Four Shots

Well, today was another visit to the pulmonologist and more shots. They are receiving a medication to help prevent RSV this winter. They are big enough that they now need two shots of the medication, one in each leg. This visit, I had to work so Rocky brought the girls to the office and we went together. Then we had lunch in the cafeteria before he went home to rescue Gramma and Grampa from the other kiddos! The girls are now on breathing treatments 3 times a day and steroids twice a day for the next 5 days. If they are not better by monday, we are to call the doctor back to see where to go from here. He believes that they have just picked up a virus that has caused their Reactive Airway Disease (from prematurity, etc) to flare up. Isabelle has now passed up Abby by nearly a pound. She weighed in at 19 lbs 2 oz and almost 29 inches. Abby was 18 lbs 5 ounces and 28 inches. No wonder the are so heavy in their car seats!

This weekend was really busy. I made cookies and candy on Saturday and then on Sunday the kids and Mema decorated the cookies we made. There are a FEW left over for santa, but not many! That's ok, I hear Santa doesn't need that many cookies, anyway!

Here are some pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses, and then my 4 girls together. Olivia was not really keen on posing for a picture, but we tried. Isabelle now has 6 teeth. She has cut 4 on the top and 2 on the bottom now. Abby is behind with just the 4 (two on top and two on bottom). We will be spending tomorrow taking care of the last minute things for Christmas, cooking, cleaning and cooking and cleaning! Oh, and did I mention I am counting the loads of laundry I do this week, just to see. I started on Sunday and I am already up to 10 - How high do you think it will go?










We hope you have a blessed Christmas!

5 More days until Christmas!

Today is a pretty relaxing day, if you call Wal-Mart at 8:30 am relaxing. Well, I guess it is better than Wal-Mart at 12:00 pm on a Saturday, 5 days before Christmas! I have been busy making cookies to give to friends, and will soon start rolling out cookies for the kids to decorate tomorrow for Santa, and US to eat! I have not wrapped ANYTHING at all - that will be tonight. I guess the kids haven't noticed, as none of them has asked where the presents are. I hate to wrap them as I get them because I don't want to hear the "so-and-so has X number of presents, and I only have X" whining. It's better that they just appear one morning.

On a more relaxing front - the girls are pretty consistently sleeping all night. This morning I awoke at 7:30 - NO ONE was crying, up, or in bed with us! At 8, Emily came down and said someone was crying. Thus all the girls were up. That's OK, I'll take 12 hours of sleeping babies!

Today is my Mom's birthday. Rocky's parents are going to come over and watch the kids, eat dinner with them, and put them lovingly to bed while we take them out to eat at a REALLY nice place. I'll save the place for later, as it is a surprise!

Oh, well. Back to baking!

It finally happened!

Well, sort of. I put the girls down last night, upstairs, in separate beds. GUESS what happened? Well - I woke Abby up this morning to get her dressed for school! Izzy had different ideas last night. She wanted some one-on-one bonding time with mommy. She got it! Well, it was definately less painful waking up to one baby between us rather than two. I did warn the daycare that Abby was probably REALLY hungry, as she had gone from 9:30 to past 7am without eating. She did cry all the way to daycare, but stopped when I pulled in the parking lot. Way to go girls! Maybe our no-sleep-sore-back-no-room-in-the-bed days are coming to an end!

TTTS Awareness day

I just stumbled upon the Twin to Twin Transfusion Website the other day and noticed that December 7th is World Awareness day for TTTS. I am working on getting a fundraising page up, but if you would like to contribute, please go to the TTTS Foundation webpage and you can donate from there. It's amazing, as we just past the girls 1 year birthday, where we were last year at this time. Even though we didn't progress to the laser treatment and/or we didn't have to choose which one of our girls would live, I am forever grateful to the Doctors, nurses and other staff in Houston for their care and concern. We made 7 painful (just long) trips there and came home each time with healthy babies. I'll never forget the whirlwind events the few days before they were born. I didn't have a good feeling the week before I was admitted, and I had actually scheduled another visit to Houston to have things looked at again. I never got to make that trip. I am so grateful that I listened to my body. By the Sunday before the girls were born, I was having difficulty sitting on the couch and getting a big breath. It turns out, Abby was doing worse and her fluid had increased. Some of the extra fluid was removed on Monday and my doctor told me I was in the hospital for the long haul. I spent the rest of the day making sure that I had all the necessary things for a few months in the hospital - toiletries and a laptop! What else do you need? The next day, things were ok and we celebrated Olivia's birthday in my hospital room. By wednesday, things were looking grim again and the delivery was scheduled.

