Author: Raptor Mama

Sorry for the radio silence last week!  It was absolutely crazy busy.  Both babies had therapy (Mia twice), they had their well baby visit with shots, Mia had to go to the cardiologist for a check up, we had to replace our AC, Kate had open house, and one of my BFFs came to visit for 3 days. Whew.  I’m tired just typing all of that!  I’m hoping to get back in the swing of things this week and by some miracle (a combo of therapy for both babies wearing them out and my mother-in-law sticking around after therapy to help me transfer post nursing sleeping babies to their swings) they both slept for over an hour.  At the same time.  IN THEIR SWINGS!  It was a Christmas miracle y’all.  I’m thinking about buying a lotto ticket tonight.  🙂

 

I love how this page turned out.  Full disclosure, I was a wee bit tipsy when I made it so I was willing to take a few chances.  I haven’t been scrapping much since the babies decided that daytime sleep is for the week, but now that our AC has been replaced post bedtime crafting is an option again.  It’s like a whole new world has opened up!  Previous to this our office resembled a sauna in the evenings.

I started off with some gel medium, yellow gelatos, and a heart stencil.  It was subtle but I liked it.  Then I decided to go crazy and try the “packaging technique.”  Basically, you smush your distress ink stamp in some of the clear plastic packaging that embellishments come in.  Then you add a few squirts of water and smush it around in the paper.  I didn’t have a squirt bottle handy so I added a bit of Heidi Swapp color shine in gold and I love the effect!  It gives it just a bit of sparkle.  Plus, I didn’t have to go find a squirt bottle which is a real positive considering how lazy I am.  😉  These papers are all super old too.  It is nice to be using up some old stuff!  I want to organize and purge my craft room and I figure the best way to start is to force myself to start using up this old stuff I’m hanging on to.

I finished the whole page and then realized that I needed a border to help ground it so I just trimmed it slightly and mounted it on a piece of patterned paper.  Normally I hate how thin this cheap cardstock is, but I actually love that you can see a teeny bit of the pattern peaking through so consider this a score for thriftiness.  I also realized after I took these that I never journaled!  Whoops.  Thus are the perils of tipsy crafting.  I went back and added a few lines of journaling tot he right of the photo between the Sunshine and the actual sun.

Raptor started 1st grade on Monday!

I can’t believe how big she’s gotten!  She was so pumped about her first day.  And she came hoe bubbling over with excitement and even ::gasp:: told me about her day!  I realize it’s only the first week, but I can see how nice it is going to be to have her home at 3:15 ish instead of 5:30 or 6:00.  She came home, had a snack, told me about her day, we read a chapter of the book we’re reading, (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe)  (I had to add a link so it would be underlined.  Aren’t books supposed to be underlined?), leisurely packed her lunch together, and just had a generally relaxed evening.  I realize that it will be more hectic once homework starts next week, but I think it’s going to be so much better than last year.  I have to say that going back to work full time, having Kate start kindergarten, and being pregnant with multiples all within a 2 week span made for a pretty insane year.  I’m so glad to be back at home this year.  🙂  And today is early release day (her charter school has early out every Wednesday) so I get to have an extra 2 hours with her!  Yay!  Maybe I’ll try to set up a little activity for her to do while the babies have OT for 2 hours this afternoon…  Hmm…  I’ll ponder that.

And the boots.  Y’all.  How darn adorable are those boots.  She got some boots right before she turned 3 and she wore them, literally, to pieces.  So we got her some new ones for her birthday this summer and she was beyond thrilled.  They have (adorable) uniforms, but she still likes to jazz them up a bit and the boots accomplish that.

 

 

I had a really hard time deciding on Godparents for the twins.  At first, I wanted there to be no overlap between any of the kids’ Godparents.  The problem is that we just don’t have that many Catholics to choose from.  lol.  In the end, I decided that some overlap was fine, so my sister is Godmother to all 3 of my kids.  My uncle is Raptor’s Godfather and my brother-in-law is the twins’ Godfather.  I was so hung up on trying to give them all individual ones, but in the end, I knew my sister and her husband were the best choice even if it meant not spreading it around.

