C and D Week, plus a visit to St. Peter's

This past week was a very busy one for Charlie and Lily. We learned all about the letters "C" and "D," plus we visited our friends at St. Peter's! Charlie and Lily had their 1 year adjusted NICU follow-up on Wednesday, and it went great! The babies were seen by a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a physical therapist. Each therapist had a bunch of different tests for Charlie and Lily to assess their development. We're happy to say that Charlie and Lily scored right on target for their adjusted age in all the categories! We are so proud of our little super stars! The speech therapist said that she would like us to work more on helping the babies learn to identify objects and mimic sounds more, so we're aiming for big improvements in those areas when we go back in April.

The only slight concern came from the physical therapist regarding Charlie's fingers. The pinkie fingers on both of his hands are pretty drastically curved - the bottom part of the fingers are straight, but after the knuckle the top of the fingers curve towards his hand, almost like a shepherd's crook. Joe and I have both known about this since Charlie was born, but honestly never gave it much thought. The PT was concerned though that as Charlie grows the curving of his fingers could get worse and hinder proper use of his hands, so she thought we should bring him to a pediatric orthopedist for a consult. That appointment is set for November 2, so we'll let you know what they say.

After the appointment we stopped up at the NICU to visit with some of our favorite nurses. Charlie's beloved Nurse Carolyn was on duty and came out to give snuggles to both babies, and Lily's buddy Nurse Linda was there to catch up with the Bug. We also got to see Nurse Tina, who was Annaleigh's primary, and a few of our other old friends. We so love visiting the NICU - even as time goes by it still feels like home there in so many ways.

Now, back to C and D Week! :)

To kick off the week we read Ten Rubber Duckies and If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, and sang "Five Little Ducks." We also took a walk around the neighborhood and looked for cats and dogs.

"Hey Roy, stop hogging the duck book and read this one. It's about YOU!"
Charlie and Lily felt cotton balls, and then helped me glue them to giant letter "C"s.

We also made decorated donuts by shaking sprinkles onto paper donuts. The babies really liked shaking the sprinkles...

...until I tried to get a picture and sprinkles somehow ended up all over the kitchen floor.
We also made some cupcakes to end the week. The babies' original due date was October 5, 2009, so they hit 1 year adjusted this past Tuesday. We decided that they needed some cake to celebrate this milestone, so we went with cupcakes to keep with our theme.

Lily went to town on the cake. See, Nurse Julia? Vanilla cake IS her favorite! ;)
But Charlie is a frosting man!

Mmmmm! (Charlie is actually giving a fairly decent shot of his right pinkie finger here - you can see how it curves in at the top.)
"Learning is fun - and delicious!"