Friday, June 20--Day 25

Another good day with Clare.  She showed promising development in her sucking skills this morning, which gave us a sense of accomplishment.  Consistently we arrive at 8am to find her already wide awake or easily woken up, and this is when she stays awake the longest and is most interested in eating and in interacting with her adoring parents, who hover over her plastic cradle and make all sorts of dumb comments to her.  When we did her care at 5pm, she was reluctant to wake up but nonetheless managed to get a good grip on her gavage tube and yank it out of her nose several centimeters three separate times, requiring the nurse to retape it to her face twice. As I've no doubt mentioned before, we figure the only toys we'll ever need to get her are wires and cords and things that she can put in and pull out of her nose.  We'll do all our Christmas shopping at Home Depot and medical supply stores.

Several well-meaning staff at the ICN have asked us, "so, did you guys get a chance to go out and enjoy the weather?"  I don't know about Tim, but the very notion seems so foreign that I have no response prepared;  they might as well ask me, "so, did you guys ever sell Dutch spoons out of your basement crawl space?"  Me:  "um...", blink, blink, blank look.  We did decide to take the evening off, however, and spent the time mowing the lawn, picking up the kitchen, and getting the dining room table cleaned off enough so that we can start writing out our long-overdue thank you cards.  It was nice to have enough energy to do this.

Clare weighed 5 lbs, 6 oz tonight, consistently meeting her goal of gaining an ounce a day.  If she manages to keep her body temperature consistent for a few days--she's still requiring a number of layers to stay warm--then we get to bathe her, hopefully early next week.

Tim has remarked that he's developing Stockholm Syndrome.  He's afraid he's starting to like the endlessly looping Kenny Loggins-"Somewhere Out There"-"Rainbow Connection"-"All the Pretty Little Ponies"-modern lullaby CD that plays incessantly for the neighbor baby.  Maybe once Clare comes home, a bunch of us can plan an Intervention.