Chloe's Birthday

Chloe turned 1 year old on Monday! It's now Saturday and I can still hardly believe it. Dave asked me if it felt like a long year or a fast year and I immediately answered, "BOTH." He agreed.

We celebrated our littlest princess at home - just the four of us. I wasn't sure what to do about the cake. Usually, babies get to smash a piece of cake around on the first birthday but there's now way I was about to give cake to Chloe. She's not getting cow's milk, yet, and she's still only getting pureed food. I felt kind of guilty about eating cake that she couldn't enjoy but finally decided she needed a cake picture for her birthday book (at least that was my excuse for making a yummy cake :-) It was chocolate buttermilk with cream cheese icing and tasted better than it looked. (While I claim to have many talents, cake decorating is NOT among them.) Solana and I whipped it up together and Chloe watched from her exersaucer.

Dave came home with a huge balloon and new toys for Chloe and we ended the celebration playing in the backyard. Our neighbors even came over to the fence and sang Happy Birthday to Chloe. It was very sweet!

And just in case you're wondering - we decided to celebrate Leila's angel day on the 11th - the day she went back to heaven - and to keep the 23rd just about Chloe. It seems that all the families with single-survivor twins do it differently. Many celebrate both twins on their shared birthday but, since Leila left us almost two weeks before they were born, we decided to give each of our girls their own special day.

Chuggin' along

I feel like I haven't posted a genuine Chloe update in a while. She's finally getting over her 2 week cold. I thought that horrible cough would never go away but it's definitely on its way out.

We've scheduled an EUA (examination under anesthesia) for her eyes in September. The opthamologist will check her retina again to make sure the ROP isn't trying to resurface. He'll also measure her eye and get an updated RX for her contact. It's a surgery and we're never thrilled about those but it's minimally invasive so that's good. Until then we're still patching for four hours a day. Chloe's such an easy-going baby. She yells at me and tries to roll over a bit when I put her contact in (and I don't blame her) but is otherwise extremely cooperative. I'm a lucky mama, for sure!

We're still working on sitting. It feels like she's taking FOREVER to sit but we do see progress every day. For example, one of the exercises I'm supposed to be doing with her is setting her on her knees with her bum on her feet and placing her hands on my thigh to hold herself up. It's sort of an upright kneeling position and is supposed to strengthen the muscles between her shoulder blades. She stayed in that position about 15 seconds longer today than she did yesterday. This is cheer-worthy in our house and I was quite pleased with my little one. She'll get there one day soon. She just tends to do things more slowly than other babies.

The good thing about Chloe is that, although she progresses slowly (and sometimes extremely slowly), she's always showing some progress. And for this we are thankful.

We're not visiting the pulmonologist for another two months but she has her one year checkup on Thursday. I'm not looking forward to the shots but I'm definitely looking forward to her weigh-in. I hope she's gained. I think she has so we'll see. She was having trouble finishing her bottles and I started getting frustrated because she hasn't increased her intake since May. This resulted in my brilliant plan to reduce her from 5 to 4 bottles per day. She also gets pureed baby food twice a day and my (silly) theory was that she was eating too often. That...did NOT...work. She's back to 5 bottles and two baby food meals. I'm adding olive oil to all her baby food to sneak in extra calories and I think it's working. She seems to be chunking up a bit. We'll see....

I took the advise of my great friends and mix her morning Zantac in with oatmeal. She takes that no problem. Then I use the Grape-flavored Zantac in the afternoon. I squirt that one as far back as I can and along the side of her cheek. She's not thrilled but her expression isn't nearly as bad as it was with the plain stuff. Then I quickly follow with bland veggies. She now knows to open wide after her Zantac because the veggies kill the taste pretty quickly.

Chloe's such a sweetheart. We adore her. She's generous with her smiles and they're great smiles, too. Dave and I (well, mainly I) are becoming more easy-going about letting Solana play with Chloe. She's not the most careful child and we have to often remind her not to lean on Chloe and to be gentle when moving her arms and legs around. Chloe is crazy about Solana, though, and smiles any time she comes near. I love it that Solana has a new-found joy in playing with Chloe. It makes her feel good about herself. I'll also let her "babysit" Chloe when I leave her on the floor and walk to the other room to get something. She feels so important.

