12/31/2010

New Years Resolution

My New Years Resolution is to not have any babies in 2011. Not even one.

And also maybe to start an Etsy shop at some point.

Trevor's is to quit smoking. It should be pretty easy, since he doesn't smoke.

Atticus's is to stop using his pacifier and his bottle, even though he doesn't know it yet.

Jane's Resolution is stop peeing on us every time we change her diaper.

Elizabeth's is to get everything into her mouth.

What's yours?

12/29/2010

Atticus



My son

Loves


Peanut butter.

When he eats it, he is obsessed with the texture, taste, and color. In other words, he is completely absorbed in the moment.


But when he's done, he's done. He moves on to the next moment. And he completely absorbs himself in that one too.


A lesson I need to learn from him.

Jane


Jane is technically our middle child, and Elizabeth's older sister (by five minutes).


She is inquisitive and curious.


...and sometimes a little concerned by what Mom is doing.


And she is also our smallest baby, with the smallest feet.


And she is turning into a ravenous finger sucker. When I lay her down for a nap, the first thing she does is knock out her pacifier and start working on her fingers instead.


And she loves to kick up her heels.


And I am starting to realize that she has a cow lick in the form of a very small mohawk.


And we love her more than we could possibly tell you.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth is our baby.



Lizzie loves to sit up in her bumbo


And she loves tummy time, even if it wears her out a little bit.


Eliza is a pretty happy little girl.


With the brightest eyes and longest eyelashes.


And a sister with whom she loves to smile and make faces.


Sometimes she's serious and contemplative.


But it's never long before she's to smiling and chatting with you.


And she is certainly the most loved Lizzie, Eliza, Liz, or Elizabeth that I've ever known.

12/26/2010

Christmastime Comes Once a Year, Now it's Here, Now it's Here

We had a GREAT Christmas! We all got up at 7 and opened stockings on our bed, as per Hall family tradition. Atticus was so excited for his toys and the first thing he did was ask for some chocolate.


Evidence of the chocolate can still be seen on his chin. Do you see that camera lens cap he's holding? It belongs to my BRAND NEW DSLR camera! Given to me for Christmas by my fantastic, wonderful, selfless husband! I love the camera, almost as much as I love him.


There isn't really any difference between the pictures yet because I still haven't figured out how to really make the best of it, but I'm so excited for it! Here, Trevor is opening one of his gifts from me, "A Muppet Family Christmas" and "John Denver and the Muppets: A Rocky Mountain Holiday" on DVD.


Jane received some very generous gifts too! Thank you all so much, the clothes and dolls are going to be well loved!


"MERRY CHRISTMAS."


Mom holding a grumpy Jane


Atticus has all the tools a little boy could ever need! So far he has "fixed" the TV, the baby bouncers, and our closet door.



The aftermath of Christmas morning


Atticus holding Jane and showing us where her nose is.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas! We love you!

Yes, They Are My Twins

Today at church I met two other moms who had twins. I love talking to other mothers of twins; it's really good to see that they haven't been driven completely crazy and that they get to have hygiene now. One of the moms even had identical twin girls when her boy was 21 months old, so she REALLY understood.

You know who doesn't understand? Almost everyone else. They don't even seem to understand basic concepts of what's appropriate in conversation or how childbirth and parenting works. As proof, I offer you a list of things that have been said to me in my short 5 months of having twins.


Mr. Suspicious: Are those twins?
Me: Yep!
Mr. Suspicious: Are you sure?
Me:... pretty darn.

Mrs. Nitpick: Twin girls, oh how sweet! Are they identical?
Me: Yes, they are!
Mr. Nitpick: No they aren't, this one is a little bigger.
Me: Okay.

Ms. Notamom: Are those your twins?
Me: Uh-huh.
Ms. Notamom: Which one is the good one?
Me: They're both pretty good.
Ms. Notamom: Oh, come on, there's always a good twin and a bad twin. Which one is your favorite?
(By the way, this different versions of this conversation happen all the time. I'm usually not asked outright "which one is your favorite?" but a lot of people assume that there is a good baby and a bad baby)

Mrs. Expert: So how are your twins doing?
Me: Great! They're gaining weight slowly, but they don't have any developmental delays!
Mrs. Expert: Oh, you won't see any developmental delays now, that won't come until they're older.
Me: Oh, did you have a preemie?
Mrs. Expert: No.
Me:...
Mrs. Expert: Atticus doesn't do very well without you, does he?

