For the past two weeks, Liliana has been going to her medical daycare (off and on, depending on whether or not she has an appointment/Early Intervention therapy that day). She seems to love it, and Sean and I actually visited her today to pick her up.

With the daycare and her transportation with the Rover bus, I had to change Liliana’s feeding schedule drastically. Previously, we had been giving her 3 daytime feeds and one overnight feed; now, we’re giving her only 2 daytime feeds and an intense overnight feed. Surprisingly though, Liliana is tolerating this new feeding schedule incredibly well!

I’ll get her up in the morning, give a dose of omeprazole, and put her on the bus. She has lunch around 11 with the other kids; she just started getting Gerber Graduate meals upon the suggestion from a nurse because Liliana seemed interested in the other kids’ meals. She gets put down for a nap at 12, and gets her pump feeding at the same time. After the nap, she should be offered a snack, and she gets her 4 ounces of Miralax-water at 3. She gets on the bus home around 4:30, and I give her food when she gets home (because she is starving!). There is another pump feeding around 6 or 7, then she gets put to bed at 9 with Periactin and a 1-hour bolus of 3 to 4 ounces of formula. She’s usually asleep once the bolus is done, and I change the feeding to give her a little over 8 ounces of formula at a rate of 1 ounce per hour.

Liliana visited her nutritionist this past Tuesday where she weighed in at 24 pounds and 2 ounces. We’re finally out of the 23 pound range that Liliana had been floating in for the past few months!

I sort of want to increase how many calories I give Liliana overnight, just to fatten her up some more, but it would be better if Liliana ate those calories orally, so I’m going to have to restrain myself from giving her an extra half-ounce of formula…

Liliana is doing really well with eating and drinking. The day that we went to the nutritionist, Liliana drank a whole carton of juice. That is incredible, considering that before we started daycare, Liliana would only take a few sips and be done.

Damien is doing well too. We’ve been working on his sippy cup skills (we had him using cups with straws), and I think he’s nailed it. It took him about a week to figure out how to lift the cup, but now I can just prompt him to lift it by saying “up”.

His personality is developing: he “meow”ed the other day, today he growled while playing with a dinosaur, and growled at Daddy while making a claw (because Daddy was doing it).

Since Liliana’s been going to daycare during the day, I don’t really have any pictures of her this week. I might just have to move the Friday pictures to Sunday on a permanent basis, but I’ll definitely be posting pictures this Sunday so you can see the kids opening their presents! In the meantime, I’ll be dreading the kind of lighting conditions I’ll have to deal with for the pictures…maybe I’ll just use my laptop to take a video. Or I could do both (taking pictures and recording video)! Just as long as there is no cupcake frosting involved…

Happy Holidays!