A Brand New Year

Hi all.

It has been quite a while since we've posted up here. Sorry about that. I actually wrote up a post last week, but somehow managed to not save it.

We spent a quiet Christmas and New Year at home. Mike has just about recovered from the devastating loss of our beloved Irish to the LSU Tigers.

Mike returned to his regular schedule of teaching the first week of January. Taking care of Addison and Lily while he is gone for 8+ hours is a bit more hectic now that the girls are eating solid food. This means getting cereal, veggie/fruit and bottles ready for both girls usually when they are STARVING.

For a while Addison would only eat her solids well if you allowed her to guide the spoon. Fortunately she is very good at hitting the mark. Unfortunately she likes to go so fast you don't have time to scrape up what comes sliding out of her mouth before she is ready to shovel more in. Generally she ends up with a pool of food around her neck. Yuck. But lately she's allowing her minions to feed her. Lily has always been willing to let her minions feed her.

Exciting times around here. Lily is on the verge of crawling. Mike's installed one gate at the bottom of the stairs going upstairs. Now we just have 2 more to get installed!

Addison continues to be rather content either on her belly or her back. She has rolled belly to back a few times in the last week, so we're hopeful she's starting to get motivated for locomotion.

Lily continues to be a wonderful sleeper. She sleeps 10-11 hours straight every night. I don't want to jinx things, but last night Addison slept 10 hours straight and we are praying this is the beginning of the end of night feedings.

We've started giving Addison 2 small bottles of food everyday. At first we tried to make it formula, but she'd have none of that. We've now gotten her to take 1/2 breastmilk and 1/2 formula, but her mother is concerned that it isn't sitting well on her stomach as she seems to spit up afterwards.

Both Addison and Lily continue to grow nicely. As of Tuesday this week Lily weighed 16lbs 3oz and Addison weighed 15lbs 12oz.

Next Tuesday we will make a family trip to Columbus. We are going to Children's Hospital to meet with the doctors and staff at the CranioFacial Clinic to have them check Lily's status and discuss her surgery. Currently her surgery to repair her cleft is scheduled for March 21.

This past weekend we travelled to Washington DC to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa Meyer. The girls also met their cousin Frank and his fiance Megan, the Pattersons, their great aunt and great uncle Maeve and Bob, and our good friends from Notre Dame Michelle Pfeifer and Michele Spring. It was a busy weekend and to top it off we had car trouble. Some speedy repair work from Gerry's guy (and master mechanic), Tom, and we were only delayed by 6 hours returning home. Denuen who continues to recover from her knee surgery joined us. After some initial territorial squabbling, Denuen got along well with Grandma and Grandpa's dogs, Murphy and Tara. For some reason, I was a total slacker with regards to photos and videos. We've got very few from the weekend.

Here's some pictures to keep everyone up to date on the girls:

Lily under the tree	Addison under the tree
Mike, Lily, Murphy, Tara, Grandma, Grandpa and Addison	Grandma, Lily, Grandpa and Addison
Lily and Addison peeking over their highchair trays