She Calls This Pose "Blue Steel"

 It's hard to believe we've been in IMU just over a week now. In addition to making major progress in her breathing, gaining a respectable amount of weight and managing to fight off any further infections, Josephine has been working on her model poses.  (Notice that she favors the sassy, Olan Mills, hand-below-the-chin look, which she has been perfecting since her sonogram days.) 

Besides spending a great deal of quality time snuggled up relaxing with either Mommy or Daddy, Josephine has continued with various therapies aimed at helping her recover the developmental time lost while she was intubated and unable to move.  Despite the fact that she has slept through every last session of her speech therapy (which isn't aimed at helping her speak, but rather at assisting her in mastering the ability to swallow effectively in spite of some ongoing vocal chord paralysis), she amazed the speech therapist today by taking a bottle and successfully drinking a little under an ounce of milk.  (She would have taken more, but the speech therapist wanted to wait and make sure she's not accidentally aspirating what she swallows.)  The long and short of it is that Josephine is a total champ when it comes to eating!  (Like mother, like daughter I suppose. :)  )

We're now waiting to get the go-ahead for Josephine to move to "the floor".  (It was pointed out to me that when taken literally, "the floor" seems awfully cruel.  In our situation, it refers to the 8th floor of the hospital where kids go just before they are sent home.)  Michael and I have been completing our education requirements - learning to give medications, place a feeding tube, work a feeding pump and administer CPR - so once we make it to the floor, we should only need to complete the room-in process before Josephine is discharged.  Rumor has it we may be moving upstairs within the next week and may be able to do our room-in a by next weekend.  We're getting so close!