Zoë gets another visitor!

I finally finished my NICU rotation. It was an exhausting month. I worked 6 days a week and easily worked above 80 hour/week because of the patient load and the extremely tenuous health status of my patients. I found out today that the NICU at the University of Chicago receives a third of all critically ill babies in this country that are under 500 grams. These babies are tiny - smaller than the palm of my hand! I'm happy to say I have the day off tomorrow. I haven't had a weekend since the beginning of the month. This means Zoë and I are sleeping in while mom goes and takes an exam tomorrow. Next month will be a lot easier in hours since I'll be working in an outpatient clinic in Hyde Park. I'll see you, NICU, in 2 months.
On a much cooler note, this past week we got a wonderful surprise visit from one of our very closest friends, Jen Nizzi. Her family flew back from North Carolina for a brief break. She and one of her daughters, Piper, made a brief stop by our home to say hi and to meet Zoë. It was really nice to see her and Piper, who is growing up so fast!

Changing of the guards, and capturing the elusive smile.

Grandma Preston left on saturday after 2 weeks with us. She was a huge help and Zoë will miss her the next few months when she and grandpa are in Australia. In the meantime, Grandma Hsu arrived on sunday to start her 2 week stint watching Zoë while mom and dad are at work.

We also finally "captured" pictures of Zoë smiling. In fact, we snapped quite a few photos. Here is a sampler of the first ever photos.

Zoë Hsu vs. Bruce Willis

Our daughter has hair similar to male pattern baldness. I call it Bruce Willis alopecia. Compare:
They're practically twins!

The elusive smile

Our peanut has reached the age where she will express, if the conditions are right, a social smile. Before, "smiles" were the result of things happening in the diaper (flatulence, stooling, urinating, etc.) or random, poorly controlled facial contractions. Lisa and I pretended in these moments that she was smiling at us because they were very cute moments. We're happy to say that we no longer have to pretend. Zoë gives her toothless smile daily now; however, catching one on camera is as easy as snapping a picture of the yehti. She seems to know when we bring out the camera after a significant period of smiling because almost without fail, she goes back to her now-well-known-face-of-perpetual-startle. Like this one:

We'll be very excited when we capture one on camera. Hopefully it will be very soon!

Zoë gets another visitor

My college friend Todd was in town on business and stopped by to see us and meet Zoë. Todd and I went to the University of Pennsylvania where we were housemates with five other guys. The last time all of us were together was about 6 months ago when Todd got married to Stephanie in NYC. We all try to get together when we can since we all lead pretty busy lives. Todd is second among my college friends to meet Zoë; Rich, who was one of the housemates, wasn't only the first among my college friends to meet Zoë but was also one of the first people to meet Zoë when she was only 1 day old. Zoë and Todd's first encounter was definitely memorable. Other than the fact that Todd tried to "eat" my child, Zoë seemed to really like Todd by gracing all of us with one of her first social smiles. We weren't able to capture a photo of the moment when she smiled, but I have to say that Todd is a real pro with the babies.
Zoë also seems to really enjoy her bath times. I think it reminds her of the womb or possibly a giant pee bowl. Either case she is really happy when she's in and out of her bathtub as you can see by these photos.
I'm also including a segment called hat on/off. Just scroll back and forth real fast.

Back to work

After 3 months of maternity leave Lisa starts up residency tomorrow at RIC. I'm also on-call again tomorrow until the next day. Luckily, Grandma Preston agreed to stay with us these next 2 weeks to help care for Zoë. Seeing the most recent photos, I think they're going to do just fine during the day when the parents are gone.

Ringing in the New Year

Lisa, Zoë and I had a mellow new year's eve. In fact, we didn't even stay up late enough to see the new year (we went to bed at 10pm). I now have to get up at 5am to start my rounds at the hospital for my NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) month at the University of Chicago. I have some of the smallest babies I've ever seen among my patients. Some babies weigh less than 800 grams! Zoë's birth weight was huge in comparison. The hours are long and the patients are complex. Most of the time I come home to crash. I'm on-call again tomorrow meaning I won't be back home for another 30 straight hours. However, I had to post a blog to exhibit another Zoë fashion show, sort of a SHORT retrospective review of Zoë's 2007 clothes. She's gotten a lot of new clothes in the past month from friends and family.