Baby leggings

My new love! Baby leggings. So cute and adorable, plus they keep their legs warm. We have trouble with a lot of pants because our cloth diapers give them lots of extra junk in the trunk. My poor girls don't fit into most of their pants thanks to their bootylicous diaper butts. Yay for baby leggings! I need to buy more so they don't have to wear the same pairs every day. :)

Anna and Lucy's Baptism

I have been so so bad about blogging recently!! I am going to try hard to get back into it again. I really enjoy writing about our family life - I just usually want to go to sleep once we get all of the kids in bed! Thankfully everyone is in bed on a good night by 8 or 8:30, so I have lots of nice time in the evening. My goal is to blog once a week.

We had a wonderful celebration of Anna and Lucy's baptism last weekend. They are 5 1/2 months now and did so well with the whole weekend! Saturday evening we had out of town family come to our house for a pizza dinner - the weather was amazing and we sat outside on our new lawn chairs, drank beer and ate pizza! It was relaxing and so nice to be outside!

Sunday morning we were up early with the girls - they now all get up between 6 and 6:30 - no sleeping in for us! I didn't mind though because there was a lot to get ready for after the service - we had everyone back to our house for lunch. We had mini sandwiches from Giant, famous Ziegler potato salad made by my mother, fruit salad made by my friend Alisha, and chips and salsa from my friend Melissa. (Thank you everyone!!!) I made sweet tea and had a cooler of drinks. For dessert a beautiful cake made by Sweet Tooth Bakery. Half vanilla and half chocolate. I really appreciated, and especially now that I'm writing it down, all of the help that I had from everyone that brought food! It really made my morning so stress free!

We made it to church on time and had one small scare - in the church bulletin it said that we were scheduled to have the girls baptized at the 9:00 service, but we didn't arrive until the 11:15 service. Thankfully the bulletin was wrong and we hadn't missed the baptism!

Here are a few pictures from the special day!

Fancy Lunch

Ellen has discovered a book series called "Fancy Nancy." She LOVES these books and has memorized the three that we have. The basic story line is about a girl, Nancy, who loves to be fancy. Being fancy usually gets her in some sort of trouble - she stays up too late reading a fancy celebrity scrapbook and is tired the next day, she wears a fancy nightgown to school on pajama day and feels left out when her friends are in matching heart pjs, and other fancy adventures! :)

We have also been trying (and mostly failing) to get Ellen to eat different foods besides cheese and pb&j. Today was our first day of trying the Fresh 20 lunch plan! (see Fresh 20 dinner plan post here)
We had cheese and bean burritos, trail mix, and carrots and hummus. It was a huge success! I told her that we were having a "Fancy Lunch" and she got very excited. We even "cheers-ed" my glass and her sippy cup. :)

It was incredible. She actually sat at the table and ate lunch with me - and behaved wonderfully! We have really been struggling with dinner time lately - she refuses to try most foods and generally acts so crazy that she has to get down. I think maybe she's so wired from the day that by dinner time she just can't sit still and let herself eat. Lunchtime was so nice - she ate or tried everything, and liked it! She even ate some baby carrots- and this girl does not eat veggies.

Here are a few pictures of our delicious lunch: (notice the half eaten carrots!)

Mommy and Anna

At dinner time she ate two scallops and refused the spaghetti we had with it. So that was her dinner, plus some milk. Last night she ate only salt. So maybe lunchtime is when I will try to get nutritious foods into her! Tomorrow I am sending her to nursery school with chicken pasta salad, green beans, red bell peppers, and grapes. We'll see how that goes! She and Matt have a great routine where they take the bus together to go to nursery school every Tuesday and Thursday. Matt drops her off and then walks to his building to work for a few hours. He then picks her up at noon, takes her to his office, and they have lunch together. Then they come home on the bus and he works from home for the afternoon. Its the most wonderful thing for all of us! (except maybe Matt's productivity) Ellen adores her Daddy time and I adore my alone time with Anna and Lucy!

Speaking of, during our "fancy lunch" Anna and Lucy were being the good babies that they are and swinging happily! (and being held by me!) :)

Here's Lucy:

 And here's Anna:

And here's a cute picture of them hanging out before bedtime the other night:

(Lucy on left, Anna on right)

They have become great sleepers, they regularly sleep 6-8 hours, and only get up once a night. Its wonderful! They will be four months this week - can't believe how fast time is going!

