Lily's First Giggles

Anyone who views my never ending picture postings of the babies on Facebook may start to think that Lily get's neglected.  However, every time I go to snap a picture of her smile or other cute thing she is doing, she stops as soon as I pull out the camera.  For a few days she was making, what we dubbed "Baby Dinosaur" noises whenever she talked.  I pulled out my phone to record it and instead was lucky enough to catch her first giggles.

Growing is Hard Work

Little Wyatt, who is normally so smiley and playful, has done nothing but sleep the last two days.  Growth spurt, perhaps?  He wakes up to eat, give a few smiles and then he is ready to pass out again.  But I am definitely not complaining.  This extra downtime has given me time to finally sew him a boyish blanket complete with Airplanes, make and devour a pan of peanut butter rice crispy treats, paint sun catchers with the girls, get caught up on laundry (until it starts all over again Monday) and even write a blog post.

Live, from Oklahoma!

So here we are again, several months later.  I have come down with a cold with is just cruel and wrong for a mom with two babies and a bored 4 year old at home, so I have decided to sit and update the blog real quick.
Last month, Justin graduated from Air Force Pilot training and won the AETC Commanders training award as well as the distinguished graduate award which basically just solidifies what I already knew: Justin is pretty dang cool.  After graduation, we packed up a huge trailer and drove up to Altus Oklahoma where he is now doing his KC135 training.  The nice thing about this program is that, so far, it is pretty lax.  He works, at most, 6 hours/ day which is a huge change from the 12 he was pulling daily in UPT. We are also renting a house which is larger and nicer than anywhere else we have ever lived so we are thrilled about that and having space.  We have been pleasantly surprised with Altus and we like it here.  We have already gone shopping in Lawton which is just 45 min. away and gone to a Rattlesnake Derby in another town 20 minutes away.  This is a great change from Del Rio which was 2.5 hours from anything.
We also had our first tornado watch the other night, which was all sorts of excitement.
The kiddos are all doing well.  Macy is loving her new school and Kylie is enjoying staying home all day with me.
The picture above pretty much sums up life with the cute babies right now.
Alright, more updates later when I can clear some stuffiness out of my head.

3 Week Birthdays

Hooray, the babies are 3 weeks old today!  Here is what you should know about our lives right now:

• They babies were doing awesome on their breathing... until I went home for 24 hours.  Apparently my absence traumatized them and they have decided to have apneas and bradycardias again... Grrr.  Ok, I know it wasn't really my fault but the timing sure makes it feel that way.  They just upped their caffeine dose so hopefully we will see improvement in the next few days.  I am also doing my part by drinking Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper diligently.  Between my constant thirst, inability to stay awake and eating out all of the time, I figure I can also do my part to help their breathing by providing extra caffeine via breast milk :)
• They are finally figuring out how to keep their body temperature which is check mark one out of three on the big list of things they have to accomplish in order to go home.  The other two are eating on their own and figuring out how to breath...  Anyway, so Wyatt was moved out of an isollette today and into an open crib.  They will likely move Lily over after bath time tonight.
• This morning I got to nurse both babies at the same time.  It was awesome especially since Lily's little "suck-swallow-breath" switch finally went off and they were both able to get half of their feeding by nursing!  It was also the first time I was able to hold them both at the same time and I just couldn't stop thinking how amazing it is that I have these two little babies.  Could I be more blessed?  It almost made me want to have more kids... almost. Except the fact that I am forbidden from getting pregnant again.  Apparently, I am not very good at it.   I double nursed them again tonight and it went great until Wyatt spit up towards the end.  I think he would have had an entire feeding until his incident but oh well.  At least he is figuring it all out.
• My mom is now in town and taking care of Macy and Kylie while Justin goes to work.  Justin's mom left last week and we are so blessed to have so much help!
• I survived working on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and I am so glad that I have an entire year before I have to do that again...
• My life is really glamourous as I live in a hotel, have personal housekeepers, a chauffeur who drives me everywhere I need to go and I have people to make me all of my food.  Aren't you jealous? 
• The babies are now 33.5 weeks so hopefully we will be out of here in another three weeks... a girl can hope, right?
• The worst part about pumping is having to wait up to pump that final time before bed so I only have to get up once at night to pump again.  This results in me not going to bed until 11:30 or later every night and waking up by 7 every morning.  Hence the exhaustion and diet coke dependence...

The "30 Week Post"

I had been meaning to post for weeks and finally decided to hold off and just do a 30 week post and do a big pregnancy update, so here it is although it will be a much different post than I had been planning on writing.  I had planned to show you a picture of me at 30 weeks, talk about how I had grown out of most of my clothes, talk about how I got put on bed rest at 28 weeks because I had dilated to a one and all that good stuff.  Instead, this post is going to be about....

These two little cuties.  Meet Wyatt Justin and Lily Nichole.  Born 9/8/11 at 11:13 and 11:14 pm.  Wyatt was 3 lbs 7 oz. and Lily was 3 lbs 4 oz.

I have been trying to write this post for several days but once the harsher pain meds wore off and I could think straight, I was still too tired to write or focus.  I am still too tired now, but I will do my best so pardon any incoherent rambling.