Mrs. Mom: Oh, are those your twins?
Me: (Only if you're not going to say something dumb) Yes.
Mrs. Mom: Oh, well I have a three year old and two year old, so it's just like having twins too! In fact, I bet it's harder.
Me: Okay.

12/22/2010

Gingerbread Houses and Cute Kids Being Cute

We've done some stuff lately. Here's some pictures of it. I'm really tired. Can you tell?



We built graham cracker "gingerbread" houses with Peter and Leigh-Ann. It was really fun and everyone but Leigh-Ann ate a bunch of candy. Apparently she has this thing called "self-control". I wonder how that works?


Leigh-Ann's house


Peter's church tower. I don't know if that's what it actually is, but that's what it looks like to me.


My house with the Trident roofing shingles.


Then we had a weekend up in West Yellowstone where Trevor and I went snowmobiling and forgot to take pictures. But we brought home Nana with us for a few days, and the kids were pretty happy about it.


Lizzie


Jane


Atticus. These pictures are horrible because our camera is about dead. But I know what Santa is bringing me for Christmas, and our photographic blog offerings are about to get MUCH better...


It's a little hard to get out of the bumbo once you reach a certain size.


Jane (in the purple legwarmers) and Elizabeth ( in legwarmers with hearts) love standing now! We just have to hold onto their hands and they'll be happy as a clam.

12/12/2010

Christmas Youtube

My Dad sent me this first video and it is HI-LAR-I-OUS. It's worth a watch or five!




Also, I thought I would post Trevor's favorite Christmas song. Really. Starting in November he walks around the house singing it all the time

"I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas"

12/06/2010

You Have All the Tender Sweetness of a Seasick Crocodile

It's Jane and Elizabeth picture time!




These adorable baby bows that we always get compliments on are from Aunt Pam! I love them. If you think her bows are as cute as I do, her Etsy shop is here.


Jane being contemplative.


Elizabeth being surprised.


The girls have discovered just how delicious their hands are.

We also just took them to the pediatrician today, who says they don't seem like preemies at all! They are now measuring them on the full term growth chart instead of the preemie one. Jane is 11 pounds 1 ounce and 23.5 inches long, which puts her in the 5% for weight and 20% for height. Elizabeth is 11 pounds 4 ounces and 23.8 inches long, which puts her in the 8% for weight and 28% for height. They've almost tripled their birth weight!

Developmentally they are coming along just fine. They love jabbering away at us, and recently have loved standing on our laps. They smile a lot too, it's just hard to get it on camera! Hand eye coordination is coming slowly but surely. We head back to the preemie ophthalmologist in March to make sure they don't have any other major eye problems associated with prematurity.

We also got the okay from the pediatrician to start them on some rice cereal, which I am CELEBRATING WITH JOY. They have been nursing every 2 hours during the day (this is even with the 2 bottles of high calorie formula that they get at night), which means that on a normal day I am nursing 14 times, and on a crazy day like Sunday, I am nursing one billions times.

12/02/2010

Mac & Cheese Addiction: It's Hereditary

When I was a kid, I loved macaroni and cheese. Just ask my parents. My mom and dad have all kinds of stories about it. I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I think one time when I was a toddler, I asked my mom for mac and cheese right after breakfast. I threw such a fit that she ended up making it for me at 10:00, and I would have eaten the whole box if she would have let me. Is that right mom?

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Atticus got into the pantry yesterday and walked around during the afternoon doing this:






Yes, we did have Macaroni and Cheese for dinner. And yes, there were cut up hot dogs in it.

11/27/2010

Answer:

Jane on the left and Elizabeth on the right. Did you guess right?

11/19/2010

Can you?


Can you tell who is who?

11/17/2010

Jane and Elizabeths Birth Story

For Premature Birth Awareness Day, I thought I would post Jane and Elizabeth's birth story in full. It's really long. Good luck.