They hosted a brunch for our families after the actual baptism and I got this awesome picture of them holding the babies in their blankets.  I would have liked to have had one with the babies in their christening gowns, but I was not super happy with the gown we ended up with for Xander so I changed them for the party.  Mia wore Kate’s absolutely gorgeous (and ridiculously expensive) duponi silk gown.  It was enormous on her.  lol.  Poor Xander.  We were given Kate’s as a gift and buying a comparable one for him was just not in the budget.  Plus, I went to the mall closest to us instead of the fancy mall downtown and there were basically no choices even if I had wanted to buy one.  I still kind of wish I had made a trip to the other mall, but the babies were insane even on the short trip to the close mall, I can’t imagine if we’d have added another 45 minutes in the car.  lol.  In the end, they got baptized and that’s all that really matters.  🙂

I started off with this, but it seemed like it needed more of a title.

So I added the black thickers, changed the paper clips to black, and added some washi to try and balance it out.  I’m still a little iffy on it, but I love the hearts in the background so I decided to post it anyway.  I made them with some spray mist and a stencil.  Also notice that I’m unapologetically using a Valentine’s Day line and it’s not February.  I love this line and I use it all the time.  🙂  Sadly I’m almost out!  I’m keeping my eyes peeled for another awesome line.

 

 

I love the cute little amber teething necklaces.  They’re not meant for babies to chew on.  Supposedly the amber warms against their skin and releases something that helps with pain.   I don’t know if they actually work or not, but I know that with Raptor it helped me deal with teething frustration just because it’s so darn adorable that it would distract me from her crankiness.  Plus, they’re like the bat signal for crunchy moms.  If I see a mom with an amber clad baby at the park, I know there’s a decent chance that she’s going to be cool.  At the very least, she’s unlikely to care if I’m nursing my kiddos sans cover.  We got ours as a gift, but here’s a link to some if you want to check them out.  I recommend it.  The cute factor is ridic.

RaptorDad hates them.  Like seriously hates them.  He’s not a fan of pseudoscience.  See exhibit A.

This is the first time I tried on the babies’ necklaces.  His expression cracks me up!

I love this layout.  I’ve been having so much fun with the stencils!  And the doilies.  And the paperclips.  And…  Well, I’ve just been having fun lately.  🙂

 

Slowly but surely I’m working my way through the babies’ first month.  Today is their first bath!

With boy/ girl twins, I’m trying to keep the layouts from being too girly, but it’s no secret that I love pink.  🙂  And that I love gel medium and stencils!

Also?  I addicted to the gold color shine!  I’m pretty sure this one is the color I have.  I love it!  I just want to swim around in it.  🙂  I’m considering ordering about 20 more colors of it.  🙂

In more current news, we had Xander evaluated for ECI services today and he did qualify.  He has torticollis which basically means his neck muscles are stiff.  Imagine when you sleep funny and you wake up and can’t turn your head because your neck is stiff.  Now imagine that you slept like that for 9 months.  lol.  I wasn’t sure if he would qualify but I’m happy that he did.  Our 3 month goals include tripod sitting and having him turn his head to bat at toys in all directions.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love ECI?

And goals for August.  Hmm…  Really should get on that.  How about…

1. Scrapbook October 2014
2. Scrapbook December 2014 (November is already done!)
3. Scrapbook April 2015 (Only 1 layout to go!)
4. Do some current layouts
5. Get back on the Project Life bandwagon
6. Blog!
7. Work out 5 days a week
8. Register for Buddy Walk
9. Video of Interview Book
10. Frame DAD pics

 

 

So this happened.

