Mostly Treats Here... We Promise

Okay, as promised, this entry has a TON of great "up"dated (as in "up"right) news about Gwendolyn. But, before we dive into that, here’s a quick nugget on yesterday’s spooky activities… Namely, overly tired twins that have colds and runny noses don’t make the best trick-or-treaters. Still, Mom and Dad took the opportunity to stuff Braelyn and Gwendolyn into their Halloween costumes and tote them over to Grandma McKee’s.

It’s funny in a way because one of the rites of passage that we as parents (or at least Dad in general) are dreading is when the girls are old enough to decide what they want to be for Halloween themselves. It isn’t because we want to control their choices but rather because it’ll be yet another reminder that they’ve gotten that much farther removed from being infants... Honestly, where does all the time go?

With what seed planted, we took a pair of grumpy kids and threw them into a furnace of a pumpkin costume each that was by all accounts a tad too large for them so we could parade them around and show them off. You know, because we apparently wanted to reinforce just how unpleasant of an experience it can be.

Ah, the joys of parenthood! ;)

Needless to say, calm demeanors didn’t quite make an appearance for the duration of our visit to Grandma’s but at least they aren’t in full tears in the family photo atop today’s blog. (And kudos to Mom for getting in the spirit and sporting a Halloween shirt and cat ears… Dad just kept on his Chiefs garb from earlier in the day). Maybe next year the girls can take a lesson from their McKee cousins and embrace the joy of the season in some better fitting costumes.

As for Gwen’s good news… In the following pictures you will see (in order) Gwen’s final fitting of her new braces, a close-up shot of her braces (as you can see, these aren't of the Forrest Gump variety), and her tooling around in her brand new stander (which ironically was delivered the very same week as her braces). A side note that Gwen LOVES her stander. In fact, it’s pretty obvious by where the pad meets up with her chest the stander photo that it was taken before the stander was even adjusted to fit her… It didn’t matter to Gwendolyn Marie because she was upright and loving it!!!

Our crazy medical themed week continued because not only did Gwendolyn get new braces and her stander but, she and Braelyn FINALLY had their one-year checkup. You might gather from Braelyn’s expression that the next photo that it was taken before her latest inoculation was administered. In fact, the appointment became a rather lengthy affair (shocking that twins, one of which has far from a run-of-the-mill medical record, would require well in excess of an hour for a checkup, hey?). So after the check-up was complete but before the shots were administered she had enough downtime to snarf up some puffs and flash her smile.

Speaking of which, for those of you keeping track at home, we’ve got the latest measurements on the girls. Braelyn tips the scales at 17 pounds, 8 ounces, is 28.25 inches long, and has a melon circumference of 45 centimeters. Her weight is now down to the second percentile but she’s bumped up to the 14th in length so for the time being there isn’t much alarm.

As for Gwendolyn, she came in at 18 pounds, 14 ounces, with a length of 27.25 inches and a head circumference of 46.5 centimeters. As we discussed after Gwen’s MRI, we found out that she has increased fluid in one of the ventricles in her head so that’s why its circumference is in the 81st-percentile. While concerning, it isn’t yet a crisis situation either. We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out with her next MRI in the Spring. Gwen is only in the fourth percentile for height and the 10th for weight… Basically she's an inch shorter than Braelyn but weighs over a pound more. That’s where we need to continue to monitor Gwen’s eating. The more table food she gets by mouth, the less formula she’ll need because of the extra calories she’d be ingesting.

And one last milestone that was like gold to Mom and Dad… Yesterday Gwen finally realized that when she’s hungry she can simply grab food with her hands and put it in her mouth all by herself.

It’s amazing that a child can go so long without doing it and then all the sudden out of the blue it’s like they’ve been feeding themselves the whole time. It was that way with Braelyn too. One day she just said, “Hey, I got this… Why don’t you just let me pop these puffs in my mouth and you can take that extra time to get my sister dressed and ready to leave?”

It’s just all in a day’s work for the Castellanos we guess!