Chronological age: 55 days / Adjusted age: -3 weeks

Hi, you robins! Hoping this post finds you in the sunshine and welcoming spring.

Along the way we’ve received a handful of frequent questions, the answers to which we thought could be useful to share in one place. Without further ado, a few Q&As are below – and if you have others you think would be handy to include, please let us know.

How much do the girls weigh?

It feels impossible to type these numbers! As of last night, Poppy is 4 lbs. 14 oz., and Marty is 5 lbs. 14 oz. They’re bonafide giants.

When are they coming home?

Also impossible to type: Last week the doctors cautioned us that the last big developmental hurdle – feeding – could be the most extended and arduous. Yet in the last few days Margot is now consuming nearly all calories orally (rather than through her feeding tube), and could come home very soon. !!! This prospect is astonishing, the emotional equivalent of a hundred elephants trumpeting on parade across our hearts. As joyful as that feels, it’s also daunting to think of Penelope remaining at the NICU, now alone, and what that means as we splice time into smaller and smaller bits. We will keep you posted either way.

What will be the long-term effects of being born so soon?

This is where worry still lies. Even when home and growing like the healthiest of babies, the potential for long-term effects of being a micro-preemie is still real. This include emergence of cognitive disorders, deafness, blindness, cerebral palsy. Tests to date haven’t indicated the girls will encounter any acute issues, and the monitoring of such will be a constant in their continued care.

How is Lucy doing in all this?

Our brave, beautiful bird.

By inheritance, Lucy is awfully English; this is no more evident than in her tendency to bear a stiff upper lip (and to manifest the Squires family credo: “Hold firm”). She nods glancingly when we explain that Mama is leaving to stay at the hospital, or that her sisters aren’t coming home quite yet. Like a “good sport” she sends cheerful voice memos to whichever parent isn’t tucking her in at night, and she goes about her day, which thankfully includes time with Gigi and the warmhearted regimen of her school, the Northern Door Children’s Center.

In the quieter moments, though, Lucy asks questions. She asks if we truly have to go, if her sisters really want to meet her, if we will all be together someday. And that’s what we hope, that she keeps coming to us, that conversation can be a light in the privacy of her bright and busy mind.

Where are you living these days?

We remain divided between a few locations: Meghan hopscotches between Sister Bay and the hospital in Green Bay, Lucy remains mostly in Sister Bay (at either our current home or Gigi’s) to attend school, and Casey is ensconced in Sister Bay, working unflaggingly to make our new house livable. Currently, we do share one address, one meeting place at the apartment on Glen Lane.

Do the girls look like twins?

The answer right now is… kind of. Poppy is still comparably smaller than Margot, so she is yet to mirror her sister’s very cheeky cheeks. And Poppy has two marks on her eyelids called “salmon patches” that will likely go away with time. For now, they’re distinguishable, and fully lovely in their own way. (And they’ve spared us from deploying Dr. Hayes’s #1 checklist item upon the birth of identical twins: Nail polish. To be applies to each tiny baby’s toes to tell one apart from the other.)

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We see pictures like this, and identicalness seems like a stretch…

And then an image like this, and there they are! Two little girls, twins as can be. ⇩