All this to say - thank you to everyone who helped us through this most stressful time in our lives - we couldn't have done it without you. If you feel like giving back to someone - please consider the TTTS foundation, as they were very quick to mail us resources free of charge. These were invaluable in helping us understand in detail what was going on. Have a wonderful week!

Luau Pictures

Here are some of the pictures from the Luau. We had a relaxing day on Sunday, the day after and opened presents. It was wonderful that way - not rushed, etc. I tried to get pictures of everone with their respective gifts, but soon they tired of that. Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

What a difference 365 days makes!

Abigail Hope Then...
Abigail Hope Now...
Isabelle Joy Then...
Isabelle Joy Now...

Birthday News

Well, we have passed all 4 birthdays in three days. Matthew turned 4 on November 11th, Olivia turned 2 on November 13 and today was Abigail and Isabelle's first birthday. We had cake twice this week and celebrated at dinner. Today, not even one picture of the girls on their first birthday. Oh, well - that will change tomorrow. We will be having the grandaddy of all parties tomorrow night. I'll post many pictures, but we have been busy all week with preparations. I took off this week to get the house ready, shop and cook. I'm exhausted. I'm almost ready to go back to work. (ALMOST). Anyway, more tomorrow!

Halloween Night

Well, instead of trick-or-treating the usual way this year, we went to "Old Town" and participated in the first annual BOO BASH. Everyone in the community came together for one HUGE block party. Some of the local churches and businesses, instead of having their own independent events, had booths, cars, bounce houses, etc in the streets of Old Town. I think they were predicting a few thousand people. It was way more than that. There were people everywhere. I will be interested in finding out how many people there actually were. I really like things like that, even though they are crowded, you always run into someone you haven't seen in ages. Mom went with us and Dad stayed here with Mema to hand out candy. Mom hadn't realized how much a magnet the twins were. Everyone would stop to admire, compare twin stories, etc. There is such a bond between families of multiples you don't realize until you have them. It's so neat to compare stories, get and give advice and just commiserate sometimes! Anyway, enjoy the pictures.
Joshua, dressed up as, well, a 13 year old 7th grader trying to be cool but still wanting candy.
Caleb, the pirate, arrrrrrrg.
Emily the Mad Scientist, who said she wanted to be a cheerleader again next year...
Olivia, the Pixie. What is a pixie, anyway? CUTE.
Matthew the Spider.
Isabelle, the baby...

and Abigail the baby.

Here is everyone. I had to dress up as 50's for work, so Rocky just did a quick change from PJ's to match me. Maybe I should have changed into PJ's to match him. Oh well. Have a great saturday. We will be doing the soccer thing all day!

Pumpkins and Halloween Morning

This morning before I took the kids to Daycare, we stopped on the front porch for a quick picture. How cute are my 4 littlest pumpkins! (Isabelle is on the Left - I know, wrong, but it was a quick picture)

Pictures

Here are some pictures from our weekend away.

Caleb's Prayer

Caleb was going up the stairs and found a wooden block he mad in RA's a few weeks ago at church. It is a prayer wheel. Today he is to pray for school. He asked that when I was done on the computer, would I pray with him. Here is his prayer: "Dear Jesus, Thank you for our Teachers. If we didn't have teachers, we would all be bored at home. Thank you for school. Amen."