I went in to my doctor's appointment Tuesday morning to see how everything was going and I had dilated to a three, which was not good news.  The doctor sent me over to the hospital for a non stress test  and told me that he wanted me to move up to San Antonio in case I went into labor.  While at the hospital Justin and I spent the afternoon with him running around and me on the phone trying to figure out how to get me transferred to San Antonio ASAP.  We had planned on Justin driving me up on Wednesday because we didn't have a huge sense of urgency.  However, one of the ladies who works at the clinic on base pitched a fit when she realized that my doctor and the hospital hadn't immediately med evaced me up so they decided to get a helicopter sent down to pick me up.  I felt a little bad because I knew they were expensive and I didn't really think I was going into labor right away.  After hours at the hospital, my contractions were all over the place and I wasn't really effaced.
Justin brought the girls by to tell me good bye and I was more sad to leave them behind than worried about the babies coming until the flight nurse checked me and I had dilated to a 5.  I was shocked again and thought that meant I might have the babies the next day.
Turns out I was wrong and we should have had Justin leave for San Antonio when I did because after an hour long helicopter ride with some fairly painful contractions I landed and had dilated to a 7.  I called Justin and told him to come up ASAP but knew he wouldn't make it in time because the babies were breach so the doctors wanted to do a C section right away.  40 minutes later I was getting an epidural and they took out the little ones.
As they wheeled me in several nurses commented on how calm I was.  I wish they hadn't said that because as soon as that blue sheet went up in front of my face I started to feel more alone and nervous than I ever had, even with 15 people in the room.  I couldn't see anything and was completely alone, except for the poor anesthesiologist who must be used to dealing with emotional women by now. As soon as I started crying, he gave me some fentynal (sp?) which not only got rid of the tiny bit of pain I could still feel but also helped me to relax. A nurse who had just gotten off her shift offered to take pictures of the babies with my phone since Justin wasn't there and I will be forever grateful to her.
The babies were taken off to the NICU shortly after and Justin showed up about an hour later.  I had never had a C section before and was liking it until the epidural started waring off and I realized that Demoral did nothing for my pain.  Long story short, it was a very long and painful night.

The other big bummer is that I had woken up Tuesday morning with pink eye so I wasn't allowed to go into the NICU to see the babies until I had been on drops for 48 hours which meant 1:00 a.m. Thursday morning.

I will update more on the babies later but I wanted to at least announce that they were here and both doing well so far!

In Case You Were Wondering...

This is what 13 weeks pregnant with twins looks like.

Yup, you read that correctly although this pic is over a week old (I am almost 15 weeks now) and I am even larger now that I was.  I am due in the middle of January so we expect to see them in December some time. We are very excited and more than a little stressed about everything but really just thrilled to finally have a healthy (if not slightly more complicated than normal) pregnancy.

We found out at the doctor yesterday that one of the babies is a boy and the other is most likely a girl.  I go home to Boise in a few days and hopefully my dad will be able to get some better pictures and be able to see more clearly. We couldn't be more thrilled and are just so relieved that they both look so healthy. We were also shocked to learn that we were pregnant with twins after last year's twin pregnancy.  What are the odds of that happening spontaneously two times, to the same people?

The girls are so excited to get two babies and hopefully that means they will be extra willing to help me with them.  I already need help picking things up off of the floor as it has become ridiculously difficult to bend over, especially since I am just coming to 15 weeks.

As for my pregnancy updates and so I can keep record since this is my last pregnancy ever, (hallelujah) my belly circumference is growing at a rate of .5-1 inch per week (yikes), the general state of morning sickness is mostly gone although I still get sudden attacks of nausea and I am exhausted.  Really, I can't sleep enough and by every afternoon I try to get off of my feet for an hour or two and rest and doze.  I am also struggling to keep my self fed as I have to eat constantly but at least I finally have an appetite again so food actually sounds good to me. Other than that, I am just taking things one day at a time and wondering (dreading) how ginormous I will be by my 6th month as I already feel huge.  Apparently I am supposed to gain 20 pounds in my second trimester which kind of freaks me out but, hopefully, all will go well.

Alive in Texas

I know it has been a while so if you are wondering, yes, we are alive.  Well, barely.  It has been over 100 degrees almost every day for the last 2 1/2 months and we are melting.  We loved the weather when we got here in February but now, not so much.

In February we traveled all of the way from Anchorage, Alaska to Del Rio, Texas.  Where is Del Rio, you ask?  Well, it is in the middle of no where on the Mexican border.  In fact, we are so close to the border that I occasionally get warnings on my phone that I will incur international roaming charges if I make any calls.  Yikes.

We moved down here so Justin could do his Air Force pilot training at Laughlin AFB.  Justin is doing well in training and we are glad that he doesn't have to stress about ranking high so he gets assigned his dream plane.  Since we are Guard, he started training knowing what he will fly in the end while most of the other students here are competing for their dream slot.

Justin and I took a ferry to Washington and then drove to Boise and then Utah to pick up the girls (they had flown down with Justin's mom the week before).  Along the way we picked up a Golden Doodle puppy and surprised the girls.  They instantly fell in love and although I have had to deal with figuring out how to deal with a puppy and her messes, I like her too.  Daisy is now 40 pounds and hardly looks like the tiny little thing we picked up six months ago.

Shortly after arriving we bought a boat and we spend most Saturdays on Lake Amistad swimming, playing and (now that I have learned how to pull Justin without killing him) water skiing.  It is nice to get away from town and the stress of pilot training on these days and it is great to see how daring and adventurous our little girls have become. They have also been taking swimming lessons and they can now both swim short distances on their own.  Kylie is an amazing treader and floater and Macy can swim further and do it quickly.

We live on base and love it here.  Although we have had to adjust to not having a garage, we love living in a nice, friendly and safe neighborhood where our kids can run back and forth to and from their friends' houses all day long.  We have a lot of great neighbors and have had a lot of fun here.

I will try to keep up on things a little better from here on out but I just wanted to drop in and say, "Hi!" :)