Christmas Tree

Despite a life time of waiting until my brother's birthday on the 21st of December, we decorated our tree last weekend. This is (more or less) the first tree that Bluet has experienced, and she is very excited. She likes to move the baubles and decorations from branch to branch, so all the breakable ones are now hanging from the same high branch.

Just wait until she sees the presents under the tree on Christmas morning....

 

Ilona Comes With the Rain

Since apparently the only time I have for blog posts is when I'm home taking care of a newborn baby, I didn't want to miss the opportunity this time! For those not aware of the adventurous life the Corse Collins family has been leading lately, I wanted to do a recap of the past 3 crazy weeks... Thursday November 21: Ben and I went to downtown Houston and signed millions of papers, thus completing the closing of the deal on our new house. Saturday November 23: With the help of movers (since I couldn't lift anything) we moved and spent the first night in the new house. Monday November 25: One of the worst Monday mornings I can ever remember. It was raining hard and we attempted a family commute in our 1 car. I was in the car for a total of 4 hours that day, getting everyone where they needed to be and collecting them later. Tuesday November 26: 1 car family commute day 2. Still raining but not as hard. When it rains in Houston the streets are filled with water due to the nonexistent elevation above sea level - it makes driving quite the adventure. I went to my 38 week doctor's appointment in the afternoon, where my blood pressure was found to be high. My doctor told me that I needed to go to the hospital that night and have the baby in the morning. This caused me to burst into tears since it meant that we wouldn't be able to go to Austin the next day, where we had planned to spend Thanksgiving and the weekend with my parents, sister, brother, and their families, although in retrospect these plans were cutting it a bit close (you might find a trend here). Along those lines, and representative of my life lately, I had a grant deadline on December 3. I didn't want to worry about this over Thanksgiving so I was almost ready to submit but needed a few more hours. With baby coming this became a real emergency. So, around 7 pm, Ben and Bluet dropped me off at the hospital with my computer, and I finished the grant, submitting it at 2 am that night. Wednesday November 27: I woke up in the hospital, but I was moved down the list of those most in need of a C section due to the arrival of women in worse shape than I. So, I spent the morning wishing for coffee, being hungry (no food or drink because of the impending surgery) and responding to work emails. Around 11 am, I actually went into labor much to my surprise. A couple of hours later I was having painful contractions 5 minutes apart, which moved me back to the top of the surgery list. Maybe Ilona had gotten hungry as well but in any case she had decided it was time to come out. So, we were whisked to the OR, prepared for surgery, and she was born at 2:49 pm, 7 pounds 2 ounces and screaming her head off. If my anesthetized memory is correct Ben came dashing in about 5 minutes later, having been occupied with meeting my mom so that Bluet could represent us at the Thanksgiving holiday, cleaning out our old apartment, and some of the other tasks on our very long list. Ilona's name comes from a novella by the Colombian writer Alvaro Mutis (Ilona Comes with the Rain). I highly recommend his collection of novellas "The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll" - I first read them about 10 years ago and they continue to be memorable. And, it turns out that Ilona did come with the rain. Here is Ilona today:

Bluet's Music

The last few months Bluet has been having extra music lessons with "Mr Jason" at her school. For a while whenever we asked her what instrument she had played, she would say 'a tambourine', so we were a bit worried we were wasting our money, as we have one of those at home. However, it turns out Bluet actually got to play lots of instruments and sing lots of songs, including playing the bass guitar (below).

Also in the car there are a small select group of songs Bluet will let us listen too. They are the "maybe baby song", "Come On Come On", "Raindrops", "The Doctor Who song", and occasionally "I Love it". As you can see they all now have massive play counts on my iTunes (The higher the play count, the earlier Bluet discovered the song)

We also sing "Raindrops" and "Come On Come On" every night before bed.

New house, new garden

Ilona has been doing very well in her first week at home, eating and sleeping as expected. Mainly Bluet has been ignoring her, but occasionally she shows concern if Ilona is crying (asking Emily if she is going to feed Ilona) or sometimes watching when her nappy is being changed.

*****LIVE UPDATE BREAKING NEWS******

Ilona is crying

Bluet "The baby is crying"
Bluet "What happened, baby?"

Baby stops crying. This us unrelated to anything Bluet did.

*****END OF LIVE UPDATE*****

One of the reasons for moving was so we could have a garden for Bluet to play in. This garden has stones, which is ideal for Bluet. Whilst Emily's Mom was staying with us earlier this week we all sat outside, including Ilona, and watched Bluet play with the stones.

Bluet's new bathroom

Bluet can spell "Bluet"

Last night, in the bath, Bluet did this all by herself

Home again/for the first time

On friday Emily and Ilona were allowed out of the hospital, a time of great rejoicing. The last of our hospital photos are below. Since then, Ilona has mainly been sleeping and eating, and eating very well, may I say.

As mentioned before, Bluet was staying with her grandparents, so didn't get to meet Ilona until Sunday morning. She had been told she had a baby sister, and even knew her name, but to make sure she wasn't too traumatised we made sure there were some presents for her - including Iggle Piggle from Gran Helen, some hello kitty plasters and some sticker books. Here are some pictures of Bluet meeting Ilona. At first she seemed interested, and asked to touch Ilona ("The baby is soft") and even gave her a kiss. If we ask her who is in her family she lists Ilona (or 'the baby') and she even told me off for playing with one of Ilona's toys ("that's not yours, Dadn, it's for the baby"). The sweetest thing she did was to run out of her room carrying a doll baby, which she held up to Ilona and exclaimed "they match". We are very proud that she has taken the new arrival so well.

Bluet News

Of course we are missing Bluet very much right now, but this picture cheered me up just now. On Wednesday morning Bluet woke at 6, crying "I need a band-aid" (plaster) over and over again. I went and got her and took her into our room - there was nothing wrong with her, so it must've been a bad dream. But she still wanted a plaster and I didn't have any. So I gave her some duct tape which I did have lying around, and told her it was a plaster. She insisted that she had to stick it to her lip. So here is Bluet with a moustache.