Catching up to do

There is so much to catch up on... I don't even know where to begin! Charlie is doing well. She is growing quickly. At her last weigh in (last Thursday) she was 6lbs 10oz. She seems to be gaining about an ounce a day so I figure she is over 7lbs by now. My new favorite thing is that she can really hold her head up on her own pretty easily. It is fun to see her looking around and being so aware of things that are going on around her. I can pick her up by grabbing under her arms and lifting and not have to worry about her head bobbing around. In some ways I feel so lucky to have a preemie because she is still so little. I guess one positive thing in all of this is that my baby is a baby for so much longer. The down side of having a preemie is that I really do feel paranoid about everything. I started getting a cold yesterday and now I am worried sick that Charlie is going to get sick and that it is RSV, not just the common cold (of course RSV is the virus that is really bad news for preemies... it causes major respitory issues and can even cause death). Her pediatrician mentioned that there is RSV out there in the community already but I checked a Southern CA blog that gets info from various hospitals in the area and they have yet to have any reported cases, which makes me feel better. For some reason they don't start giving the RSV prevention shot until the first week of November (which makes no sense seeing as how the season usually starts in October). In any event, she seems to be okay as of right now. I am wearing a mask around the house (luckily my packrat of a husband kept the mask that he wore during my c-section) and washing my hands after every time I sneeze or blow my nose (which is rather frequent at this point!!) So, we just keep praying that Charlotte has some how eluded this sickness. Even if it is NOT RSV I would hate to see her sick with this. It is truly no fun at all!

One thing is for sure, our little peanut is so cute and getting cuter every day! Here are some new(er) pictures of our sweet 3 month old (can you even believe that she will be three months tomorrow?!?! She is so precious!!!

I found a few pics from back in the NICU that I wanted to post here...

Here is the three of us on game day. Check out Charlie's booties :)




These are pictures that we took the day we left the hospital... One of the nurses was hilarious and wanted to put Charlotte in all these crazy places. I will have to find those pictures on Will's computer. For now, these are a few we took that day.

Charlie in daddy's ball cap (just to give you some perspective on how little 4lbs is)

Here we are with her nurse Amanda (who we still keep in contact with and has become a good friend to us) and Charlie with Dr. Kukraja (one of our favorite and most encouraging doctors!)


Here are a couple pictures from the night we got home (we stopped at Marsha and Wyman's on the way so that we could feed her, so we didn't get home until late)


And here are just a few random cute ones from around the time we got home from the hospital...





That is all for now... I promise to update more soon and get some pictures of our showers up here as well as pictures from just before she was born when we were in Hawaii :)