I was pretty sure I was going to be rocking ye olde iPhone 5, but RaptorDad is awesome and took it in to get the glass replaced on Friday.  Even better, the machine that replaces the glass was broken so I got a whole new phone!  Now I just need to accept the fact that I have to get a case.  Suggestions?  I’m considering this one but maybe the glitter is too much?

Sorry no post on Friday.  We were just too busy!  My cousins were in town and we went down to Deep Eddy to go swimming.  I <3 Deep Eddy and I’m glad we went, but it was just a teeny bit crazy with the babies.  Thankfully I had lots of help.  🙂

I managed a bit of a contortion act and got this awesome selfie of me feeding Mia.  I’ve long wanted a flattering pic of me nursing, and I think I finally succeeded!  I love that it’s not too in your face, and I love that you can see the pool in the background.  Mostly I love that it shows how far Mia and I have come in our breastfeeding relationship!  🙂  Of course I had to scrap it right away.

I have more pictures to scrap from Friday, but I wanted to do this one separate so I could journal about breastfeeding twins.  I’m trying to do some more very current layouts so I can do more in the moment journaling.  I want to get the details down while I remember them!  It was a pretty quick layout to pull together which was good.  I’m trying to do a mix of throw down layouts so I don’t get behind and artsy layouts so I feed my creative side.  It’s a work in progress.  🙂

I am addicted to these mini doilies!  I just ordered some new pink ones.  🙂

I’m still figuring out my goals for August.  Look for that tomorrow or Wednesday. 🙂

Mia has been making this weird noise pretty much since she was born.  I’ve tried to describe it to the various medical professionals, but the little stinker has yet to make it in one of their presences.  Her speech therapist suggested that I try to tape it and I finally succeeded this weekend.  I texted her the video, she agreed that it was odd, and suggested that I send it to Mia’s pediatrician.  I don’t really have a way to do that, so I just added an appointment for her when I scheduled Xander’s weight check.

Their weights were great!  Mia was 9 pounds 1 ounce and Xander was a whopping 10 pounds!  For the first time, their dr actually seemed satisfied with their weight gain.  🙂  Mia earned herself a referral to a pediatric ENT to check out the weird noise.  BINGO!  Dr said we were going to have to go anyway to get her hearing rechecked at 6 months so we might as well just go a little early.  He said he doesn’t like to mess around with potential airway issues.  He said some other stuff too, but I’m pretty sure that my eyes just glazed over while my inner 4 year had a tantrum at the thought of yet another specialist visit.  Now putting head firmly in the sand until the visit.  Just say no to Dr Google!

One of the great things about living where we do is that we’re so close to my parents.  We stopped by for a bit on the way to the appointment and I got this adorable pic of my dad holding both babies.  I think this is the first time I have photographic evidence of a Mia smile!  I was so excited about it that I broke through my mental block against scrapping at night and made a page!

Pretty simple page, but I like it.  🙂  I think one of my August goal’s might be to try and scrapbook in the now.  Thoughts?

 

I’m addicted to the timehop app.  In case you live under a rock, it’s an app that shows you what you posted on social media on the same day in previous years.  This showed up on Saturday.

The photo on the left is of the meds for my first day of injections from the cycle that resulted in the twins.  I didn’t really blog it at the time, but now that I’m scrapping pictures from these months, it’s kind of forcing me to process it.  Which is good and bad.  Good because dealing with baggage is healthy and bad because dealing with baggage is hard.

RaptorDad and I had agreed that this was going to be our last cycle regardless of the outcome.  I had a really hard time accepting the likelihood that Kate would be an only child, but to be frank we had gotten to the point where we were done flushing all of our disposable income down the toilet of infertility treatments.  We decided that if Kate was going to be an only child that we might as well take advantage of that and start traveling.  Plus, she was starting kindergarten and I was going back to work at an awesome school after 5 years as a Stay At Home Mom.  We were just done with having our lives on hold.  And done with the emotional roller coaster that is infertility treatments.  I was so sick of having my life divided into 2 week cycles of hope and despair.

