Happy Mother's Day!

To all you moms out there -- I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day! (Debra, hope your little ones weren't still sick with RSV...) We had a good day. Went to my sister-in-law's house and celebrated with them and both sets of grandparents. I got a few things from Eric, Lily and Eve -- including a necklace with the girls' birthstone, kind of as a place holder because Eric wanted to get something with two of their birthstone and two with our birthstone, to represent the whole family! They match so well too, with the girls being dark green (emerald) and ours being light green (peridot)!

And if that wasn't enough, Lily can now cruise along the couch. Slowly, but she does it. And Evie can stand up without holding on or being held for about 5 seconds. She needs balance work, but that is definitely progress. Lily doesn't do as well at that as she will fling herself forward to grab onto me when I try to let her go! They are so cute though. And their birthday is 9 days away!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Can't believe it.

One year ago May 11 I was admitted to the hospital with the girls and I still really can't believe it has been that long already. It feels like yesterday in some respects, though thankfully a majority of the NICU is a blur. Unfortunately, the parts that aren't a blur are the WORST parts of it...and I would love to forget those.

Anyway, I promised a blog post about fanfiction, so here is a little bit about that for those who are interested. I started writing fanfiction back in middle school, when I was an avid SeaQuest fan. Basically, it is where fans take the show, movie, book, comic book, etc, and use those established characters, settings, sometimes even plots, and change them to their liking. Some are short pieces, others, like one of my Lord of the Rings pieces, are 100,000 words or more. They are so much fun to read and write! Currently I have posted online stories from Star Wars, from when I was MUCH younger, and stories from Lord of the Rings, Dukes of Hazzard and Pirates of the Carribbean, from more recent years. Some of mine are unfinished and might never BE finished. Others are complete. I post at www.fanfiction.net under the screenname Gwenneth. My old fics are under the name rialin2032. I love that site because so many visit it and I love to get reviews from readers. I have written for a few other places, but that is the most accessible. I'm working ona few more Star Wars fics, in the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith time period. I'm also working on a few Harry Potter stories. I'm a HUGE fan of Draco turning good stories, so those are predominantly what I write.

Anyone who wants more info can always comment or e-mail me! It's a great deal of fun and very relaxing for me.

This question thingy

I'm bored, figured I'd participate...

4 things I was doing 10 years ago (1998):
♥ I was still in high school, didn't graduate until 2000
♥ In April of 98 I began my training in Tae Kwon Do (I'm a third degree black belt now)
♥ Preparing for a band trip to Germany that would last two weeks (ended up being totally awesome!)
♥ I turned 16 that August

4 things I was doing 5 years ago (2003):
♥ bought our first house that November
♥ turned 21 in August and went to Ozzfest in Pennsylvania that day
♥ got my second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do
♥ working hard at college on my journalism degree

4 things I did yesterday
:♥ had a horrid migraine and slept a lot
♥ wrote a little of my fanfiction story
♥ started making my mother's day presents for my mom and mom-in-law
♥ rocked a cranky, teething baby to sleep

4 shows I love to watch: (since I don't have television, I don't watch tv regularly, but I love these series')
♥ the pretender
♥ hannah montana
♥ seaquest
♥ dukes of hazzard

4 things that make me really happy:
♥ going into the nursery in the morning and finding both my girls standing in the cribs and having them laugh and smile at me
♥ a hike in the spring when all the green starts to show on the trees
♥ reading a wonderful fanfiction story
♥ getting reviews on stories i've written

I'm not going to tag anyone as most people I visit in the blogosphere have already done this. But if you haven't, do it if you want to and consider yourself tagged!

Not much time...

I wanted to update quickly. EI came and we are definitely qualified for speech therapy. The girls both performed at a 3-6 month level in that area. There was a 15 percent delay and a 20 percent delay in the gross motor skills area. Both girls were age appropriate in fine motor skills (they corrected to 10 months for their prematurity). All in all it wasn't bad and the women were really surprised how well-behaved LIly and Eve are, but we knew that! We will have a meeting to discuss the therapy. The PT lady was going to talk to the service coordinator about PT for hte girls but because they weren't delayed 25 percent, but 15 and 20, they TECHNICALLY don't qualify.