Anna and Lucy's Newborn Photos

So I know my twinsies are no longer little newborns, but since I'm finally catching up on my blog, I wanted to post a few of the amazing pictures taken by a wonderful local photographer - Fara Lippincott.

These photos were taken on December 6th - the girls were just 3 weeks old! Fara came to our house and basically made our living room into a photo studio - it was amazing! The photo shoot lasted about 3 hours - there was lots of nursing and diaper changing!

Here are a few of Anna and Lucy together - they are wearing their name bracelets so you can see who is who. :)






I love the naked ones! :)






And here are a few of Anna:


(beautiful blanket made by my mother, Grammie Jane!)




And here are a few of Lucy:


(blanket by Grammie Jane!)



Love their feet!


Notice that there is a toenail with some red nail polish? That's Anna - labeled so that we couldn't mix them up! Now that I know their differences I can mostly tell them apart in the pictures. They really do look different to me now. Its taken me a while though - the day those photos were taken I really couldn't tell them apart at all! Hence the need for a red toenail! :)

And here they are at 3 months! So much bigger! :)

Life is crazy, Our wooden duck gets a bath

So I keep putting off writing this post because honestly at the end of the day I mostly just collapse in bed and fall asleep. Occasionally Matt and I watch Downton Abbey, but that's about it. I keep waiting for the perfect moment to sit down with the computer and type away. Well I think I've finally realized that moment will never happen the way our lives are now and if I don't start blogging even a little bit, I will forget it all!! So this post is brought to you from my iPhone as I sit in bed, we'll see how long I make it before I have to go to sleep. :)

So, here it goes, life with twins and a 2 year old is hectic and wonderful, crazy and stressful, a bit mind numbing at times, but I have to stop and remember how blessed we are to have these beautiful children in our lives.

Ellen is now almost 29 months and is doing great. (Now that she's over her epic 3-4 day fever/flu/cold virus) We did potty training back in December and it went really well- she was ready! We did rewards at first- an m&m and a sticker because she loves chocolate. We attempted a sticker poster board so she could see her progress but that lasted all of 2 minutes before she was tearing it apart. I have to keep remembering she's only 2! Instead she preferred to stick the stickers randomly around our house.

She loves having sisters I think, as much as any 2 year old can! Today she was helping me give them baths and she was adorably "cheesing" at the babies to get them to smile back at her. It was beyond adorable. :)

She loves reading books, playing with her stackadoos, doing puzzles, and running in circles around the house. Please send warm weather so we can go to the park!!

Anna and Lucy are doing really well, at 3 months Anna weighed 12lbs and Lucy 11lbs! Anna has really gotten chubby and so so cute. Lucy is just a bit smaller and just as adorable! They are definitely looking different now, at least I can tell them apart and can say that they are for sure not identical.

They are great eaters though they've recently been on a bit of a bottle strike. We gave them lots of bottles over Christmas when we were with our family, it was so nice to be able to go out and have them take a bottle. When we got home from the holidays life settled back down and we stopped giving them a regular bottle because I was always with them. Unfortunately this coincided with when I weaned them off of using nipple shields to nurse. (A nipple shield basically makes your boob like a bottle) Not using a nipple shield is great, however it also meant that the babies started refusing all bottles. I had gone back to work part time tutoring (3 whole hours a week) but when I came home a few weeks ago and Anna was hoarse from screaming for 2 hours I decided not to work until they will take bottles for Matt. We are working on it- last night while I was at my exercise class at the Y, they both took bottles! Yay! Hopefully we have turned a corner. :)

