The end of November

I'm going to start writing more in here. Little and often. Or that's the plan anyway.

Stanley has been amazing this week. He's really starting to crawl, in his own special way. Each of his limbs can move almost normally in their own right, it's just when he tries to coordinate all of them that he doesn't get the desired effect. This can make him very frustrated, uncomfortable and angry sometimes; but this last week he's improved so much. Today, in fact, while Leela was in the kitchen, she turned around to see Stanley's smiling face peeking around the door frame. This is the first time he's ever managed to travel that far from the play room - and it brought tears of happiness to his mother's face.

Willow's also amazing. She's still not walking on her own, but it can't be long now. She spends most of her time destroying things, ripping books off shelves, taking stuff out of boxes, putting stuff in boxes and being a little monkey. Watching a 'baby hospital' programme on TV last night brought it all back. Just over a year ago the docs were working through a list of things to try to basically keep her alive. Each time one option failed, they'd try the next. We just can't believe how well she's doing - just remembering how ill she was; we don't even associate that poor baby with the little girl we see today.

Both Willow and Stanley inspire me so much in everything I do. There's no way they got all this motivation and determination from my side, so I think we all have Mummy to thank for that.

November-ish.

I can't remember when I started writing this. Probably when I had a few spare seconds last week.

Overall, this month has been much more pleasant than the previous November. Last year, it was the time that we hit rock-bottom. Willow had just had her operation and it was touch and go for a few days at least. On Sunday, it was 12 months since she had finally freed herself  from the ventilator, which was the first major step on the road out of NICU. This year, she's very nearly walking on her own. She stood with no support for three seconds yesterday, so it won't be long at all. She's going to be dangerous when she's worked out how to move on two feet, that's for sure.

Stanley's had a really positive few weeks too. His sitting up is coming along slowly but surely. He still can't do it completely without the support of his own arms, but every day his back is getting straighter and stronger. We're just hoping right now that he'll be able to sit up nicely on Christmas Day to immerse himself in wrapping paper. He's now doing physiotherapy and hydrotherapy every week, both of which he's responding well to. It definitely helps that there are young lady physios for him to look and smile at while being floated about in a pool. We were also told by doctors that they're pretty sure he'll be able to to walk without aids. It's the first time someone's actually told us a rough outcome we can expect. Obviously it could still be much worse or much better than that - but this is the 'average' result for a child doing what Stanley is doing right now.

At that same meeting, Willow was effectively signed off - they told us they don't want to see her again (in the nicest possible way). Also, she's now been off oxygen for nearly two months - so hopefully we can now put that episode behind us. We still need to keep it around the house in case she gets ill. However, in the last two weeks both Willow and Stanley have had a bad cold. We were quite worried when we woke up one morning to them wheezing badly. But they managed to get through it without even needing any additional oxygen; in fact, they coped a lot better than Daddy coped with his man-flu.