Of Babies and Men

It took a few minutes but Lucas finally forgave mommy for
being an absentee mother in the recent weeks

Cheers mommy! Now everyone has their proper sippy cup :)

When mommy left for the hospital the first time she was gone for two weeks and only saw us one time. Then three days after she came home, she returned to the hospital only to be AWOL for yet another six days. She was shocked by what she saw back at home.

When she left we were yet babies, but when she returned we had become little men.

Mommy was speechless when she saw us with our elongated feet and chunky hands. Even Lucas' disastrous haircut has made a comeback! Mommy still can't ascertain whether our sudden morphing into little men is because we are monstrous compared to little 4-pound Raia or whether we really grew that much in the last four sketchy weeks that she was gone more than she was present.

Mommy was welcomed home in high style this weekend (previous video). And she was impressed with our new skill set of self feeding ... or not (following video).

It has been exactly a week since Raia apparently entered the world. I have yet to see conclusive proof of her existence, but that is the storyline nonetheless. As for Lucas and I, our lives have returned to normal with mommy actually making frequent appearances at home, including in the morning when we wake up. Mimi and GongGong are still here and they have been our substitute parents in the last month. They have established a new routine of letting us play outside after school and feeding us treats that had been banned in our home up until now. It is a very dangerous proposition to allow grandparents to parent.

We have bonded a lot with abba in mommy's absence. He treats us as his dessert. Ooga means cake in Hebrew. 

But apparently no one else's life has returned to normal. "Normal" has been redefined now for an estimated month or so while Raia continues her development ex-utero. She needed about 9 more weeks in the womb, so she'll be taking those in an incubator now in the NICU at the hospital downtown.

I always thought "kangaroo" was a marsupial from Australia.
But apparently it is also a method of holding babies!

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Outdone by a Little - and I mean little - Baby!

Touche, baby sister! Nice touch on the whole premature birth thing!

I heard through the grapevine that my track record for drama has been shattered. Mommy is AWOL again and this time it has a lot to do with the perhaps not-so-shocking news of the century: our little sister, Raia Jansezian, was born on Monday, Nov. 18 at 5 p.m.

Eight weeks early.  

Plus she caused mommy to spend an inordinate amount of time beforehand (and now afterwards) in a hospital.

She will steal the spotlight for at least the next few weeks, making mommy and abba traipse back and forth between Lucas and I at home and Raia at the hospital. Raia may actually beat my own hospital-stay record in just the first month of her life! Although she is not allowed to count the time (about 20 days) from before she was born. That wouldn't be fair.

Lucas and I have yet to see evidence of her arrival, which occurred less than 24 hours ago. Apparently she is a top-secret baby. If she does exist, we other babies will not be able to lay an eye or a hand on her until she is discharged from the hospital. And after 7 months of manhandling mommy's belly, this is going to be a rough time for us to have to abstain.

Raia's first few portraits will be just like mine - replete with wires and tubes, under a heating lamp and in a preemie ward.

She was on track to be the biggest of all the Jansezian babies, threatening to pass the 8 or 9 lb mark if she waited till week 40. That was good though since she clocked in at 1.970 kilos at week 31, well surpassing 4 pounds.

All in all, Raia (pronounced rye-uh) is off to a good start physically and dramatically. She is going to fit in great with Lucas - Italian soccer player drama queen - and myself - the ultimate king and diva of all sorts of theatrics.

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A Force to be Reckoned With on the Broadway Stage of our Lives

Lucas practices this look...

...and I perfect mine!

I believe our sister is already angling for the spotlight and how she may steal it from me. I am constantly in a tug of war with Lucas for this spotlight and, as you may recall, I managed to wrest the attention away from Lucas' birth (see link for more info) with a dramatic ride to the hospital in an ambulance while connected to an oxygen machine. You really can't beat tactics like that. I made sure to remain in the hospital up until and then even after Lucas' birth and send off so that my homecoming was after his.