(Taken the day before Jane and Elizabeth were born)

At 4:30 a.m. on August 2, 2010 my water broke. I had just reached 33 weeks with the twins that day. I put on a skirt (the only thing left that still fit me) and woke up Trevor with a sharp “My water broke. We need to go to the hospital.” I woke up D. Ann, who had been staying with us since I was put on bed rest, to tell her what had happened, and would she please take care of Atticus, our 14 month old son. Trevor grabbed his keys, I grabbed nothing since I had somehow failed to pack a hospital bag, and we were off.

We went to the E.R. entrance and told the nurse at the desk that I needed to go to Labor and Delivery. He called up and we waited for the wheelchair as I filled my shoes with amniotic fluid. When we arrived upstairs, our nurse asked the billion or so questions that are required to be checked in. I was checked into a room just as the day shift took over. I was the only mother on L&D, which was shocking since the last time there had been 12 or 13 women laboring with me.

The contractions weren’t horrible, but I requested an epidural anyway because I knew I would be getting one eventually. I knew I wanted an epidural because of the possibility of an internal version. An internal version happens when Baby A is born head first, but then Baby B turns breech. The doctor reaches all the way up and manually flips the baby down head first. This was not a memory I wanted to have. The anesthesiologist promptly arrived and inserted my epidural, and I lay back down not thinking anything of it since I had such an easy time with it last time. Then I started to feel nauseous... I told my nurse, who reached for a puke pan… but the room wasn’t stocked. At this point I knew something would be making an appearance soon, so I tried to tell Trevor to grab a trashcan, but it was too late. One sheet change and some Zofran later, my blood pressure came up, righting what was wrong, and I settled in to wait for the babies.



(A picture of Elizabeth from one of the billions of ultrasounds we had)

If you’re wondering why I wasn’t having a panic attack or freaking out the way most women would be in this situation, it’s because I was as well prepared for it as I could be. 3 days prior to my water breaking, I had found out I was 3.5 centimeters dilated, so it would have been a miracle to make it full term. We had also already had a baby in the NICU, so we were prepared for the awfulness of having our babies in the hospital. This was the time to grit our teeth and deal with it.

A few minutes later, I realized we didn’t have a camera. I called our beautiful friend Leigh-Ann and woke her up to ask her to go to our house and pick up our camera for us. She obliged and even brought us muffins and juice too. We chatted for a while and I was very grateful for the distraction from the two impending premature births. After a while though, she needed to leave. Shortly after she left, Dr. Meredith and Dr. Harling came in to talk with us, noting that my contractions had nearly stopped. I should have remembered that this is what happened when I was fully dilated with Atticus, but I didn’t. I just thought “Great! Maybe I can keep the girls in a little longer!” Dr. Meredith brought in an ultrasound machine in to check if Jane was still head down. He stuck the Doppler about halfway up on my belly, looking for a head, but he couldn’t find one… he moved it down farther and farther looking for a head before Dr. Harling finally said “It might be quicker to look the other way.” Sure enough, I was very nearly fully dilated with hardly any contractions. Not that it really takes 10 centimeters to give birth to a 33 week baby anyway.

The nurses rolled me out of the room and into the operating room, where all twins and preemies need to be delivered "just in case". Everything was gotten ready (except the temperature of the room; it was freezing in there) and 2 pushes later, Jane was born. She cried, so they briefly allowed me to see her and touch her before she was handed through a window to the NICU. 2 more pushes later, Elizabeth was born. She didn’t really cry, but she gurgled a little bit. I also got to see and touch her very briefly before she was whisked out of the OR. The NICU called out to us “four eight and four eleven!” Four pounds, 8 ounces and four pounds, eleven ounces.

Trevor left me to wait outside the NICU until he could go see them. I got cleaned up and wheeled back into L&D to recover. After a while, I’m not sure how long (it always seems like forever when you don’t know what’s happening to your baby) I asked the nurses if I could try standing and clean up. They were doubtful that I would be recovered enough, but I guess they just didn’t understand the motivation. I stood up and got into the shower, quickly cleaning off. Trevor returned, and we were given permission to go to the NICU to see Jane and Elizabeth. That's where, through 2 half inch thick sheets of plastic, I met my daughters.