This past month has seen a couple of firsts. Rachel, you had your first day of school, Emily had her first time going to Miss Judy's, and your mother had her first day back at work. A few days ago, Emily turned two months old, and a couple of weeks ago, Rachel turned 3 years and three months old.
Emily, you've been very busy taking everything in. You're still not on much of a schedule yet, but you are getting closer. We have a pretty good schedule once we all get home, but I don't know how consistent you are with sleeping (which is the key to any schedule) at Judy's house. When we're all home, you generally are awake until about 10 PM, then we feed you and put you to bed. Every once in a while you're sleep the entire night, but usually you're awake somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning.
You are eating bigger bottles less frequently now, and I've been kicking myself because I never wrote any of this stuff down about your big sister. If I had, we could compare, and jog our memories about the things we were doing to get her to sleep and be on more of a regular schedule
You've started smiling a lot, and I'm sure at this point it's more than gas. You smile whenever you see someone you recognize, like me, your mother, or your big sister. You also turn to look at us when we talk to you or when we walk by.
You're also able to keep your head up on your own quite a bit now. You still get tired and let it flop over from time to time, but you have a lot of control over your head, and we can see your neck getting stronger every day.
We found out that you do indeed have some hearing loss in your left ear. We had some extensive tests (to the tune of several hours) run on you, and it was determined that you have mild to severe hearing loss in your left ear. You can hear low pitches really well, with just a little bit of amplification, but high pitched sounds you have a really hard time with. Since your right ear hears just fine, they're telling us that it's very possible that you will develop speech and language normally, but we're going to have a team of experts helping us keep a close eye on you. We found out that you will need get a CT scan when you turn 6 months to find out exactly what's going on in your left ear.
Rachel, you're still being an amazing big sister. I keep wondering when the honeymoon will end, but I'm really enjoying how much you love your little sister right now. You still want to sit with me every time I feed her, and help me out. You hover right over her face and say "Hiiiieeeeeeee" to her in the high pitched little voice, trying to get her to smile at you.
You wake up every day asking if we go to school today. Never once have you said that you didn't want to go, and most of the time when I drop you off, I have to remind you to come give me a kiss because you're off playing with your friends the second you get there.
You come home singing songs, counting, and telling us about things that we haven't taught you. It is amazing to me how fast you're learning things, and it's fun to listen to you talk and sing to yourself. A couple of weeks ago, you were in sitting on the potty, singing a song to yourself, when I heard you stop and say, "One, two, three....eyes on me!" And then you continued singing your song.
Lately, you've been telling us what letter everything begins with. "D-D-Daddy...does Daddy start with the letter D?" Of course, sometimes you get the sound of the letter and the way you actually say the letter mixed up, but it's very cute. "D-D-Double-U...just like D-D-Daddy" I never truly appreciated just how hard it was to learn things like language and letter sounds!
You have your very own computer now. Since the hinges on Mommy's laptop started going out, we bought her a new one, and set up her old one on a table and hooked it up to a monitor. You know exactly where the PBS Kids shortcut is on the desktop, and you ask all the time if you can play with your computer.
You are both amazing little girls, and we are so lucky to have you. We love you both very much and can't wait to see what this next month will bring.
Love,
Daddy
