baby sitter had mentioned Sophie had fallen hard on her head and of course that was foremost in my mind when she wouldn’t sleep. However, I think it’s just a phase as she’s very alert and very active.
Trent on the other hand loves to sleep – big naper and when he’s tired – he just sleeps. Its funny how a brother and sister can be so different. He’s just loves to explore our house though and everyday he gets a little faster with his crawling. He’s also perfecting his steps and doing less “goose stepping”. They just love to play and don’t care what it is. A toy, a piece of Tupperware, it doesn’t matter- they just go for it.

Our little ones are so busy. Sophie’s crawling improves every day and she can now go quite far without belly flopping. We can tell her upper body is getting stronger and her staminas improving. She is also trying to catch up with her brother’s walking attempts.
Ofcourse as they both try to walk, we’re also experiencing stumbles and tears as they fall. With Trent we know this is part of learning about the world and while we don’t want him to hurt himself we certainly don’t worry about him like we do Sophie. We’re so frightened that she will fall backwards and land on her shunt. It’s hard not to be over protective- and yet she’s definitely our fearless one. Trent is so much more cautious than she is. The tweetie bird and bugs bunny balloons the babies got last weekend continue to be a source of great entertainment for Trent. He’s so enthralled with them and just stares and stares at them.

Our little Sophie girl is SO chatty. She just babbles and babbles and smiles. I’m sure she thinks she’s being understood and is probably wondering why nobody (except Trentman) is chatting back. She just goes on and on. I can totally see our future with a phone call from her kindergarten /first grade teacher about Sophie’s talking. Tonight Aaron and I listened to her babble on and on and we said to one another- listen to our 1lb 5oz baby just chat. The whole thing just makes us smile from ear to ear. We do have a problem though in our household with hair pulling. Sophie just can’t let it go (no pun intended) Poor Trent she just grabs it with both hands and he just SCREAMS. We’ve told her NO but I’m not sure she’s getting it. We’ve now told Trent just to run far and fast. He can out crawl her and now needs to take advantage of those skills.
Today I called to set up our June appointments for Trent’s hearing follow up and Sophie’s neurosurgery check in (and follow up with her June CT scan). Normally the schedulers don’t get too personal but the neurosurgery scheduler was so different. She read Sophie’s records to me from the computer and told me how our neurosurgeon Dr. Edwards had noted that HE needed to see Sophie every 6 months and that she was a beautiful baby in her records. We are so fortunate to have a surgeon who is so invested in his patients. He is such a special man.

Today the physical therapist came to see the babies. Karen our therapist had Sophie give her a demo of standing up in her crib (a new thing she started in the last 3 days when she was upset with me). Our focus for next week will be help Trent walk without the goose step (trying to get him less stiff with new movements) and get Sophie girl to crawl five moments in a row without the belly flop. Right now – she can go 3 movements and we need to get to five by next week. Flat footed is definitely the focus as well
We can tell the babies worked hard today- both were SO tired tonight.
This evening I took them to their first author reading at our local children’s bookstore in downtown Willow Glen. It was very special given who the author was. When they were in the hospital we were told to read them as much as possible to stimulate them. This was especially important with Sophie once we found out she had a stage 3 head bleed. Once we knew what we needed to do I had put out a call to the neighbors and the books just flowed in from our neighbors and from my work colleagues. What amazing support we had and we just know it made the difference. During our NICU days I made a point of reading for books a day to them (because we visited twice a day) and one of those books was “Lilly’s purple plastic purse” by Kevin Henkes and tonight we got to hear him read his newest book in the Lilly’s series. Sophie especially just loved the Lilly’s purple plastic purse. Every time he said Lilly – Sophie let out a scream. Trent on the other hand – was so focused on the author. Unfortunately because there were so many people there I wasn’t able to meet the author but I was able to write him a note and tell him how important his book to our babies.