What a Mother's Day Weekend

Well folks, we had a fabulous Mother’s Day and hope you all did as well. The girls gave Mom her first official Mother’s Day gift (a travel mug ablaze with their smiling faces) first-thing in the morning. Then, we all had breakfast and said our good-byes to this weekend’s out-of-town guests at Grandma McKee’s. After that, Braelyn and Gwendolyn had a Skype with their other Nana so that they could say hello to her. That was a particular treat for the girls because they were able to see their Great-Grandma Anthony (who’s visiting the twins’ Nana in Florida right now) for the very first time.

The twins are really doing great! Gwendolyn has reached the point where she’s begun to sit up unassisted for brief moments, something not even her sister has perfected yet. Each and every day, she seems to develop more and more strength throughout her entire body. She’s even begun to periodically stretch out her legs and feet, which is a particular treat given her circumstances. Since she stopped her bottle feeds with a thickening agent, her body has even lost a little of it’s extra “fluff” as well so she’s gotten a little bit more streamlined.

Not to be outdone, Braelyn reached a milestone herself just a couple of days ago. Ironically enough, she picked Mother’s Day Weekend to perfect her first word, “dada.”

No truth to the rumor that she was promised a pony by her father if she got that word completed first!

;)

Still, she obviously has no correlation between that word and her father because she’ll sit on her mat playing with her toys and start rambling “dada, dada, dada, dada, dada, dada...” over and over again at various levels of excitement. But it could be worse… She could only say “dada” while filling up her diaper!

We’ve begun saying “mama” to Braelyn in hopes that both sets of parents can be represented in her vocabulary but she’s yet to cooperate. In fact, when we say “mama” to her, she typically responds by saying “dada!” at a higher decibel level than her last. So, even though she carries the McKee lineage as her middle name, she apparently inherited one her father’s poorer attributes, his stubbornness.

As for a medical update, on Friday Gwendolyn went in for a heart echogram to make sure none of her breathing issues had begun to affect her heart. We’re very happy to report that the results came back today and her ticker is fit as a fiddle. Of course, Gwen’s not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. She’s got a visit with her Neurosurgeon next week to track the progress of the touch of hydrocephalus that was present in March’s scan.

She’ll go in the end of this month to see her new pulmonologist for a clinic visit so they can chart her progress breathing since she was discharged from the hospital last. Then in June, she’ll visit again with ENT to see how her congestion is coming along. We’ll say that thus far, the reflux medication honestly doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot for Gwendolyn. This morning, much as she has every morning in recent memory, she sounded horribly stuffed when she woke up.

Hopefully as time progresses, the medication will begin to take effect. And if not, maybe we can solve the mystery of her congestion that just won’t go away once we go for that follow-up ENT scan. We need to get to the bottom of it before Gwen’s follow-up sleep study later this summer.

Well, that’s all that fit to print for now… talk to you all in a few days!