Quick story that inspired the title of this post: I went to my body pump class at around 5:30 last night. The twins were napping when I left, but their third nap of the day is usually pretty short, so they were up by 6ish. Both were happy for a while but eventually needed bottles (and they took them!!!) I called home after class and since everything was going so well I decided to go clothes shopping at this great second hand clothes shop that closed at 8 so I had 30 minutes or so to shop. After shopping I went back to the car to find that I had a dead battery! Noooo!! I called home to hear screams on the other end- the situation at home had deteriorated!! I called AAA and they were there within about 20 minutes thank God since it was freezing out! When I got home the following was going on: Anna was being changed by Matt and screaming. Lucy was in the swing and screaming also. Ellen was in the bath, and I was told by Matt not to go in bc the bathroom was covered in poop. Toys everywhere. Absolute chaos! Oh and to make matters 100 times worse I had stopped to check the mail on my way up the driveway and , you guessed it, TURNED OFF THE CAR. With a dead battery. So of course it wouldn't start again and was sitting at the bottom of our road waiting to be hit by the next car to turn in. (We had to call AAA again, same guy showed up, so embarrassing!) Anyway so I quickly fed and put the babies to bed while Matt got Ellen out of the bath, and then dealt with the car and AAA. After the babies were asleep I cleaned up the bathroom which was a mess. Apparently Ellen had been going potty while Matt was feeding Anna a bottle. She had pooped in the little potty and had needed Matt to come help her but he couldn't since finally Anna was eating, he didn't want to stop and lose momentum. So, this left Ellen in the bathroom with a potty full of poop. It wasn't really everywhere thank goodness though I did wash the bath mats! In particular there was a wooden yellow duck with poop on it. I asked Ellen as I was getting her ready for bed- Ellen how did the duck get poop on it? Did you put the duck in your poop? Ellen started to say no, but then replied, "yeah!" Gross. That poor duck! I look forward to when Ellen realizes that poop is gross and doesn't want to put things in it! Or maybe it's just time to switch to using the toilet instead of the little potty! I have to look at the positives though, at least she's potty trained, still better than diapers!!

And here are a few pictures of life! :)

Merry Christmas!!

We are spending Christmas in Eagles Mere this year with my parents. It's been wonderfully relaxing with lots of beautiful snow!! And we are supposed to get another 6 inches tomorrow!!

Here are a few pics of our Christmas morning:
Ellen's favorite presents from Santa: Chapstick and a Santa sippy cup

Anna in the "my first Christmas" and Lucy in the "I love Santa" shirts.

Anna and Lucy's Birth Story

Warning: This is a BIRTH STORY! There will probably be TMI (too much information) in this post, so consider yourself warned! :)

I'll start with Tuesday November 13th. I went for what I thought was a routine growth ultrasound and office visit. The growth ultrasound went great as far as Matt and I were concerned, the babies looked adorable, both were over 5lbs, and we thought everything was fine. Anna (baby A) was still head down, and Lucy (baby B) had flipped to breach. Matt left the appointment after the ultrasound to go pick up Ellen from nursery school, and I stayed to have my office visit and then hospital non stress test.

During the office visit, my doctor (Dr. Patel) told me that the babies were small, smaller than they would like, and it looked like their growth had slowed. She seemed concerned, and said she was going to talk to the other doctors and see what they thought. Anna in particular looked like her growth had slowed down the most. She said I should go ahead to my hospital non stress test (where they hook heart rate monitors to your belly and wait for the babies to move to make sure their heart rates increase along with their movement, I had been getting them twice a week for a few weeks)

At the hospital another doctor came to talk to me and said she had spoken with Dr. Patel and that the consensus was that the babies should come out tomorrow! (Wednesday the 14th) I immediately burst into tears. It wasn't that I was sad that they were coming, just so shocked. She also said Dr. Patel would be happy to let me attempt to have a vaginal delivery, but since Lucy (baby B) was breach, if she didn't flip, I would need a c-section. So there was a chance I could end up with one vaginal birth and one c-section birth. It was a risk that I decided I was OK with, it was worth it to me to attempt to have both girls vaginally. That is how I had Ellen and it was a good labor with an easy recovery, so it was worth a try! :)

Looking back on it now, I wish that I had asked for a second ultrasound to really confirm that their growth had slowed. I didn't realize just how early 36 weeks really is. I always thought that 36 weeks was fine and once you hit that magic number your babies could live outside perfectly with no help. Turns out I was wrong. 36 week babies, especially early 36 weeks which my babies were, still need A LOT of help once they are born. I was totally not prepared for this. Or maybe they would have let me keep them in an extra week, I don't know. I can't change any of this, I just wish I had questioned their decision more, or at least understood the gravity of it.