Today it did, and other happenings

Things have been pretty busy around here lately. Joshua is busy with Band and the youth group at church. Emily and Caleb are enjoying the last few weeks of soccer. Matthew and Olivia enjoy playing outside and eating popsicles on the picnic table under the swingset and the new sand daddy put in the sand box this weekend. Abigail and Isabelle are busy pulling up, cruising and keeping mommy and daddy up at night. I also had a birthday. Rocky surprised me and took me out of town this weekend, WITHOUT children - thanks to Mom and Dad, John and Louann, Sherry, Riki and the Youth Group at Oak Grove for watching all our kiddos. We went to a Bed and Breakfast that we enjoyed a few years ago. It is in Kyle and it is called The Inn Above Onion Creek. It is really beautiful. There are no onions, and the creek is dried up, but it is pretty all the same. I'll post pictures later when I have more time. It was too short, but really wonderful. I had a 2 hour massage while Rocky had a little alone time. We had a wonderful dinner and a beautiful walk back to our cottage in the dark, amongst the Cattle. (Ask Rocky about his unreasonable fear of Cows sometime). We came home and went out to eat at Outback with all of our dear friends: Shay and Marcus, Becky and Jay, Sherry and Steven, Liz and David and Jim (Robin was out of town). Jim and Jennifer were with us in spirit. We had a wonderful time. Thanks, guys for making a difficult birthday fun!

Well, not too often I tell a Mema story, but here is one that everyone will get a kick out of. The other day, Rocky had her helping to make juice before bed so they could enjoy it for breakfast. The next morning, everyone got juice. No one said anything, but it was really watery. I just figured Rocky deliberately watered it down to make it last longer, and the kids don't need any additional sugar anyway. Well, later that evening, Rocky asked Mema about it. She said she followed the directions precicely and put 3 cans per one of juice. She made two pitchers. Rocky tried to explain that there is no way that 3 cans of water and one of juice could possibly fill up 2 pitchers. She argued with him and said that she did just that. Three cans of water. Again, Rocky trying to get to the bottom of the watery juice, pressed the subject saying agan that 3 cans of water could in no way fill up 2 pitchers. Her reply was - "well they did today".

My Baby!

My baby is almost 13. I am almost the mother of a teenager. That just doesn't seem possible to me - throw in the fact that in less than a month, I will be entering another decade of my life and this has the makings of a really crummy end of the year for me. Last night, Josh and some of his friends had a sleep-over after we took them out to Razzoos. We had a really nice night. We got in and out and were back home in 2 hours (thank you Grammy and Grampy) for watching the other kiddos so we could enjoy time with our "soon-to-be teen". As I type this, it is 11:19 pm, less than an hour from the actual time of birth (11:59 pm). His goal is to say up until then. Good thing he took a nap today, since I don't think there was much sleeping going on upstairs last night. (also, one major design flaw of our house - the playroom is directly over our bedroom, as is the air hockey table). Oops. Well, here are some pictures of my baby!





I guess that I can "out" Josh in that if you look closely, the shirt in the pictures from last night and the last picture taken a few minutes ago is one in the same. I am told that at some point in the teen years, the boys start bathing like 6 times a day. Please tell me that happens the day they turn 13!

Julie

TEETH!

Well, Abby and Izzy both have one tooth each - so I guess we could say "teeth". Saturday, Caleb lost a tooth and the girls seemed to have found it. They each are sporting a very small, but everpresent bump on the bottom left. You can't see it yet, just feel it. Now you will draw back a very wet finger when trying to feel said teeth, but they are there. They are also crawling up a storm, and they are starting to want to pull up. Isabelle pulled up to her bumbo seat saturday. They are getting there.

Now - Save the date. We are going to have a BIG party for the girls first birthday, Olivia's second birthday and Matthew's fourth birthday. November 15th - details to come!

More later, Julie

Labor Day

Well, we had a great holiday. Everyone came over and we had a wonderful Luau. We had Kalua Pig, chicken long rice, mac salad, sticky rice, shoyu chicken, spam musubi, fruit salad and coconut pie. It was a wonderful day. The kids played outside in the sprinklers and had water balloon fights and Abby learned to crawl - forward.

The First Day of School

Well, I guess officially it is not the first day for the smaller 4, but here is the picture so humor me. We are off and running. After school, Caleb had soccer practice. I took all the paperwork for the 3 oldest to fill out. Too bad they just can't have a district wide database for all the emergency numbers, addresses, etc. And how many "Code of Conduct" books do we need exactly. The amount of paper that I threw away, wow. Oh, well - here is the picture.

Too bad I forgot to move the girl's toys out of the way, but you know what they look like.

Sitting Up and Getting Wet

Well, the girls are on their way to crawling. They are getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth and today we tried sitting. They actually did it. I have a feeling that they will be doing a lot of catching up in the next month or so. They go back to the pulmonologist this week to evaluate for Synagis again this year. Hopefully they will be able to get it, especially since they are in daycare now. Speaking of daycare, we are starting our 3rd week. Everyone is doing well, just slight runny noses and hopefully nothing more serious creeps up.