The cycle seemed doomed from the beginning.  We were supposed to cycle in early summer so that all of this would be behind us before I went back to work, but our meds got held up by a European holiday and then held up in customs.  (We always order our meds from Europe because it’s a fraction of the cost.  Still ridiculously expensive, but much cheaper.)  Then we decided to ask for a lap to check for endometriosis just to be sure that we gave this cycle every possible chance to succeed.  Good thing too, because they found a cyst the size of a tennis ball when we did the preop ultrasound.  And when they went in, they found not only endometriosis, but that both of my tubes were partially blocked despite a clear HSG and hysteroscpoy the year before.  Well, no wonder the treatments weren’t working.

We started the cycle right before I went back to work; in fact, I had to ask to leave one day of inservice about 30 minutes early.  Talk about awkward.  Obviously I didn’t say what kind of appointment I had, but it’s still awfully flakey to ask to leave early on your first week of work at a new job.  RaptorDad and I had no actual hope that this cycle would work.  We were just going through the motions as we had both accepted that Kate would be an only child.  I don’t even think we would have gone through with the cycle if we hadn’t already spent many hundreds of dollars on the meds earlier in the summer.  But we had and so we did.

When I started my period a few weeks later, we were sad, but in some ways relieved.  After all, I had gotten hired at a school that I loved.  I was so excited about working there, especially since it seemed like I would be able to transition into a full time teaching job the following year.  And while I missed being at home with Kate, she was loving kindergarten and I was loving being on the same campus as her.

I decided to test early just to rule out anything crazy before I stopped my progesterone.  Imagine my shock when I got a positive test!  I then spent the whole weekend convinced I was having a miscarriage, but I was actually pregnant!  We were in for a long road ahead, but I’ll tackle that more in another blog post as this one is already super long.  🙂

And if you made it through all of that, here’s your crafty reward.  🙂  Like I said, I’m scrapping pics from last August/ September and I came across these pics that RaptorDad took as a joke.  I always take pictures with Kate on the first day of school with a little chalkboard so he decided to take some of me on my first day of inservice.  🙂

I thought it might be neat to take pictures of the layout in progress, so here’s the bottom layer.  I mixed up some paint and some texture medium and put it through a stencil.

Then I matted my pictures several times and added a bit of rick rack.  So far so good.

Then the embellishment, journaling, and title.  I had a super hard time with the embellishments!  I love the October Afternoon puffy stickers, but they drove me crazy trying to figure out where to put them.  lol.

 

 

 

 

Mia is doing fantastic!  She’s making great eye contact, she’s started smiling and cooing, and she’s tracking.  Also trying to find her thumb and lifting her head up.  🙂

ECI is going fantastic.  We just added speech and a nutritionist.  Why speech?  At this age speech is working on her oral motor skills- things that will help her nurse more efficiently.  We were working on them with her occupational therapist, but then she has to split her time between the oral motor exercises and the exercises to work on her core strength.  When you consider that Mia isn’t really super attentive for the whole hour (she usually spends at least part of it sleeping or eating) her therapist and I thought it might be a good idea to add speech.  Now Mia gets therapy twice a week!  The more the merrier I say.  We try to do her exercises every day, but it’s difficult to juggle that with everything else.  I feel a lot better knowing that, at minimum, she’s getting a good therapy session twice a week.  🙂  We also added a nutritionist once a month to come out and weigh her so that we can stop doing weight checks at the pediatrician’s office.  Yay!

She also had her second MRI and everything looked good.  Her ventricles were a little larger, but still nothing requiring a shunt.  The neurosurgeon said she had less that a 20% chance of needing a shunt at this point.  Since the odds are rarely in our favor (let’s just say I’ll never go to Vegas) that’s freaking me out a little, but it is what it is and there’s not a darn thing I can do about it.

Overall, Mia is just a doll.  We <3 her so much.