But since his birth, Lucas has proven to be a formidable opponent. When he started out, his cry was an Academy-Award-winning-wake-up call that was akin to the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings. It caused even the bravest adults to react with sheer terror, and mommy was even too traumatized to close her eyes lest she be awoken in such a manner from a much-needed deep sleep. Now in his older days, Lucas channels Italian soccer player diva mannerisms by collapsing into dramatic cries. On the ground. Replete with fake tears and the trademark flip of the hair from his forehead. His Italian side really shines through when it comes to drama.

Lucas is already a force to be reckoned with
on the attention-getting front

But then again, I am constantly working
on a new look to sport as well

But this new baby - even before birth - is proving a force that could outdo the both of us. First of all she has the advantage of being of the princess gender. Second, she is the youngest child. And third, she has already caused some major upheaval in our lives by placing mommy in the hospital for nearly two weeks.

If you can judge a personality by one's pre-birth behavior, this one will also try to out-dance me on the dance floor - which is MY territory. She is practicing her moves as she swings violently around the womb at all times. And she is supremely impatient having already threatened to invade our space with an early birth.

I can already sense the competition beginning to heat up!

The following videos are from the hospital when Lucas and I invaded mommy and princess' space for a few hours the other day. As you can see, there is no dearth of entertainment options at a hospital!

The following two photos: One is breakfast, one is dinner
- every single day at the hospital. 

Can you guess which is which?

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Who Says Hospitals are Boring?

Look who we found!

 Mommy has been awol for almost two weeks now, hiding away from Lucas and I. We have spotted her during that time on FaceTime or Skype, but before today, we haven't had any confirmation of her exact whereabouts.

However now we know where she is - and that she has been misleading us all along!

Mommy is vacationing in a toddlers' paradise - without us! She has a bed that reclines and rises with the touch of some alluring buttons. She is surrounded by all sorts of advanced technological equipment that would be ever so much fun to play with. The elevators are glass and you could spend all day watching the fun compartments go up and down. She gets served three meals a day - to her bedside! And, someone comes to clean her room - every single day. Who could ask for anything more? Well, a bucket of champagne would be nice too, according to mommy.

Buttons!

Wheels!

Personally I think she is trying to get in some vacation before there are three of us to outnumber our parents and the amount of hands needed to juggle our needs. And yet she says she misses us and that she is bored out of her mind.

But after today I realized it is a ruse - hospitals are anything but boring. When we finally came to visit, we couldn't contain ourselves!

More buttons!

A bed with buttons!

Recline!

A remote control!

Incline!

Lights! Buttons! Equipment! Beeps! Nurses! Hallways! Wheelchairs instead of strollers!

Lucas and I were ecstatic and spent the first several minutes inspecting every crevice of mommy's room. We tried to unplug life support machines. We adjusted the bed - sometimes while either one of us were under it! The IV bag would make a great bath toy we noticed. The doctors' computers are on rolling desks - a double whammy of disaster waiting to happen. The  windowsills make perfect benches for sitting. The closets and drawers are perfect for our height. And the curtains make a great place to play peekaboo, or cuckoo as it is called in other parts of the world.

Free rides!

Lots of free rides!

We took rides in the glass elevators waving to anyone in the lobby who cared to watch. We used a wheelchair as a roller coaster up and down ramps. And we rearranged the furniture in the family room. Lucas and I also learned how to squeeze the alcohol from the bottles that are conveniently placed at the door of every room so that every part of us and the surrounding floors were well disinfected, perhaps better than ever!

It was a new adventure, a day of pioneering for both myself and Lucas. A span of two hours that left us spent of almost every ounce of toddler energy we have (our reserves are endless though). So we weren't too upset when we left, without mommy. I smacked her face and Lucas whimpered a little. But otherwise we were too tired to be upset for long. During the car ride home I napped and then when we got home we both continued in that vein, replenishing our reserves for the afternoon's activities.

And then we saw mommy again later ominously appearing on the iPad from her "spa." Hmph!

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