Anyway, back to the story! So, the rest of Tuesday was a blur, Matt and I ran errands and thankfully my Aunt was in town to help watch Ellen. I of course slept almost nothing Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning we got up super early to get to the hospital by 7:30.

As soon as we got to the hospital we were admitted to a room, they had plenty of room, in fact I think we were the only people in labor that day! The OB doctor that had been on call the night before came in and checked me around 8, and found that I was still only 1cm dilated and ~70% effaced. (at my doctors visits prior I had only been 1cm 50% effaced, basically there was no change, no surprise there!) He then inserted a cytotec pill to help start contractions and soften my cervix to make dilation easier. And then pretty much nothing happened for a few hours. We were allowed to get up and walk around, so we walked around and around the L&D hallway to try to help coax labor along. Eventually I started feeling really really minor contractions, but at least they were starting! Dr. Patel checked me a few hours in and said she wanted to start me on Pitocin. That meant back to the bed for me. I was hooked up to an IV, fluids, and the baby heart rate monitors. They started petocin and slowly I started to have more contractions. At the beginning I'd have Matt look at the computer screen I was hooked up to to see if I was actually having a contraction. Eventually they turned the petocin up to 5 (highest is 20) and they got a little stronger, but still nothing bad. Nothing as intense as when I was in labor with Ellen.

The worst pain actually, was from the stupid penicillin IV that they had me on in case I was group B strep positive. I had only had my test the day before, so the results weren't in yet. (turns out I was negative so I had to take those stupid antibiotics for nothing, hopefully they helped the babies in some way!) The penicillin burns your arm as it goes in the IV and I swear that burning was worse than any of the contractions!

I vaguely remember Matt reading magazines to me, I think he was reading something really boring from Wired, and something more interesting from Redbook that my mother had bought for me in the gift shop. We also watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother on DVDs. (thank you Mom for bringing us entertainment!) With Ellen's birth the labor was so quick once we got to the hospital that we didn't need any of the entertainment stuff that we brought. So, we didn't think to bring anything with us for Anna and Lucy's birth. Being induced has a bit more down time though, so we called my mom to bring us entertainment! It made a big difference! :)

In the early afternoon Dr. Patel came to check me and said that I had made it to 3cm dilated. She decided to break my water and that is when the contractions got much much more intense! Still not as bad as with Ellen, but they definitely hurt and I had to really concentrate and breathe through them. I have these sand stress balls that I made for Ellen's labor that I was using and they really helped. I pictured myself pushing the pain through these sand balls. Sounds silly but I think it made a real difference. Instead of resisting the pain I tried to push through it, I visualized that the pain was helping me to dilate more. I think it actually worked because 10 minutes after she broke my water I was checked again by a nurse (for practice or something) and I was already at 4cm. Dr. Patel strongly encouraged me to get an epidural at this point, since she said things were probably going to go fast and I needed to make sure I had an epidural in case a c-section (for Lucy) was needed.

Before I got the epidural I asked for an internal monitor to be put on Anna's head so I could get out of bed easier. Lying down is the WORST way to get through contractions, its so much better to be standing up. The only problem with this is that monitoring two babies is way harder if you are moving around. Anna was so far dropped that it was really hard to keep a monitor on her. They put an internal monitor on her head that was awesome. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to move around during labor - they were able to read her heart rate easily and she stopped dropping off of the monitors! This was important additionally because with twins there is a higher chance that one of them won't tolerate labor, and an emergency c-section would be needed. So everyone was pretty hyper about checking to make sure they were both doing OK.

Anyway, I got my epidural, and once that was done, my nurse told me to tell her if I felt any pressure (meaning that I needed to push). I looked at her and said, wait, I think I do feel pressure. It had only been maybe 45 minutes since Dr. Patel had broken my water so I could tell she didn't really believe me. But, she checked, and sure enough I was at 10cm and ready to go! :)

Then things got really crazy. I had been able to labor in a regular L&D room, but once I was ready to push, I needed to be transferred into the operating room in case a c-section was needed. (standard procedure for twin deliveries) No one was expecting it to be so fast, so everyone was running around like crazy. My doctor was yelling orders at everyone (she was kind of scary!) and poor Matt wasn't even allowed in the room until they got everything set up. I was rolled onto the operating table since I was pretty much completely numb from the waist down due to the epidural. My legs were propped up in to these stirrup things, I was totally exposed in front of at least 15 people (nurses, doctors, med students, who knows who else was there!) And then, because we needed to wait for there to be TWO OB doctors, and a pediatrician, I just lay there and waited for everyone to arrive. Thankfully with an epidural you don't really feel the immediate need to push, so I was able to just lie there in minimal discomfort and try not to think about all of the people looking at my business!!!

