Finally, a new post!

OK, it's been a while since we've written anything here, so let's start with some exciting new numbers (courtesy of Blaise):

Direct Bilirubin: 0.3 (!) This is officially normal range.
Weight: 3.12 kg (~6.84lbs)
Total milk per day: 252ml
Blood donated on Blaise's behalf: (~2000ml)
Total amount of blood Blaise has: (~200ml, or so we're told)
Actual social smiles exhibited by Blaise: many, and they're both cute and hard to photograph.

Speaking of photographs, here are two very nice pictures of Blaise at nearly 3 months of age. These were taken by our friend Julie during her and Mathieu's visit.


It's really been a lot of fun hanging out with Blaise lately. She seems to have crossed a few developmental thresholds in terms of how social she is, and many of her nurses have remarked that she seems very interested in finding out what's happening around her. Both Erin and I have noticed how much Blaise seems to attend to conversations happening nearby these days, and the early hints we had of her orienting towards our voices have given way to full-fledged direct attention to us when we're nearby. This also means she knows when we've left, which further means that she knows turning on the waterworks is a sure-fire tactic for getting us to stay in the room. A funny detail about that is that she cries with real tears now, which makes her crabby fits seem that much more laden with grief.

The word from her care team is good all around. There've been a few small things here and there we've been a little concerned about, but nothing major. Blaise seemed like she had a small cold last week, along with an elevated white blood cell count (which could signal an infection). Both of these things resolved on their own, though, so no worries for the moment. The most recent development however, is that her lines aren't "drawing" which means her nurses can't get blood out of them to get her lab work done. This is kind of a pain, since it means they have to actually stick Blaise with a needle for the blood they need and also because it may mean there's a bit of plaque (or a clot) blocking the line. I should add that putting things into the line is fine...she's all set for getting her IV nutrition and Omegaven, but it'd be nice if we can get her lines back to being a two-way street. Today they'll try using TPA (a clot-buster) to fix 'em up, but we'll see how it goes.

Beyond that stuff though, she's really just been hanging out, charming nursing students left and right, and getting bigger every day. Of course, we're both starting to get a bit anxious about her upcoming surgery, but Blaise maintains an air of Zen-like calm. April 6th seems very close. Here's hoping I can get some of that calm to rub off on me.

PS - More pictures to follow, we promise!