FARGO -- Abby Carlsen had her eye on her sister's fingers. The twins were sitting a few inches apart, perched on the laps of visiting relatives. While the grownups chatted, Abby leaned in and pulled Belle's left hand tantalizingly close to her mouth. She could almost taste it, when Belle jerked her hand away.

So close, and yet so far.

It was so much easier when they were conjoined.

The Carlsen twins, now 8 months old, are still adjusting to the way life has changed since they were separated at the Mayo Clinic in May. And so are their parents.

Now that they're finally back home, there are no more doctors and nurses underfoot, no more feeding tubes to worry about, no more life-and-death decisions to make.

But it's still not exactly the "normal life" that Amy and Jesse Carlsen once thought parenthood would be. Not yet.

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The Carlsens could have been mistaken for foreign dignitaries when they arrived at the Rochester airport for the flight home in early June. A small jet awaited them. Photographers snapped their pictures. Jesse placed the babies' car seats on the floor of the hangar and gazed around, a little awestruck.

The day before, the Mayo Clinic had tossed them a farewell to remember -- a balloon-studded celebration in the courtyard of St. Marys Hospital.

And now this, a private jet with two nurses to accompany them on the 51-minute flight to Fargo.

Jesse spotted a red mat at the foot of the stairway and laughed. A friend had jokingly told him: "Well, they better have a red carpet." And there it was.

Their extraordinary journey, from the birth of conjoined twins to the dramatic separation surgery in front of news cameras, had elevated the family to celebrity status. During their three months at Mayo, so many news organizations had chronicled their story that one reporter asked what it felt like being the parents of "the most famous babies in the world."

Jesse, amused, didn't miss a beat. "Didn't Tom Cruise just have a baby?" he replied.

As they stepped off the plane in Fargo, they could see Amy's parents and sister rushing toward them, surrounded by a cheering crowd of about 100 people with banners and cameras. On Interstate Hwy. 94, a billboard blared, "Welcome Home Carlsen Twins."

When Amy walked into her house for the first time in months, she breathed a sigh of relief. The front door closed on the crowd of photographers milling outside.

'Now be nice'

In late June, just seven weeks after their daylong surgery, the babies were babbling and rolling over and learning to crawl -- just like other babies their age. The vertical scars that mark where they were once connected, at the chest and abdomen, were hidden beneath their matching pink Onesies.

Amy marveled at how far they'd come. "If you had met them for the first time, you would never know," she mused. Belle was using her sister's foot as a teething ring as Abby struggled to inch away. "Now be nice to each other," their mother chided.