Finally everyone arrived and I was allowed to push. Anna's head popped out during the first push, and then the rest of her during the second push! Talk about an easy delivery! As soon as she was out the doctors put an ultrasound on my belly to figure out where Lucy was and try to flip her. They pushed and pushed at my belly, but that sweet stubborn child would not budge. Instead of going head down, she settled butt down and head up. :) So, it was time for a c-section! Thankfully I was pretty numb from the first epidural, and the anesthesiologist just had to administer some extra medication to make sure that I was 100% numb.

The weird thing about a c-section is that you can feel the pressure and movement of them cutting you open and taking the baby out. You don't feel any pain, but you definitely feel pressure and movement. Its very strange. I made the mistake of looking up at the operating light and realizing that there was a REFLECTION in the light, and I could see past the surgical cloth barrier. AHHH! I looked away immediately. Anyway, Lucy was born minutes later - "butt up" just like she wanted according to Dr. Patel. :)

I got to see Lucy as they were taking her out to the nursery, and then they worked to put me back together for the next 20-30 minutes. I was doing fine, just really really cold and shivering, probably partially because of the hormones, but also because the operating room was FREEZING. They wheeled me into the recovery room and put warm blankets all over me which was nice. Then I started to feel major pain. I was having to breathe through the abdominal pain as my epidural wore off, and it was horrible. Worse than any contraction! I kept asking the nurses to give me more and more pain medicine - they gave me both morphine and demerol, and only then did I start to feel better. Meanwhile Matt came in to check on me and let me know that Anna had been put on oxygen. I didn't realize at the time that this was the start of a week and a half of oxygen and worry for our babies! Lucy soon followed and needed oxygen about 20 minutes later. :/

They continued to be "stable" through the night and didn't thankfully need to be taken to a NICU, but it was a rough first night for both of them. Our pediatrician was awesome and stayed all night with them to make sure they were OK.

After I finally was feeling better after recovery, I told my night nurse that I hadn't even been able to SEE Anna since she was whisked away after her birth and they were so focused on trying to flip Lucy. So, she awesomely decided to wheel my ENTIRE BED into the level 2 intensive care nursery!! I was still on IVs and not able to move of course (this lasted for 24 hours) and the babies couldn't come to me since they were on oxygen. Being able to see them, even though it was scary to see them under oxygen hoods was still wonderful and I will be forever grateful to that nurse!

After Ellen was born, we were so spoiled and got to love her and feed her for about 2 hours before they took her to the nursery to get weighed and bathed. So by the time she was a few hours old she had already nursed at least once. I realized that I wasn't going to be able to do that with Anna and Lucy, so I was determined to pump. I told my nurse that I wasn't going to bed until she got me a pump, and that I was going to wake up every 2 hours to pump that night, just like Ellen did her first night. She looked at me like I was a little crazy, but kindly got me a pump and was very supportive all night by helping me work the pump and taking my milk to the nursery. Unfortunately the girls were having too much trouble breathing to even be allowed to try to eat the expressed milk that I was getting, but we started building a stash in the nursery refrigerator. I was determined that when a doctor started talking about how they needed supplementation, we would have plenty of milk to supplement with and not have to use formula. It turns out that all of that pumping just caused my milk to come in super fast (yay!) so by the time they were able to eat, I was able to start nursing them and no supplementation was needed because my milk was already in.

So that is Anna and Lucy's birth story! I can look back on it now and love that they are here and healthy. I wish I could do it again and wait at least a week to try to give them more time to grow and develop their lungs. The pediatricians assure me that there will be no long-term affects of being born so early and that they will be perfectly healthy and should have no issues breathing later on. I am very thankful for this, but I still wish I could have given them a few more weeks! They are lying here on a pillow next to me snoozing away as I type this, in fact Anna just started fussing and wants to eat so I will sign off now!