We're looking forward to Chloe's first birthday tomorrow! I can't believe it's been a year!

Summertime Fun - July

Summertime Fun Continued:

Centerville has a great small town parade through main street. We could have walked from our house. It's that close. Chloe loves watching Solana and I'm sure she'll be copying everything Solana does as soon as possible. Here is Solana sucking on a candy. (Candy was, by the way, the best part of the parade. I think Solana made out better than she even did on Halloween!)


Here's Chloe sucking on her shoe. Good thing she's not walking, yet....

Here come the cops. Act natural!

I thought Chloe's post-bath curly hair looked so funny. She doesn't even look like herself.

My cousin, Tricia. She and her family live in San Antonio but they travel to Ohio every year to spend the 4th of July with her husband's family. They came over for a visit and I was so thankful that they made time for us. His family lives about a half hour away so it's not exactly around the corner. We had a great visit!

Angela's little girl, Kylie, turned 8 and they had a little party. Angela was so sweet. There were only a few girls invited and she made sure they were all healthy so we could go to the party. All the other girls were dropped off so we were the only other adults there which was nice for me - fewer potential touches :-) It was an all pink party. The girls looked so cute!

She gave pink flower clips to everyone - even Chloe!

I borrowed these Black on White and White on Black books from the library. Chloe loved them (after I wiped them down with Clorox wipes.)

Summertime Fun - August

One of the great things about blogging is that I can get emotions off my chest, acknowledge them, own them, analyze them from outside of my head, and move on. I find this preferable to dwelling. Had I not written that entry last night I'd probably still be stuck in my head. But today I feel good. And I'd like to post the antithesis of Summertime Blues with this, Summertime Fun.

Here are some of the fun things we've done this summer.

Chloe is like her sister. They LOVE books. She was seriously into this one. I don't remember if Solana was actually reading to Chloe or just posing.


See what I mean?


My sweetie pie with the crossed eyes. Mmmmmwah!

Chloe was playing with me from across the room while I was pumping. Not bad pump-time entertainment...



Solana started soccer this month. I love her little shin guards and cleats. I couldn't help but put a flower on her headband.


One of these girls is not like the others... There sure are lots of blondies in Ohio! :-)

We love camping but haven't taken the popup out since last June. This was Chloe's first family hike at a park 5 minutes from our house.

My parents arrived August 10th for a short but wonderful visit. Chloe's checking ou her Grampy.

We love them so much!

Chloe, how am I supposed to feed you with your feet up in the air?

She started making this face while my parents were here and kept doing it over and over. We were cracking up.

Solana started ballet this summer. She choreographs her own routines during So You Think You Can Dance and only watches the TV for new ideas. I figured a dance class would be good for her. She loves it!

She's so into it!

The best dog in the world! Bluebell joined my Mom and me on a hike.

Self portrait.

My parents.

My sister, Leticia, came to visit at the end of June and brought her two kiddos, Mia-5 and Graham-2. They're both adorable. All our pictures from their visit were taken on Leticia's camera, though. I thought Dave had put them on our computer but I couldn't find them. We didn't go out very much but still had a great visit. The girls attended nature camp at the park on Tuesday and Thursday. I bought them these SPF suits. They're only 3 months apart and this was the first of a full week of dressing alike.

Sharing the back seat with Bluebell.

Summertime Blues

I can't sleep. It's almost 4am and I've been tossing and turning since 3. Insomnia's not usually an issue for me. Chloe stirs around 3am almost every night lately and I just change her diaper and pass out again. I once learned that, if you can't sleep, you should jot down what's on your mind and then you can get on with it. I found myself blogging in my mind so...here I am.

After I wrote my entry about Leila's day I was displeased with it. I felt like I should have written something more poetic - like I didn't do her justice. To be honest though, while I spoke to her a lot in my mind, my heart just wasn't into blogging. I hate to be a downer but I feel like I've been walking around with a bit of a raincloud over my head this summer. Fortunately, it's a small raincloud so the sunshine still makes its way in most of the time. Every once in a while, though, I'll step on the magic rain button and whoosh. Down it comes and I'm suddenly walking around like a Charlie Brown character. The week that Leticia was here and then the 4 days my parents were here were great. I'm seriously grateful for them. They sort of kicked the magic button aside in order to stand next to me. Since their departure I've had some time to live inside my own head, though, so here I am...