We have spent the last two saturdays with both of our parents putting together the playset that has been making our garage smell good for about the last 6 weeks. It looks great and it is DONE! I put the periscope and pirates ship wheel up tonight. We got the slide up just as a MAJOR thunderstorm rolled through last night. We were all running for cover, picking up tools and cardboard trash from the backyard.





Caleb was baptized last week. Daddy did it. It was wonderful. Many people came up to me and said that Rocky had made them cry. I am so proud of him! Here are some pictures of that.

RAIN

Well, it has been raining most of the day. It really hasn't mattered since I have been in class all day, but the evening is approaching and I was wanting to get out and go for a walk. I actually packed my exercise stuff - ready to walk. The gym in the hotel costs, and I may just fork it out. I really feel like I need to do something. There is a Clam Bake party tonight at the conference - hope they have Chicken (I don't eat clams). Rocky would be in heaven!

Forgot to tell you about the RATS I saw running from under the fence of Boston Commons onto the sidewalk to get pieces of food people had dropped. They were HUGE and really bold. They were like squirrls. Actually, they had probably eaten the squirrils and were moving on to bread crumbs. I couldn't believe how many of them there were! NASTY! I got pictures and I'll post later.

Live from Boston

Well, I made it to Boston. It was a good flight, too long, but nice. Quick trip to the hotel for more money than I was told - but, I'm not in Texas any more. Got to the room, unpacked, made room for the Fridge that I have to rent for my stay to keep the breastmilk so I can bring it home, get out the pump and realize that I have made the most horrible mistake - again! I have forgotten a most important piece of my pump, the same piece that I forgot when I left for camp this year. Too bad someone isn't coming from home tomorrow to bring it to me. I called mom, in tears and she looked into shipping the part. Just to get it here by Monday was going to be $150 or so. NOT worth it. So - head to the Concierge desk and ask the poor GUY there to try to find me somewhere to find a breast pump. Probably not his most weird request, but close to it I would gather. BINGO - in the cab, off to Target, buy a NEW pump and then head back to hotel. PUMP. This will go in my book as one of the TOP stupid mistakes I have made (and expensive, too!) I then took off on a long walk to Boston Commons. It was a brisk 25 minute walk there. I also visited the "Cheers" store. The weather is really nice here - NOT 107 degrees, but a nice 80 or so, and once the sun goes down, it is supposed to be inthe 50-60 degree range. Too bad I can't sleep outside. I brought the camera, but didn't bring the cord, so no pictures for now. Oh well, they are not that interesting anyway.

On a side note - We gave the girls Bananas yesterday. I was wondering if it would go down easier if it tasted better than rice cereal. It made no difference for Abby, but Isabelle is really getting the hang of it. They will probably be walking by the time I get home wednesday...

My sweet girls and other stuff

Well, the girls are growing so much. We go back to see the pulmonologist at the end of the month and will find out what the plan is for the winter. I am assuming that means another round of RSV shots. They are officially teething. They are VERY drooly and wet all the time. They might just eat their fingers for dinner soon. They put everything they can in their mouth. I got this cute picture last night. Abby has her arm around Izzy's neck. AWWWW
On other fronts, Josh and Emily are away at Pre-teen camp. I hope they are having a good time, and learning as well. Caleb really misses them. He is getting some good one-on-one time with the grandparents while they are gone, but he really misses them. I hope that they can appreciate that someday. Caleb really has a tender heart.

I will be travelling to Boston Saturday and returning on Wednesday for a Transplant Conference. I am going by myself, and will probably not have computer access for the entire time - yikes. I kidded about going and buying a laptop just for this trip, but that got poo-poo'd really fast. Too bad. Maybe they will have a business center that I can sneak in and keep somewhat up to date on everything. I hope the kids are easy on Rocky while I am gone. School is about to start. I think we are ready. I have been shoe shopping with the kids and only have Josh and Emily to finish up. I did the underwear shopping yesterday, without the kids. They will just be surprised. They probably won't even notice...Oh well. Off for laundry and to clean up...it never ends!