Finally... An update!

Perhaps there's no blog post title more befitting of a long hiatus than, "An update from sleepy parents."  As you can imagine, the last few weeks have been busy, and perhaps the previous post title could still describe our status!  In the time since our last post, Austin and Malia turned 3 months.  They are both doing very well and staging at the pace that the doctors had hoped for.  So let's start with a few pictures of their 3 month milestone.

They weren't really up for pictures that night, but we had to get a shot somehow 

Malia enjoying her camera time

Austin, on the other hand, not enjoying the camera so much

A shot I was able to grab on their true 3 month mark

So health-wise, everything is going pretty smoothly for both of them, but the doctors would like to do surgery on Austin in a few months for his inguinal hernia.  He's not quite old enough for them to clear him for the surgery, and still the problem isn't serious enough to warrant immediate intervention.  So it's not a fun thought, but when he's old enough it should be a simple procedure to correct the issue.

Malia has fallen behind in the growth compared with her brother, but the doctors seem to have little concern for this as an indicator of a problem.  She's always been different from her brother on feeding, and has only increased her feed amounts marginally since coming home.  She still struggles with keeping her feeds down, which is always frustrating.  We've tried to makeup her caloric loss by taking her to a 2 hour feeding interval (instead of 3), but having the babies on different intervals for daily routines is a huge challenge for Cheryl.

I have been working very early mornings to try and free up my availability to help Cheryl for the rest of the day, but we still double on the night shift - meaning neither of us are putting in too much sleep time still.  The babies occasionally spread out their nightly interval, but we still hold them to a pretty strict schedule to ensure they get the daily caloric intake that the doctors recommend.

Pretty face

Seeing if some music could calm him down, apparently I wasn't good enough for his liking

Austin, lucky photo grab by Cheryl, looking like a rock star

One of our favorites of them together

Cheryl had to fend for herself this week because I was out of town for a work conference.  It proved especially challenging to get through the 24-hour rigors of feeding and other routines with half the personnel. Not that there was any doubt, but this is definitely a job that takes at least two people working around the clock.

Seems like there should be a good caption here, you could almost imagine their conversation

Angelic face

This is how they bed down after a feed

So that's it for now, I mainly wanted to share some pictures and let our followers know that everything is going as well as can be expected.  Also, I hate ruthless plugs, but this one is different... I came across the Facebook page of a friend of a friend who's son is fighting pediatric brain cancer and is likely end-stage.  Landan is a courageous fighter, and his family is pretty inspiring in documenting his fight.  Check them out and like their page: http://www.facebook.com/TeamLandan

That is all for now!