We have learned lots this month. Here are the highlights.
1) Sister can make even paper gowns look good. She went to Ready, Set, Grow and even though it was a tough appointment, she smiled and charmed everyone she met. While they all agreed she is cute, they said she needed work on the whole weight gain thing so Mommy started working even harder to fatten her up.
2) Sister is not impressed with her current stats. At her four month appointment, Baby Reagan was just over 11 pounds and about 23 inches. Not even on the growth chart for weight. You can tell she is thrilled.
3) My playdates with my Rice cousins are seemingly cursed by people giving me germs. They trekked up from Dallas and I was so excited to play with them over Thanksgiving. Of course, I got the stomach flu Thanksgiving night and well...that was the end of my visit with
them. I spent the next five days on the couch with the exception of doctor's visits and an ER trip so, once again, my play time with my Ricelet cousins was ruined.
Mommy has promised me a special trip to Texas to make up for it. Even though I only got one night to play with them, I haven't stopped talking about them. Here we are having a post-dinner bath.
4) When you are already sick with one thing, you can get another. After the stomach flu sent me to the ER, I picked up RSV. Here are some pathetic pictures of me. I had two more ER trips and three more doctor's visits but managed to turn a corner without hospitalization...which I am told was nothing short of a miracle. Consequently, during this time we also learned that pink medicine (amoxicillin) is awesome and I will do just about anything for M&M's ...i.e. breathing treatments every four hours.
5) You should not share RSV with babies. After I shared RSV with sister and her weight started melting away, it was back to the hospital she went for a little TLC. Once again she was the Belle of the Ball only this time the nurses all came to visit her instead of parading her around the halls. We couldn't walk around the hospital without masks and everyone who entered had to gown up so it was a little scary for me. It was good, however, to see some familiar faces from last month's stay and to get to play with the same dinosaur toys. I spent most of my days at the hospital guarding her crib and standing on a chair to mean-mug anyone who came to examine her. Lucky for me, they thought my overprotectiveness was endearing. The nurses even spoiled me by making sure I had a copy of "Lion Candy" (AKA Lion King) to watch in the room.
6) Hospitals do not enjoy having siblings there all day. In fact, they want to get you out of there ASAP so no one else gets sick. Once they gave Mommy her nursing degree and I had spent a total of 14 of sister's 27 hours in the hospital literally climbing the walls, they were itching to get us home. Here we are elated to get the news that we could take sister home. She was less than pleased her friend the NG tube would be accompanying us.
7) Speaking of NG tubes, we learned that Reagan can pull those things out like nobody's business. Mommy would barely have her head turned and sister would yank it out mid-feed. After 5 days of constantly re-inserting the tube, Mommy and Reagan were thrilled when Dr. Wichman said they could be rid of it. This was sister after she yanked it out for the last time.
8) Cousins can be pretty different. I did get some cousin time in with Evan when Auntie Darcy and Uncle Scott came for a visit. We are pretty different. He's more cautious. I'm a dare-devil. He likes to read. I like to rough house. We still got along pretty well. Even though he and I don't see eye-to-eye about books, we do share a love for iPadding, dinosaurs and turkey pepperoni.
9) Cash may be king in most places, but here at the Groesbeck household, dinosaurs trump all. We got to have an early Christmas while cousin Evan was in town and Pemberley, Uncle Raleigh and Auntie Jessica celebrated with us too. While I got lots of cool things, my favorite was my dinosaur wall stickers. They keep me entertained for hours.
10) I. Love. Boobs. (AKA boots). We had our first snow and it was glorious. I've always been pretty anti-boots (many will remember the tears from Breckenridge when Mommy forced me to wear some) but once I saw Mommy put hers on this year, I became obsessed. I began asking for them. All. the. time. Only I call them "boobs." So it made for some rather awkward shouting at Babies R'Us and Target when Mommy took me shopping for some. Here's a preview of how this conversation often plays out in public.
11) Last and best, we all learned that sister is fierce. She turned 5 months and even though Ready, Set, Grow tried to burst Mommy's bubble again about Reagan's progress, we are celebrating the fact that baby sister officially broke 12 pounds. She is tiny but fierce and she has overcome a lot to stay on target developmentally. She can almost crawl, she holds her head up like a champ, she grabs everything in sight and rolls over like it's going out of style. She may have torticollis and feeding issues and not weigh much but she's still smiling and that's all this big brother cares about.
And here we are. All caught up. Today is Christmas Eve and we have a lot to be grateful for this year. We are all healthy and happy which is better than any gift under that tree...unless it's dinosaurs. That ranks pretty high up there too. Merry Christmas from our family to yours! XOXO, Griffin
