James and Claire

Thanks for all of the concerned e-mails today. We are actually doing much better....we just had a disappointing night last night and it came out in the blog. Today was much better. After all, today was Christy's 13th anniversary of her 25th birthday.

When Christy woke up, she was greeted by a very special hand-drawn birthday card, constructed from the finest college-rule three-hole notebook paper, complete with frayed edges from where it was yanked out. I have found that there is a certain charm in simplicity, particularly when you don't have time to go out and get a real card. The card featured likenesses of our entire family and Mamaw (depicted in what can best be described as Muppet form). Too bad I don't have a scanner. It was a beauty...and Christy liked it.

I made sure Christy was up and ready to go at 8:30, and then I drove her to 4th street for a morning beverage at a cool little place called Jo's. From there, it was a short walk to Milk and Honey....an upscale spa. I dropped Christy off for her 2-hour massage, manicure, pedicure, and eyebrow waxing. She seemed to like this even better than the card.

While she was at the spa, I returned to the hotel and worked. Mamaw and Nicholas ventured out to run some birthday-related errands. They picked up a birthday carrot cake, Blue Bell ice cream, cards, gifts, etc. Mamaw even loaded the fridge with stuff she can cook because she has had it with dining out. She even hit the dollar store to pick up cheap kitchen tools. The dollar store is a familiar place to her, as this is where she bought cooking lessons many years ago (cheap shot alert).

At 12:30, Mamaw returned, and I left to visit the twins and have a discussion with their doctor. When I got to the hospital, I was pleased to see two of our favorite nurses hovering around Claire and James. After a brief discussion, it was clear that the events from last night had been communicated to them and the Thursday release was off. This is what I wanted to hear. Claire's eating struggles were continuing, even when fed by a professional. As I was there, their doctor called and I told her to come on down to the crib. She came down and answered all of my questions. She told me that renting a monitor for home is a terrible idea, and that she would not let us. She had me at 'It's a terrible idea'. She told us that they were going to run some CBC's to make sure the twins do not have an infection of any kind....just to rule it out. She indicated that when they get released really just depends on when all release criteria has been satisfied. No time table. The news was not surprising, but I felt better.

After the hospital, I went to pick up Christy. I walked into the salon and found her toes-up in the pedicure chair....looking completely refreshed and relaxed. I tapped her on the shoulder and started whispering my recently-learned twin status into her ear. After about two words, she told me to talk louder because all of the women in there wanted to listen. Yep...they all knew the story and were dying for updates. So we chatted for a while while her toes were drying and then headed back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, Mamaw and Nicholas had planned a surprise party for Christy. Nicholas handed her balloons and brought out a cake. Mamaw forgot candles, so they used jelly beans....the trick kind where the flame never goes out no matter how hard you blow. After a stirring rendition of 'Happy Birthday', Nicholas and Christy joined forces to extinguish the jelly beans. We all had cake and Blue Bell ice cream. Mamaw gave Christy this silver necklace charm that is shaped like Texas, but has a heart-shaped hole in it. Christy loved it, of course. As we were taking pictures, Nicholas had a lapse in self-control and started bobbing for jelly beans by sticking his whole face on top of the cake.

Later in the afternoon, Mamaw and Christy took Nicholas down to the pool for a while.

I took Christy out for a nice dinner at Roy's, which is one of our favorite restaurants from Hawaii. The setting was nice and the service was good, but something was definitely lost somewhere between Hawaii and Texas. Apparently, each Roy's location contributes its own style from the local culture. The first and most obvious of these 'culture infusions' was when they brought out these pea pods instead of bread. I started to chuckle when they presented us with this pile of plants that I would normally probably pick out of the garden and throw over the fence. Christy, who has a shred of culture, showed me how to eat the beans from the pods. I tried one, and then pushed the plate as far away as I could. Maybe that is a delicacy down here, but where I come from, that's not food. Right at this moment, the manager came by and asked if everything was to our liking. I asked him for bread and butter. He informed us that they had recently replaced the before-meal bread with these beans. I asked him again for bread...and he found some. A while later, the busboy saw the bowl of bean things pushed all the way to the corner and asked if we were done with it. He seemed surprised that we had not devoured them...very odd.

We both ordered seafood dishes and both were OK, not great. We took a pass on dessert because we wanted to get back to the hotel in time to give Nicholas a bath and read books.

Nicholas was happy to see us and we had a very nice evening.

When he went down, we headed to the hospital. Things are pretty much the same. The CBC's came back and there is no infection, which is good. Claire, being on all bottle feeds, had the last wire removed from her face. Today's photos include the first of Claire 'un-plugged'.

Today was a much better day. Happy Birthday to Christy.