First time for everything!

Well the girls made it a full year before getting sick. Lily got sick at 3 a.m. on her actual birthday with a 102 fever. Tylenol knocked it down, but she was miserable and we got little sleep. It lasted about 24 hours, and she would only sleep on someone, but she ate well. The doctor said it was probably a virus and to just keep up the Tylenol. Fast forward to last night at 3 a.m. Evie woke up and had a 102 fever! Hers seems to have lasted less than 24 hours. We hit it with Tylenol pretty fast and she napped a lot today, but wasn't nearly as clingy as Lily. All in all, i think their first illness went "well" if you can call it that!!

As for their first speech therapy session, since Lily was sick that day it was mostly just Evie. The therapist was a very bubbly woman and fell in love with the girls. She fed Eve and told me that she has a good bite and good tone. She can maneuver her tongue well and seems to have no trouble with the stage 3 baby food we tried her on. She is confused with the new textures, but doesn't choke and gag. She told me to try letting the girls bite pieces of cracker *i.e. saltines...* and work on adding some lumps to their pureed food. So we've been doing that. She also said to try adding one more "solid" meal a day. As for the "speech" part, she said to repeat words over and over and over again. Drop a toy and keep saying "bang" or something or other. Same thing with "Mama" and "Dada" and to always call them by their name, not "honey" or "baby" or "sweetie" until they learn their names, which they seem to be having a spot of trouble with!

The physical therapist was impressed with how much they had improved since the evaluation. They are now cruising along the couch and Evie was pushing their activity table and walking along behind it. They can put a ball into a toy of theirs and push it through a holeover and over again. They can also stand with one foot on a toy or a book, and not fall over. And they can kneel upright without any support. So they are doing really well. They can balance without any support for maybe a 5 count, but that's not too shabby.

In other news, I might be starting a full time job -- from home. My old newspaper called me and mentioned the possibility. It would involve some feature-writing, pagination/editing/layout, and would, after 4 months, include full benefits. That is KEY. We want to have more children, but can't afford to pay for a pregnancy/delivery out of pocket. The job would pay about $28-30,000 a year. I would have to go to the office for meetings, probably once a week and go in a few times a week for a bit to send pages to press. But the rest would be from home. The only issue barring it now is whether they can acquire the laptop I'd need to paginate with. I have been thinking though, that it might be worthwhile to purchase my own if they can't because I'll be gaining a good salary for very little investment in the scheme of things. But hopefully they will be able to get one out of the budget! So I'll keep you up to date on the news there!