To our family and friends,

We are so thankful to you all. Your prayers and well wishes are very much appreciated and very touching to us. This has been a traumatic experience -- and I'm told by many women and families -- that having a baby can be pretty harrowing without any complications. As you can see, David has done a beautiful job of developing a website for us all to see and keep up with progress, as so many of you live many miles from Portland. And I think both David and I have really invested in our soft, people skills -- between calling his family to update them, talking with doctors about the kids' progress, letting go of things we cannot control, being vulnerable, etc. This has truly been humbling.

Grace, our Gracie girl, is now a wall baby -- in the NICU anyway. When babies are getting better they move to the outside walls. She is still jaundiced so wears the cool sunglasses to protect her eyes from the bright light. I've held her twice now and she opened her eyes last night when David held her for a few minutes. As with all babies, they are blue -- and I'm not sure where she got the beautiful blonde-very light brown hair and lots of it. As my Mom says, I was born with no hair! Grace has lost a bit of weight -- still weight over three pounds though. She is back to getting my breast milk, 3ccs at a time and tolerating very well now that I'm not on the magnesium sulfate any longer. We hope to hold her again today and maybe even kangaroo her today (resting on my chest, listening to my heart rate).

William -- we hope William will stick -- has been a wall baby for a day longer than Grace. There is room for him on the outside wall so he is camping out! William got rid of his cool sunglasses a few days before Grace so his jaundice is no more. He has great specialists tending to his care -- from the neonatalogists, NPs, nurses, volunteers who rock the babies -- to all the doctors who are covering for our docs -- Dr Herwitz and Drs Power and Lockwood. Glen Roy RN is our hematology RN who has been visiting the NICU and educating the staff on a daily basis. We look forward to seeing him each day around 11am. William received his second dose of Factor -- and with the advancing of medicine, it does not contain any human blood components so he will no exposure to Hepatitis.

As for my care, Drs Andrews, Slager, and the OB/OR staff at MMC were wonderful. I received the best care and they made the best decision to deliver our babies, in light of the HELLP syndrome, on Friday morning. And while the recovery is coming along, I feel like a new woman -- and probably doing too much (as David would say). He has a long honey-do list -- and checking items off. I'm promising not to lift more than 15 lbs (all that I am allowed and certainly more than I am comfortable at this point too). My Mom is here and has taken charge of our food prep, grocery shopping, and general taking care of us at home. She has joined us at the hospital and hopefully we will get her holding the babes today.

To Anne -- the stew was delicious! We enjoyed the meal last night.

And I owe a few folks calls -- feel free to keep calling us. We enjoy hearing your voices on our answering machine.

We are off to the hospital -- so between the hospital and pumping, my life is full -- and of things, I had no idea of just last week.

Our best and with much love,

David, Victoria, and the babes