I've decided that I'm having flashes of the 'anger' part of grief. The thing that clued me in was that Target commercial. You may have seen it - the one with the identical triplets. It's a back-to-school commercial featuring three very cute girls. At the end it shows them leaving down the front steps of the school and at that point their mom walks up to join them and presumably escourt them home. I decided I don't like that lady. She has a smug look on her face like, "Look at me. I have identicals. I'm so cool. Aren't you jealous?" My answer is, "Yes lady. I'm jealous, ok? I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be exhausted from my 8 month-olds. Not constantly worried about how much my survivor micro-preemie is or is not eating and desperate for her to get one step closer to sitting." Whew. There was some ugliness, huh?

A friend of mine just posted about a party where she met some people with identicals. She lost one of her twins around six months before me so she's a little bit ahead of me in everything. It was noteworthy so she obviously still felt something and I wonder - how long will it be noteworthy? I can tell you every single pair of identicals I've seen in the past three months. My stomach lurches every time. I know I'm supposed to be "gentle" on myself and grief takes a long time.... But seriously, I want to just be ok and at peace with my loss. I want it to just be in the past - not so fresh all the time. It's been a year. People lose babies every day and some people aren't even lucky enough to have babies at all.

I'm blessed to have Chloe and need to remind myself of that. I was blessed with a perfectly healthy pregnancy and full-term baby (and now ridiculously fantastically coping 5 year-old) in Solana. I'm blessed to have a great husband who takes care of us and who lets me lean on him constantly. I'm blessed to have both my parents and need to remember that.

Ok. I just re-read the above. Please know that I don't always feel this way. I'm almost certain it's the time of the year. I'm glad summer's so busy so I don't feel this way all the time. I'm supposed to wake up in an hour to feed Chloe before going on a jog. I've been doing a good job of getting out twice a week for a jog and my shrinking waistline is rewarding me for my efforts. I think I'm going to try to get a quick hour of sleep before starting the day. Weird. I suddenly feel better. Thank you blogging world.

Countdown!

I decided to quit pumping when Chloe turns one and have spent the past month slowly transitioning her to formula. She's down to one breastmilk bottle a day this week. I calculated that I'll get back two hours a day when I do that - reducing Chloe-feeding-related activities from five to three hours a day!

This is my last week pumping. Is it wrong that I'm more excited about quitting pumping than I am about Chloe turning 1 year old? ;-)

Chloe's Cold

Chloe's been battling a cold for the past week. The pulmonologist & pediatrician both said it's just a summer virus that will just run its course. Poor baby has been congested and coughing up a storm. After a few days of progressively worse coughing (and talking to nurses each day) I finally decided I needed the doctor to listen to her. She got the 'all clear'. Whew! I feel like they all must secretly roll their eyes at me because I'm THAT mom who calls and comes in for everything. I don't mind, though. Her cough finally seems to be getting better but I'll be soooo glad when it's gone!

Leila's Day

Yesterday was August 11th, the first anniversary of the day we lost Leila. Thankfully, my parents arrived in town on the 10th. We were super busy all day. Solana had ballet and swimming in the morning. I then went grocery shopping after pumping and feeding Chloe. Then it was a race to get Solana to soccer practice at 6. I don't know how the day flew by so quickly but I was glad for the busy-ness and for the company. I skipped soccer practice because Chloe hadn't finished her bottle by the time they had to go.


I flipped on the TV while feeding Chloe and resumed an Oprah I started the day before. I only recently started recording Oprah episodes (when I saw the Twilight cast was going to be on). I'll play an episode while feeding Chloe every once in a while. This particular episode was about match-making but somehow turned into a story about a boy who was starting a baking business. He began the project as a way to cope with the loss of his twin brother to cancer. The story progressed and Nate (the Oprah correspondent sent in to help the young boy) talked to the parents. The mom mentioned that it was hard to move on after their 9 year-old passed away because she was constantly smacked in the face with the fact that he was gone. Christmas. Thanksgiving. His birthday. The list went on and on. After doing so well all day I was practically sobbing watching this show. I felt so sorry for that little boy and his parents. Nate, who also suffered a difficult loss in his life, talked about the way he learned to cope with those difficult days. He said he had to realize that those days did not have power over him or over his memories. The dates were not important. After realizing that he knew that the memories would come and go but they were not dictated by the calendar.

