THING 1 and THING 2

I just love these pictures of the boys in their THING 1 and THING 2 outfits. I know I am biased but I think they are the cutest pair I have ever seen! hee hee.

Twins Update

Well, the boys had their 4 month vaccinations today and we weighted them while we were at the health unit too. Ryder is the chunky monkey at 13 lbs and Cruz is a whole pound less (12 lbs). Ryder eats more so he has taken a lead in weight gain. They were the same length just two weeks ago despite their weight difference but today Ryder measured 1/2" longer than Cruz. Im sure Cruz will catch up eventually. They are in the 95% isle for height and 75% isle for weight right now for their "corrected age". No surprise there! ha ha.

They also FINALLY slept through the night! Two days in a row they have slept 8-9 hours consecutively. They are no longer sleeping in the same crib because they were getting too heavy for the play pen downstairs but now that they are sleeping through the night, we may move them upstairs at night to their "real" cribs and I may put the playpens away. I was thinking of putting our beer fridge in their nursery as well for their middle of the night feed (they sleep 8pm-4am or 9pm-5am right now) BUT I dont want to count my chickens before they hatch because as soon as I think we have a "routine", the baby's change it! That's the way it goes!

Its been so great having my Mom here 3 days a week. She has been so helpful and is also my sanity at times! Brooklyn has started asking for "Oma" almost every morning after she wakes up and some days I have to tell her Oma's not here but I love it when I get to tell her Oma is downstairs. She recently started saying, "My Oma" and "My Baby's" in reference to her brother's, which is so adorable. That kid get's cuter by the day! She's talking more and more all the time now!

Ryder has been on his new medication for 2 weeks now and his birth mark has decreased by about 50%! It's amazing to me that he has had such great results with it in such a short period of time. I am very pleased and am grateful he hasn't had any side effects thus far.

I'm getting very excited for Christmas this year and am trying to convince my husband to put up the Christmas tree but he's on the "December 1st" train, ha ha. We may have it up before then and I will certainly post pics of the beautiful 9 foot tree that my Mom bought for my Christmas present last year (I LOVE THAT TREE!). Hopefully Brooklyn wont wreck the ornaments this year! ha ha. Next year I will have two little monkey's yanking ornaments off the tree. They will be a handful for sure once they are walking! I cant wait to have the kids picture taken with Santa this year, although I think we will overwhelm Santa with two little babes and a roudy 28 month old! Santa's arms and lap will be full and one of the twins is bound to cry, if not both of them! ha ha.

As for the day-to-day stuff......our house hold is crazy busy as you could imagine. It always blows me away how messy my kitchen and living room get on an hourly basis. The laundry and dishes (tons of bottles etc) is ridiculous around here! Its impossible to keep up. I may get our clothes washed and dried but folded and put away is a totally different story. I find myself picking out things I need out of a messy pile of clothes dumped on TOP of the dryer because I don't have time to fold laundry and put things away. Anything on TOP of the washer and dryer is clean and anything on the floor is dirty! Makes sense to me.....I just wish I had more hands and more time because I hate picking things out of a disorganized pile but that's the way it's got to be for a while. A bigger house would help solve some of our problems......suddenly this house and it's layout seems too small for my rapidly growing family but moving is not an option right now and we do really enjoy this house....its just that the walls seem to be closing in a little faster than we expected so-to-speak.

Halloween & the Nursery

Long time no blog again......

Sorry for my lack of updates....its busy to say the least here. The boys are doing so well and I fall deeper and deeper in love with them everyday. Brooklyn has adjusted so well and really only had a few weeks of bad behavior over a month ago but she's back to her sweet self and seems to really enjoys her baby brother's. Sometimes I still cant believe I had 3 kids in just under 2 years but I feel very lucky and I am grateful for these 3 little blessings!

