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.