Brotherly Love

Whenever we mention Leigh these days DHV's immediate response is "abba?" hospital?
Followed shortly by "yah-low!" yellow!

6 month hospital stay? $500 deductible.
1 month Yale Parking? $150
Giant box of twizzlers for the nurses? $5
Raiding the respiratory/oncology playroom for some yellow trucks to play with? Priceless.

DHV inspecting the sleeping arrangements with SHV.

DHV giving LRV a bottle! Very cool. DHV sat still for about 5 minutes, which is a long time for him. LRV is now taking full bottles all by herself about 1/2 the time, and she's pushing 5lbs 14oz.

Documentation of New Haven's little slice of Minnesota, Maltby Lakes.
An early autumn wind cooled us off on the walk home.

Movin' On Up

Leigh graduated from the NICU on Monday and moved into her private big girl room in the Respiratory Unit. She seems pretty happy there and has been behaving herself so far. The parental learning has officially begun and the work on the bottles continues. Here's how SHV and DHV found father and daughter upon arriving at the hospital this morning.

The staff did some decorating and greeted Leigh with open arms.

DHV showed her some brotherly love. (Excuse the blur - that kid moves fast!)

He clearly approved of her new digs.

Bottle!

Tonight Leigh had her first shot at the bottle since getting the trach. She did great, taking almost 2/3 of her feeding before tiring out. No oral aversion here!


Rumor has it that she'll be moving up to the respiratory unit on Monday, at which point our intensive training regimen will begin. Home preparations are already underway. We're officially in "go" mode here.

Lazy Summer Days

Most of our free time this summer has been spent at the hospital, but every once in a while some family help break us out of the funk. Here's Grandma V sharing her water with DHawk while Grandpa supervises.This weekend we drove up to Vermont for a night with Uncle Joe and Aunt Alice. DHV shucked his first ear of corn.

DHV ordering Janine to run, "Schnell!"
"They say let sleeping dogs lie, but if I'm sneaky I bet I can give him a kiss!"
Success!

"I lead my people to the water!"

What are these things?

DKV coined this "Frog Camp X-ray."

The men combing the weeds for insurgent frogs.
(After consulting our in-house legal council we released the captives.)

Helping Daddy inflate the boat.
Cruising the pond; no insurgents, but we did encounter a Great White Shark.

Waiting for a lift to the top of his jumping rock.

Interrogating a terrorist turtle that Joe caught.

Mr. Turtle, and his associates Mr. Tadpole and Mr. and Mrs. Salamander
were all released without charges.

Back at home Leigh got her trach and has been relaxing with a morphine drip. Here she is during a wakeful moment. She looks better without those hoses in her face and is breathing easier. We're anxiously awaiting a room on the respiratory floor so we can start discharge planning.

Croc

DHV loves fish. He asks constantly to go to the hospital and as much as we'd like to think that he is yearning to see his baby sister, we know that it's really more about the fish in the lobby. Thinking that he'd be in heaven, we packed up the minivan and drove to the aquarium on Sunday. He thought the fish were okay but had to be carried kicking and screaming away from his favorite attraction, this large plastic crocodile.

Decisions

Its been a tough week for the parental unit here in New Haven. Leigh´s doctors have been pushing for a tracheostomy to replace the nasal CPAP - she´s not growing enough and spending too much energy breathing. This will mean 24 hour home nursing care, a ventilator in her bedroom and one downstairs, portable suction devices . . . for 12-24 months. It also means that we can push for her to come home on a definite timetable (once we are trained in her care) and that she can start growing and learning how to eat. So, we were sad, but now we´re excited to get things going. The operation is tenatively scheduled for Friday; one week after that is her first trach change; the fastest a baby has gone home after that is 8 weeks. That´s our goal.

Non-nutritive breast feeding, horses, and Friends

In LRV news, last night she took one of SHV's nipples (left, to be exact) in her mouth and sucked away. She got surprised by some milk and dropped her oxygen levels but seemed to have a good idea of what do.

DHV is really into horses these days. Any walk outside must go by the stables, and any use of crayons or sidewalk chalk must produce a likeness of a horse. Here are two, by DKV and Janine.
DHV demands that he be drawn riding the horse by yelling, "high!"

Here are some late pictures of DHV being entertained by Matt and Stacey (" Mapp and Stabbee"), playing float the sticks down the river.

"D-Day"

Yesterday was Leigh's official due date. Although she didn't get to do anything as exciting as being born, she did get her first bath from SHV. Here she is hanging out in the tub - she's a bit smaller than Cousin Theo but a bath is a bath.

Afterwards she got to hang out for a few minutes without her CPAP scuba gear. Too bad that pig snout was still stuck on her nose!

As for an official update, it's been a quiet week for our girl. All nasal canula trials and bottle feeds were put on pause so that she could rest and gain some weight. It seems to have worked - she's weighing in at 4 lbs 7 oz now! In good news, her eyes continue to improve so we're optimistic that she'll be able to avoid the laser surgery.

Haircut #2

DHV was getting a little ragged looking so we took him for a trim. Once again, the haircut seems to have added a few years. We like it though.