Twin's Baby Blessing

Since the babies were preemies and there was a lot of flu going on, especially of the swine variety, we decided to bless the babies at home. We first spent a lot of time on the phone trying to coordinate family schedules and finally settled for Oct. Maddi and Jess then got Swine flu. So we delayed it, but then people couldn't make that one either, so finally getting around to actually blessing them took some time. We could tell we needed to just do it when different members of the bishopric were making the same joke every time they saw us. (by the time we bless the twins it'll be time to baptize them, hardy har har) Yep, we were a hot topic at Ward council apparently. So we FINALLY blessed them the second Sunday in December. It was a very intimate and special experience to share with our families and it was nice to be able to thank everyone for helping us so much. And Jesse did a great job with the blessings. Here are the pictures:

Emily and Elizabeth

Elizabeth

Emily

Family
Family
Us and the babies

Ok, here we go....

Gentle People,

With it being a New Year and all, I decided to make some resolutions. Yeah, yeah the whole lose 10 pounds is always on there, but this year I decided to do something new. Since I missed most of last year, what with being on bed rest for the better part of it, I decided I needed to do some seriously catch up! So in order to do that, I'm going to post something EVERYDAY for the entire month of January. You heard me! I've gone crazy!!! I know what you're thinking! It can't be done! But I have birthdays and holidays and so many other things to put on here, and I don't want to just let it go. So I will start with Christmas and work my way backwards through the year. After I have posted everyday in January, I will then attempt to post at LEAST once a week for the rest of the year. I KNOW, I've completely lost it! But hopefully I can do it. So stay tuned for some GREAT posts courtesy of my cute kiddos !!!

Jesse's Birthday

Just finished giving him his present

A nap.

Wow that was EASY! Shopping is DONE! ok just kidding....sort of...

And please don't have a heart attack that I have posted something new. It's always hardest to go back the first time, but now THAT's out of the way!!!

I would post some pictures, but alas, my laptop is on the fritz and they have all been saved to Jesse's hard drive. I will be getting my new power cord shortly and should be able to put some up!!!

Man I'm getting lazy....

Since I'm beyond crazy tired, I decided that I will give the masses *cough* that read this blog at least something to read. Here are three things about my family that apparently I'm too lazy to blog about, but other people have already posted. Why reinvent the wheel?

Circus
http://cbjungle.blogspot.com/2009/09/greatest-show-on-earth.html

Little gems about this post that I'll add. As we walked down the streets of Salt Lake, my daughter yells out "Mom! That man is smoking!" Good thing he was on his cell phone.
When we were in the car getting ready to park she yells "Mom! Look at those tall houses!" she was referring to the office buildings. I felt like I was bringing the country mice to the city. My poor children who've never seen a big city apparently. Andrew was enthralled with all the cars driving by and yelled "CAR" every time he saw one. That's pretty weird since we do have cars in PG.

Cute Story
http://pgwendtfamily.blogspot.com/2009/09/growing-up.html

Thanks Brooke for letting me link to your blog!

And for your viewing pleasure here are some pictures of the Twins my friend Julie took. She's awesome!
http://jktphoto.blogspot.com/2009/09/sweet-babies-elizabeth-and-emily.html

2 Week Well Check

Last Friday we had the Twins 2 week Well Check with Dr. Mumford. So far so good! Here are the stats:

Birth Weight

Elizabeth 5 lbs 6 oz 18"
Emily 5 lbs 14 oz 18"

Weight Check 8/31
4 lbs 13 oz
5 lbs 3 oz

Well Check 9/11
5 lbs 6 oz !!!
6lbs!!!!

Length
19 1/4
19 3/4

We were so glad to see they had gained enough weight to keep the Dr happy. Elizabeth's face is getting more filled out and it makes me feel a lot better. We're just trying to keep her that way at this point. She is our most difficult eater, she takes about an hour to fully feed and will only take a certain bottle. She nurses pretty ok. Emily does great at feeding, but unfortunately we found out she has acid reflux. This is common in preemies. I was explaining some of the things she did at night when we would lay her down. He said, "Well if she does this, this and this, then we'll give her medicine. I said "check, check and check." He just laughed and gave us the prescription. No sense in waiting, he said. Since it takes 3-4 days for the medicine to work, we're glad he didn't make us wait.
We are doing ok, more sleep would be good but there's not much we can do about it! They really do sleep well, they just take turns having bad nights. If they could just have a good night at the same time, THAT would be awesome.

Here are some traits about each one of them:

Elizabeth Grace

Elizabeth is a family name on both sides. Grace is my Father's mother's name. She passed away before he met my mom, so I've never known her. We couldn't decide if we should name her Elizabeth Grace, or Grace Elizabeth, but when we saw her we knew! We intended to call her Ellie, but so far she's still Elizabeth! That might change who knows?
She is so calm and when you pick her up she lays her head on your shoulder in a way that just melts your heart. She's smaller even though she's older so we worry about her, but she's seems so strong and steady. She's still sleeping most of the time, so when she's awake, we get excited. She definitely keeps her cool better than her sister.

Emily Mae

I am a sixth generation Emily through my mother's side. My middle name is Emily but my grandmother wanted it to be my first name. So I promised my Grandma that I would name my Emily as her first name. She still comments every time I see her, that she wished her parents had called her Emily instead of her middle name, Lois. Mae is a family name on both mine and Jesse's family.
Emily is a spunky one. She goes from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds flat. But she can be easier to calm (when it's not acid reflux) and loves snuggling up to you when you hold her. She has more periods of wakefulness than her sister, probably because she is bigger and not still in her "preemie coma" She hangs out for long periods of time just looking around and figuring everything out. She's definitely a thinker.

You want pictures? You got 'em...

Ok, so not that I don't love ya'll, but I've been a little busy. And when I'm not nursing, pumping, burping, changing diapers and anything else baby related, I'm trying to catch up on my sleep and let my body try to recover. So I'm sorry I haven't been able to post more and call people back. I still love you! I'll get to it eventually. Here are some pictures:

This is Elizabeth checking out the chick who's been kicking her all this time. This is a few minutes after they were born.

Here's Emily nuzzling her older sister

Here are my parents holding them the night they were born

Maddi was SO excited to finally hold a baby! She had waited a long time.Here's Andrew checking out the babies

Emily peeking over her blanket at us

The Twins in the Coming Home outfits. Size 0-3 was HUGE on them!

Ready to go home!

All snuggled together at home. Emily sleeps on the left, Elizabeth on the right.

Here is Emily striking a John Travolta move

Emily getting into it and Elizabeth wondering what's going on...

They both had a lot of Bilirubin problems. So we finally had a little sunbathing party to help them along. Worked like a charm.

They are doing well. We have done a few weight checks, poor Elizabeth lost a LOT of weight, and most of it seemed to be in her face. She looked so emaciated it was sad. She's looking better these days. We've successfully kept them out of the NICU so far, but we've been very close a couple of times. We just keep feeding them as much as possible! We've had a ton of help and couldn't have done it without our family and friends! We are so lucky!
PS. HUGE shout out to Kaylynn for giving us all her Preemie clothes! They are a lifesaver and they're adorable. You are AWESOME!

First Photos