Today is a pretty significant milestone in Willow and Stanley's journey through life so far. They've been home for 144 days. What this means is, they've now spent more than half of their lives outside the hospital.
On the whole, those first 143 days were horrible. There were moments of joyousness in there, but the over-riding feeling was one of torture. Every morning, I still appreciate all the things that are normal and good about our little lives back home.
Not waking up after a restless sleep, wondering what's been going on down in NICU. Not calling the unit to ask how the babies are, to see how many times they turned blue last night.
Instead, waking at 5:30am to hear Stanley babbling away to himself, followed by Willow waking up and banging the bottom of her cot with her feet. Lying in bed, smiling about those noises I'm hearing; knowing that Leela is lying next to me smiling about exactly the same thing. It still seems incredible that we're even in this position, and we'll be forever grateful that the whole show didn't turn into a tragedy.
Willow and Stanley are both doing amazingly. Willow weighs just under 20lbs, Stanley just over - so they're both looking extremely good on the scales for their corrected age, and not too bad even for their real age.
Following another check-up at the hospital, Willow is still looking perfect. There are still some concerns over Stanley's movements, and the report from the hospital states that 'the likelihood is that he has a mild form of cerebral palsy'. That sounds bad, and not the kind of thing you want to hear in any report about your children. But he is as perfect as Willow is; it may still be the case that there is nothing wrong anyway, and he does appear to be improving as each week goes by.
Their personalities are showing through more and more all the time. Willow is extremely stubborn. We've always known this, since she refused to be beaten by that ventilator, which, although it was keeping her alive, was damaging her tiny lungs so much that we thought on a number of occasions that she wouldn't make it. We can tell she will always do what she wants to do - no matter what anyone tells her. She is very dextrous, and closely examines every object which she picks up. Which is basically, every object which exists within the same room as her.
Stanley is very different. He'll sleep anywhere, and will eat anything that's placed within a few inches of him. No examinations involved first - just straight for the taste test. He's recently started babbling a lot more, and the other day, there was definitely a 'mama' in there amongst the bababamamambablabla.... After his teething episode a month or so ago, he's really chirped up a lot and is very happy for the majority of the time, just like his big sister.
Although we don't have a spare five minutes per day between us, we're having a fantastic time now as real grown-ups, and we wouldn't want to change anything. Every night when I go to bed I look forward to waking up again. Not just for that fresh cup of coffee, but to spend some more time with Willow and Stanley before having to go off to work. There is something about these babies that just makes me forget everything else in the world that's annoying. There's a lot of stuff in the world that I find annoying, so that's a pretty impressive achievement. I'm sure there's plenty more of those to come, soon enough.
