Brother & Sister

 Ben may be a tad bit jealous of his sister because she gets so much attention, but he doesn't hold it against her.

And he loves playing with all his old baby toys.

 

 Madeline with her "deer in the headlights" look.  (for good reason)

 Ben playing the toy guitar like a violin.

Pretend naptime.

 When Momma tried to take a picture of Madeline, Ben tried to grab the camera.

My lap has been full of kids these days.

Three Months Old

Our sweet baby girl is three months old.  The "fourth trimester" is over.  She's technically not a newborn anymore, and I'm just a little bit sad about that.

 Then I look at this heartwarming smile and I'm happy again.

 She is so much more alert than she was just a few weeks ago.  She loves to kick those little legs, and she's amazed by everything around her.

 She is quick to smile and getting to be quite the "talker."  I told Mike we are going to have very expensive phone bills about 13 years from now.

 It tickles her when we use the burp cloth to wipe under her chin.

Our precious little angel.

Ben Goes to Preschool

 Ben recently starting going to preschool on a local military base.  I wasn't quick enough to get photos of him getting on the bus the first day so I got his reaction when he got home instead.

He was so excited to ride the "bus" which is really an 8-passenger van.  In fact, he was SO excited that every night before he went to sleep he'd ask if he could ride the bus the next day.

I did get a chance to take his picture on his second day.  Just as excited as on the first day.  Here's a short video of him getting on the bus with the help of the aide:

The preschool is 20 minutes away, which is why they send a bus for him.  For now he'll attend three mornings each week.  It's technically a special ed preschool but he was eligible for it because of his speech delays.  He used to get speech therapy a few times a month at home through early intervention services, but now he'll get speech therapy twice a week at school instead.  For the time being we'll keep sending him to the German kindergarten on the other weekdays.  He still enjoys going there (plus he can attend through the summer when the preschool is closed) but we really think his speech will improve by being with other English-speaking kids.  And he's having such a good time!  I love that he asks every day if he gets to go preschool.

Sleepy

Some of Madeline's naps over the last six or seven weeks...

Sweetheart

She is our little sweetheart.  I was trying to get a video of her "talking" to me...she wasn't in a chatty mood, but I got lots of smiles instead.

Tasty Fingers

This is from almost a month ago.

Madeline is way more interested in finger-sucking than Ben was.

Oops, missed the mark a bit.

We don't usually have this many things in her crib and she doesn't really nap in it yet anyway.

Sleep Study

Last week, Madeline and I spent the night at a children's clinic in Heidelberg (about an hour away) as part of a sleep study to determine whether she has sleep apnea.  She's not showing any signs of it at home, but it's common enough in babies with achondroplasia that our pediatrician wanted us to get it checked out.  It took two months to get an appointment.  We checked in around 4 pm and left around 8 am the next morning.  The doctor said he'd contact us that day if he noticed any obvious problems.  Otherwise, we'll get the results in a few weeks.

Sorry for this horrible picture, it's a photo of a photo from my cell phone.  The doctor hooked up about a dozen leads on Madeline, on her head/face/chin, chest,and abdomen.  Plus the little pulse ox monitor on her foot.  She had netting on her head to keep everything in place.  It was weird not to see her signature mohawk.  She also had a nasal cannula taped to her face to measure the pressure of her breath.  There was a camera set up to film the bassinet and my bed just beyond it.  Since she had just gotten her immunization shots that morning, she was nice and tired and slept most of the time.  At home, she naps in her pack 'n play and spends part of the night in a bassinet beside our bed, but most of the night she usually co-sleeps with me.  So for the sleep study, she started out in the hospital bassinet but got restless in the evening.  The doctor told me it was fine to bring Madeline into bed with me if she'd sleep better that way, so that's what I did.  But the night nurse got irritated that she couldn't see Madeline as well as when she was in the bassinet.  So I spent two hours in the middle of the night trying to get Maddy to sleep in that dang bassinet.  Didn't work.  The nurse faced it that she'd sleep better with me, and the whole point was to GET HER TO SLEEP (that would be the "sleep" part of "sleep study").  Madeline slept for the next four hours straight.  She woke up at exactly 7 am, and I was so ready to get out of there.  It was cold, the nurses weren't particularly nice or helpful, and many of the other babies on the ward were not as calm and sleepy as mine and spent much of the night screaming.  It took four trips up and down the hall to find a nurse who could unhook Madeline from all the wires and let us leave.

Waiting for freedom.  This little girl is such a sweetheart - even hooked up to all those wires, she was still smiling at her momma.  Oh, and that mesh cap was no match for her mohawk: by morning the cap was completely off.

The adhesive gunk that held two of the wires to her head.  It came off pretty easily with a lot of shampoo.  The doctor never called us, so we're hoping to get a good report in the mail in a couple weeks.  He said that since she hasn't shown any signs of sleep apnea so far (her lips never turn blue and we never notice her not breathing) that there's a good chance she's fine.  Part of why I like co-sleeping with her is that I feel like I'd notice if there was a problem with her breathing.  The cuddling doesn't hurt, either.