AND a new video to enjoy!

On the Move

It's been a while since that post with Lily's first crawl and BOY are the girls completely different kids already! Now they both crawl, both can kneel and play with toys, both can stand on their own at the gates or in bed, and both are advancing in leaps and bounds with their play. I swear, Early Intervention, who is coming tomorrow afternoon, is going to find that in the month since the referral, the kids have completely changed. Maybe even caught up!

And their first birthday is right around the corner. For those family and close friends who read this, YOU'RE INVITED, even if you didn't get an invitation yet. (Because I haven't had a chance to send any...) The party is May 17, a Saturday, at 2 p.m. at our house. You can get their later if you so desire, but not much earlier if you can help it! Anyone is free to bring some food if you like, as well, though there will be food there.

Back to the babies. Let's see, they can both hold their own bottles now, though we are still behind in terms of chewing anything. Perhaps they'll be far enough behind in speech to qualify for a speech therapist! I wouldn't mind as I don't have a clue how to help them learn that. I mean, I look like a cow chewing grass trying to show them how to move their mouths. And all they do is smile and laugh at you!

They are definitely a lot more fun now that they can play. They have gotten good at picking up little tiny things, and so we ahve to be extra careful in the house now. They still beeline for the dog food dish if they get out of the corral we use to block them into one and half rooms of the downstairs. We can put things in and take things out of boxes and toy bins now too, which is nice, so they can pull out their own toys if they really want to.

All right, back to work now...I've got a deadline to meet!

AH. Crawl!

Okay, so I was wrong. (Erin, immediately after I said Eve would crawl first, Lily had to prove me wrong!) Yup, Lily just crawled. To reach a pepperoni wrapper, no less. That's right, an empty wrapper. And here she is!

Some milestones!

All right! Our milestones are Lily-centric. She can now sit up all by herself from a laying/rolling around position. And get DOWN from sitting up without falling. She is SO close to crawling, but still no go there. She can also clap! It's rather cute because she gets soooo excited.

The other news is that the girls officially got their first feel of grass today! It was about 65 outside and we took them out at their grandparents' house and sat them in the grass. Eve wasn't at all thrilled with it, and Lily took a few minutes to warm up to it before proceeding to roll around and sit up and everything. Eve preferred to stand propped against someone. She would tolerate sitting, but didn't want to lay on her tummy. She would turn onto her side and balance herself there, seeming to try and minimize how much of her made contact with the grass.

All right, that's it. Babies are ffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuusssssssssssssssssyyyyyyyyy. So I have to go!

Developmental appointment

Well here I thought the girls were doing great! BUT the developmental people are "worried" and so we got a referral to early intervention. I didn't know there was a specific WAY in which the girls were supposed to be playing, versus just picking things up and moving and toying with them. But I guess there is! So when they focused on one toy, or when they held two but didn't care to "figure out" how to hold a third in front of them, they are considered behind for their adjusted age. Actual is 10 and a few weeks, so adjusted is 8 and a few, nearly 9 months.

Lily plays more, bangs things, slides them around, passes from hand to hand, but doesn't tend to hold one toy in each hand. Eve does much the same, but held things in both hands a little more. So Lily is further behind there, totally not how I figured it!

They aren't making enough sounds either, apparently. They make dada, baba, mama sounds, but no vowel sounds really. It's all so confusing. If they hadn't been NICU babies I doubt we'd even be doing this.

It remains to be seen whether early intervention will deem them eligible when they come evaluate them. We'll have to wait and see next week. Of course, I'm WORKING next week, go figure.

So yeh, they aren't as caught up as we thought they'd be and they want us back in 6 months at developmental. They didn't comment on head size or anything, so I'm guessing that is good to go seeing as they did measure them. And they didn't think they would be eligible for any physical therapy assistance, just possibly speech and play therapy. THANKFULLY, EI is at home, so I wouldn't have to lug them into an office for that. And hey, if they are eligible, perhaps I would have something to look forward to that would break the monotony of the week.

Anyone have EI experience that they can share?