I thought it was odd that I randomly watched this episode on the 11th. Some things are just inexplicable, I guess. Maybe I needed to hear him say this.

Dave and my dad picked up steaks from Outback after soccer and Solana led us in prayer/song before we ate. We finally headed outside - each carrying one balloon to send to Leila. Solana gave Leila a head's up that they were coming and Chloe released her balloon first. My mom said, "Oooh! Chloe wants her balloon to get there first!" It seemed appropriate. It was very sweet and sad. With smiles on our faces and tears streaming down our cheeks we wished Leila a "Happy 1 Year in Heaven" and told her that we miss her. We watched the balloons as long as possible. We even sent one up to my Grandpa, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago on July 26th. We ended the evening with angel food cake.

I'm so lucky and blessed to have such a wonderful family. It's days like these that I realize it the most.

Chloe Reflux

I've been avoiding the blogosphere for the past few weeks. I'm not completely sure why but I definitely have. I'm sure I have tons of catching up to do on all my friends.

The main purpose of this post is to publish an update on Chloe's reflux and ask for advice.

Update: I followed the advice from my blogging friends and Chloe's spitting up has decreased to almost nothing! Here's our technique:

-Feed Chloe in an upright-ish position.
-Hold her still for 5-10 minutes after she finishes eating (unless she's feisty and starts bucking like a bronco)
-Then pick her up and hold her upright against me until she burps.
-Finally, make sure to hold her or keep her sitting for at least 30 minutes after feeding.

THANK YOU to the moms who commented on the last reflux post. These new techniques are 100% derived from those comments and they're making a world of difference. I used to feed Chloe a bit then pick her up and pat pat pat. Feed her a bit more and pat pat pat pat pat. Burps were hard to come by and when they arrived they usually came with a bunch of spitup or an awfully wet strained sound. Now the burps are BIG CLEAN POOFS OF AIR. They sound WONDERFUL. I also noticed that keeping her still for a few minutes after eating is they key to getting a good burp - almost like the burp needs to gather itself before I pick her up and let gravity push it up. I don't even need to pat anymore and my wrist/forearm are very happy for that.

We visited the pulmonologist yesterday. Chloe gained almost a pound since we saw him a month ago. She's now 14lb 5oz. Again, not too bad but he wanted to see more. I filled him in on our fantastic spitup progress and expected a pleased response. After all, I solved Chloe's spitup problem without using Zantac! Yay me, right? He was holding Chloe, looked at her, and said in a baby voice, "Chloe, can I spank your Mommy? She's in trouble because she didn't give you your medicine." Chloe said, "no." He then went on to explain that the techniques I started using are great for the spitup and congratulations on that but she still has really bad reflux even if she doesn't spitup. The acid comes up and burns her throat - which could cause a decreased appetite. THAT'S what the Zantac is for. Uuuh. Whoops. My bad. He apologized for not explaining that better but I still feel bad. "I thought her reflux was mild. Her pediatrician isn't concerned. And how do you know anything about her reflux, anyway," I ask. Apparently, Chloe's pulmonologist is the only person who really looked at her swallow study because that's where he saw it. I'm mildly annoyed at her pediatrician but he gives me a very diplomatic speech about all Chloe's doctors being a team and they each catch different things. I still think he's by far her best doctor.

RX: Keep Chloe on oxygen for feeds and (this time) start giving her Zantac. We'll see him again in 3 months time.

QUESTION: Does anyone out there have any great techniques for giving Zantac to an infant. I tasted a dose and it has a pretty strong mint flavor. And my palate is a tad bit more developed than Chloe's. I feel so mean every time I syringe it into her mouth. Her little face scrunches up into a look of pure disgust and she tries really hard to roll away from me. There's just got to be a way to sneak it in....