Picasa

For those of you who have been dying for some printed photos to place beneath your refrigerator magnets, I wanted to point out how amazingly easy it is to order prints through the picasa site. You select your favorite photos and add them to your print queue by selecting the "order prints" option.

If you click on it while you're looking at an album, it will assume you want to print the whole album. If you click on it while you're looking at a photo, it will assume you only want to print that photo. So, it'll do whatever you tell it to. :)

They then give you your choice of 4 different photo print services (including picking them up from your local walgreens).

Just wanted to make sure you knew you could. http://picasaweb.google.com/camp.melp

Back into the groove

Such a good girl. We're really pretty much back to normal, believe it or not! In between naps and eating, she's a super happy chick... She's started laughing a lot more when I play with her. I think her neck might be ticklish. Today, she chuckled heartily and flinched, closed her eyes when I walked my hands up her tummy toward her face. Over and over and over. It totally cracked me up and I WISHED I had a video camera so I could show you guys. It was hilarious.

I personally did not have the best day, unfortunately. I've been slacking on my water intake, and paid for it today in the form of a kidney stone. (boooo.) I was SO happy to not be pregnant anymore so I could take some Advil! (Those couple of episodes while I was pregnant seriously almost killed me... the heating pad is great, but... these things really require medication.)

Non sequitur: Just listening to Left4Dead is creepy. ::shiver::

Ahhh, sleep & stuff.

Before the surgery, I (admittedly selfishly) worked hard to get Calina's bedtime sleeping schedule from about 9:30pm-9:30am, since she got into a nice rhythm of being happy in bed for about 12 hours from when I put her to bed. (OK, with a couple nursing breaks in the middle, but since she sleeps right next to me, it wasn't exactly too rousing.)

Since we've been home, it's been REALLY hard to get her back in a good rhythm. She refuses to sleep more than about 10 minutes by herself during the day, so we have to hold her while she naps, if we want her to nap at all. Then, she's decided that 6 or 7 at night is an acceptable bed time, and then is UP UP UP at 6 or 7 in the morning (tooooo early for mom & dad, ugh).

So, our latest tactic is to get her to take a little nap around 6 or 7, and then go to bed for real around 9 or 10... Some nights it works great, some nights, not so much. Tonight, say. She was exhausted by 8, slept for 15 minutes, cried for half an hour, so we walked around the block, tried to put her down again at 9:30, but it took more than an hour for me to be able to get up and come in here and write about it!

Also, Colin was carrying her tonight, and it really struck me how much she's grown since she was born. Mostly, I still think of her as being about this big:

When, really, she's bigger than this now (this was more than a week ago):

How could this possibly be only 12 weeks difference? Cray-cray.

Thank you guys so much, by the way, for keeping up with us. This is quite a ride, and I'm glad we can share it with you.

She loves to kick!

Designing a helmet

We're still a month or so away from Calina's first helmet, but I'm already brainstorming about cool ways to decorate it. We had such good luck with the vinyl stickers we used on our shop's window (they're like auto decals), I'm thinking we might try getting some awesome design printed up to adhere to the helmet. (Waterproof, fade-resistent in the sun...)

Thought I'd post some brainstorming... some images I've come across that are inspiring. I'll need to come up with something that has a transparent background... But the helmet I get might have a background color like pink, purple, or blue... I'll have to find out more. :)

So, I could try to come up with something intricate like this (just without the background, and spreading out in more finger-like patterns...)

Or I could go with some sort of repeating pattern... Maybe as simple as bright polka dots or something. I could spend a REALLY long time trying to work out something like these:

Cute stuff, right? :)

5 days out

Calina is doing really well. I don't know how much more I can keep saying the same thing... We're just ever so relieved to be done with this ordeal, and every day that passes is one day closer to "normal".

So far, we have absolutely no signs that she's ever unreasonably uncomfortable (we give her tylenol or motrin every once in a while), and the incisions are healing beautifully. Our only problem so far is that she's extremely clingy and tense -- she has a hard time relaxing, a hard time being put down, and a hard time falling asleep. But other than just needing mom or dad to be paying attention to her at all times, which can get a little exhausting, things could not be better.

We are getting a lot of smiles out of her. As if she's saying, "Please, keep talking to me. Never leave me alone again."

First night home

We got a little worried around midnight when we realized that she really wasn't falling asleep. I had read some horror stories about families who were kept up for WEEKS by their kids who had been through the same surgery. It's hard for them to get comfortable lying down (obviously)!

She was really overtired and having a rough time settling down. Her head seemed to be waking her up every time she'd doze off.

Finally, though, after having a nice long meal, I just put her down, and let her lie halfway off the pillow she'd been lying on--and put another pillow under her body, so she wouldn't flop over. And she stayed asleep. She was taking up my entire side of the bed, so I kind of slept sideways underneath her. (I was exhausted enough to be able to sleep well anyway.)

She ended up sleeping a full 6 hours after that. Good for any night!

Home

Calina was SO happy to get unhooked from those monitors & IV's... she didn't have a single fussy moment after they freed her.


She slept in the car all the way home, and is just happily sitting in her swing, sucking her hand, and listening to daddy play video games (yes, already).

Auntie Jess met us at the door, and gave Calina a little love. Gramma went to the store to get some food for us for the night.

We have a little bit of a regimen: 3 times a day, I have to clean her incisions with betadyne, and then cover them with antibiotic ointment. (Thankfully we only have to keep up with that for 3 days or so.) Once a day, I have to wash her head with a special disinfecting shampoo. We have an appointment with the surgeons in about 2 weeks (July 2), so they can check to see that everything looks as it should. About a week after that, we'll probably have her first helmet.

Mostly, we're just glad to be home. We made it out of that room, out of that hospital, with our baby girl intact and happy. I know things could change at the drop of a hat, but right now, she seems so content.

Aww

She finally gave up the ghost and fell asleep. With her dad asleep sitting up in a chair next to her. <3 Cuteness!

I take it back

We've had so many people in and out messing with Calina this morning, she has gotten totally overtired. She wanted to go to sleep about 2 hours ago, but... we kind of missed that opportunity, and now she's SUPER cranky.

Colin seems to have endless patience when it comes to trying to entertain her, so thank god for that. I'm too exhausted!

Good news: Dr. Johnson said we can go home! Unfortunately, it looks like we might just sit here all day waiting for the paperwork to get finished. That's the worst. Knowing that we COULD be in the car on the way home, but... we just have to sit here in anticipation not knowing when they'll finally spring us.

I'm hoping that they'll at least get the IV's out of her hand & foot, and MAYBE let her off the monitors while we wait. We'll see I guess. The nurse is coming in to wash her head again in a little bit.

By the way, is this not the cutest face in the world? She's looking so good.