11 Weeks Old

Today Charlie and Lily are 11 weeks old! We celebrated with the weekly reading of Birthday Monsters and two nice visits. I went up to the NICU this morning and got in a good cuddle with Lily. We spent the morning in her new corner location, but then in the afternoon she was moved back closer to her original spot, since I was concerned about her being too near a drafty air vent in the new location. He newest spot is right under the clock smack in the middle of the room, where the Bug is sure to get plenty of the attention she loves! My morning visit with Charlie consisted of him chugging his bottle down without any episodes and then snuggling on my shoulder until it was time for me to leave.

This evening Joe and I returned together just in time for Joe to give Lily her sponge bath and for me to see Charlie being super, super cute on the scale. Joe fed both babies their bottles and they both drank them down quickly with no problems.

While I was in the NICU this morning, Joe went to the cemetery to visit with Annaleigh. Since he knew that all the flowers from her funeral would now be gone, he stopped and picked up a bouquet of pink and white roses for her. When he arrived at the cemetery he was of course not surprised to see all her funeral flowers gone. He was, however, surprised to find several butterflies still lingering on Annaleigh’s grave. Every time we’ve been to the cemetery we’ve seen butterflies, but we always assumed they were attracted to the flowers. But today, there they were, flying around Annaleigh without a flower in site. We are convinced that Annaleigh is sending us these butterflies as a sign that she is happy and at peace. We think that Annaleigh always knew that her time in this world would be short because she had more important things waiting for her, and she wants us to know that she is okay and doing her new job – watching out for her brother and sister. We love you so much, baby girl. Even though you are gone, you continue to amaze us.

Today was also had a very nice experience with another triplet mom, who reached out to us after stumbling across our blog. She had triplets in the St. Peter’s NICU last summer and it turns out that she had many of the same primary nurses we have now and a lot of similar experiences. She offered to give us several baby items that her girls had outgrown so we went over to her place today to pick them up. We got to see her three beautiful 15 month old daughters, heard about their time in the NICU and got some valuable advice. She also gave us an adorable pink and purple exersaucer, some bottle proppers and two play mats. Thank you so much, Elena! It was great to meet you and I hope we can keep in touch!

On another note, tomorrow is my baby shower. It was originally scheduled for June 20th, but was cancelled when my water broke on June 18th. We seriously considered cancelling this shower as well given the events of the last few weeks, but in the end we decided to go ahead and have it – Charlie and Lily deserve to be celebrated. So tomorrow morning we will be enjoying brunch with our friends and family in honor of our babies. It’s a baby shower month – my friend Sarah had her shower today (it was so nice!) and my friend Colleen will have hers in two weeks. Not to mention that my friend Lauren had a son two weeks after our babies were born, my best friend Colleen is due with her third next month, my friend Daniela is due in November, my friend Jill in December…Charlie and Lily will be surrounded by friends forever!

Poor Lily. There are constantly people trying to admire her. Whatever is a girl to do?

Charlie put on a very Lily-like performance tonight while he was getting his bath and his weighing. Sometimes they really look a lot alike.