So Halloween has come and gone and it was a hoot! Brooklyn was the cutest fairy I have ever laid eyes on and she enjoyed her fairy wings and the candy most. We practiced "trick or treat" for a few weeks before hand and then I got her a plastic pumpkin to put all her candy in. She would practice trick or treating at home every day and I would put snacks in it for her...so it's no surprise that she still says "trick or treat" in hopes of getting some goody's 3 weeks later! ha ha.

We experienced for the very first time that "sugar high" that parents always refer to and it was NOT pretty! She was literally bouncing up and down on the couch (she never does that) and running laps around the island 10x faster than her normal speed, she was yelling, shrieking and it took her about 2-3 days to recover from all the candy. Thank goodness Halloween is only once a year because it was a rough couple of days post-candy. I dressed the twins up as Superman which I thought was more than appropriate seeing as how they have proven to possess amazing strength since they were born so pre-mature! I thought they looked so sweet in the their Superman costume's and I even got a grin out of Ryder for a photo.

Ryder has a vascular birth mark (also called a "strawberry" or a hemangioma) on his right eye lid that appeared about a month after he came home. It surfaced around the time of their "due date" and has grown quite rapidly since. I took him to our family doctor who knew nothing about them and so I just kept watching it but could see it was continuing to grow, had increased in volume and redness and was starting to make his eye lid sag. I was concerned it may cause damage on the inside of his eye and after researching hemangioma's quite extensively, I opted to take him to the ER to fast track a referral to a specialist at Children's hospital that came highly recommended from another twin's Mom I know, who's son also had a hemangioma. Hemangioma's are quite common in premature baby's. Ryder has 8 of them and Cruz only has one but the only one that concerns me is the one on Ryder's eye of course.

I took Ryder to the ER on Friday and got an appt. with the specialist at Children's on Monday! That was f-a-s-t but I was glad because going back to my GP to get the referral could have added another month or two after all was said and done and by then the hemangioma could have been huge! My sister-in-law and I drove Ryder to Children's where the specialist looked at all his hemangioma's, measured them and documented all their locations. She then sent us directly over to the opthamologist for his opinion as she too was concerned at the size of the birth mark and location. The opthamologist said Ryder had a mild stigmatism on that eye and felt we should treat the hemangioma with medication right away.....so we went back to the dermatologist to get a prescription for propranolol which is a medication more commonly used for high blood pressure but is a relatively new medication for treatment of vascular birth marks. We were at Children's hospital for 3 1/2 hours but I was glad they squeezed us in to the see the opthalmologist so we didn't have to come back another day.

Im happy to report that after just 3-4 doses of the medication, Ryder's birth mark has improved and every day it seems to look better and better! I am very happy with his progress and grateful for this new treatment. Im hoping it's goes away completely in another month but time will tell.

I find it pretty easy to tell the twins apart but of course Ryder's birth mark is a dead giveaway...not only that but Ryder eats way more than Cruz does so he is bigger at the moment. I would guess between .5 and 1 lb bigger but I will find out tomorrow when I take them to be weighed and measured. That being said, if the boys are dressed the same (which they rarely are), I tend to mix them up all the time! I have to pay closer attention to size, hair and birth marks or I will surely mix them up so the easiest way is to dress them differently....but its soooooo cute when they are dressed the same! The problem is that they don't puke, poop and soil themselves at the same time so it's next to impossible to keep them in the same clothes for more than a photo or more than a few hours, ha ha. I do love dressing them the same, it's just not that practical, lol.

Lastly, we f-i-n-a-l-l-y finished the nursery! It took us a long time but it's done and I think it looks fantastic! We designed it to look like a hockey arena and chose bright yellow for the base boards to look authentic. Canucks fans will have to forgive me for the Boston Bruins theme but hubby is a hardcore Bruins fan and so we went with that! I am thrilled with how it turned out and I love spending time in their even though the boys are still sleeping in playpens downstairs. We will move them up to their cribs once they are sleeping through the night but for now it's easier to have them downstairs where all our supply's, swings, bottles, fridge etc are.