Chronological age: 45 days / Adjusted age: -4 weeks and 2 days

Tomorrow is April and still this ground, its shoulders hunched, just aches to thaw. It remains winter here, the sun bright and bracing and unyieldingly cold. And yet seventy miles south in Green Bay, two small sprouts are tucked away in real cribs (!), daring to bloom.

The latest –

Margot: Is so big! She is the first to graduate to an open-air crib, finally at a weight at which she can regulate her own body temperature. In addition, her respiration has improved such that her breathing tubes were removed and she is “on room air,” as they say. Huge, momentous, gorgeous steps forward! From what we’ve observed, Marty is our resident rubber face: She spends every holding session hosting the whole spectrum of human emotion on her face. She laughs and furrows and wrinkles her nose in awe and exaltation. Every moment a moving picture.

Penelope: Poppy is finally off the verrry long course of antibiotics that treated her Staph infection, which meant the relief of removing her PICC line. She has also been moved to an open-air crib (and then shifted back to the isolette upon struggling to breathe, and then back again). She continues to gain weight too, our little engine that could. Poppy sleeps deeply and gazes deeply and smiles deeply (…okay, maybe that’s gas, but the smiling/gas is ELECTRIC). She seems to know exactly what she’d like at any moment – a characteristic Lucy has acquainted us with quite well – and we trust that fierce depth will be the fuel that drives her tiny caboose right out of the NICU.

What’s next: Marty and Poppy are both still being fed via feeding tubes, and learning to eat by themselves is the current hurdle. Meghan is at the hospital as often as can be to work on nursing, and Casey and the nurses and occupational and speech therapists will teach them to take a bottle.

Additionally, yesterday the girls received an eye exam that raised a few preliminary red flags – it appears both are suffering retinal disease that, though prevalent in micro-premature babies, could lead to vision disorders/blindness. This reading is in its very early stages, and we refuse to be worried – not until we’ve been instructed to, and not when there’s so much to celebrate.