I’ve not been able to scrap much recently as the babies are currently boycotting any naps that don’t take place on the boob, but that is giving me lots of time to work on my current crosstitch project.  When I get bored with finish that, I’m going to start on the babies’ stockings.  Fun times!  They are the best snugglers.  🙂

In other news, I’m trying to walk everyday after the babies are in bed.  So far so good!  I’ve walked the last 4 days.  🙂  Now I’m trying to decide if I should do it every day or let myself take the weekends off.  Decisions, decisions.

 

Since the babies are 3 1/2 months old now, it seems like a good time for an update!  And since they’ve basically stopped napping unless they’re in my lap, you get instagram pics.  🙂

Xander had surgery on mine and RaptorDad’s 11 year anniversary to repair a bilateral inguinal hernia.  Basically, his intestines were not where they should be.  In an effort to preserve poor Xander’s dignity, I’ll refrain from saying more but you can check wikipedia if you like.  Basically, it went something like this.

Me: Um, can you come take a look at this?

RaptorDad: Yeah, I noticed that.

Me: !!!

We brought it up at their 2 month visit and the nurse practitioner agreed that it looked odd, said there was a possibility that it could be a hernia, and we should have an ultrasound to rule that out.  You know, no big deal.  2 days later (Friday), I took Xander in to get his ultrasound BY HIMSELF!  My parents (who are rockstars) gently suggested that asking my mom to come with me was insane and that I should instead leave Mia and Kate with them.

Xander didn’t quite know what to do with himself having the Moby all to himself!  The ultrasound went quite well aside from Xander peeing all over himself while his diaper was off.  That poor ultrasound tech.  Mia peed on her too a few weeks ago when they were checking her hips.  lol.

Then we went upstairs to get Xander’s blood drawn since the PICU mentioned that his iron was low and we should have it rechecked.  At this point, I’m starting to wish there was a Dell Children’s Bingo card.  I think I would be winning.  For having generally quite healthy babies, I sure seem to be here a lot.

We got there at 12:35.  (This is important later.)  The dr’s office was supposed to have faxed over the orders for his blood draw, but they couldn’t find them/ they weren’t sent.  Don’t know, don’t care.  The end result is that we had to wait for the dr to refax them.  Except that my dr’s office is closed from 12:30- 1:30 for lunch.  ::sigh::  Xander and I waited in the waiting room and I thought to myself that, why yes, my mother is always right and I am glad that I’m not dealing with another hungry tired infant and a bored almost 6 year old.

Poor Xander.  The first time they dug around for a while a couldn’t find a vein.  Then they called in someone else to try.  On the second attempt, she found a vein but it blew.  At which point they told me that they were willing to attempt once more, but that it was up to me.  Um, why is it up to me???  What do I know about this?  I hate being put in that position.  Obviously he needs to have his blood drawn or we wouldn’t be here.  Can you do it or not!  Third time was a charm and they got what they needed.  Spoiler Alert: he has low iron.

We finally finished and went back to my mom’s for a bit.  Xander’s pediatrician called us that afternoon to let us know that he NEEDED SURGERY!  Are you kidding me?!?  I’ve been known to have some major head in the sand moments, but it never occurred to me that he would need surgery.  Not only that, but our appointment with the pediatric surgery group was Wednesday.

After meeting with the surgeon (BINGO!), he confirmed that Xander definitely had a hernia and that it definitely needed surgery.  In 2 days.  Y’all, 2 days is not long enough to freak out about my TINY 8 pounds and change baby needing surgery.  We were also told that we would need to stay over night since they were going to have to put him under general anesthesia and they make the tiny babies stay overnight.  Oh, and we had to be there at 5:45 AM.  And he couldn’t eat after 1:45 AM.  Oh boy.  We went ahead and bought some disposable diapers for both babies.  Xander had to be in them for 2 weeks to let his incision heal and I wasn’t interested in schlepping cloth diapers up to the children’s hospital for Mia.  This is also when we discovered that poor Mia has no junk in her trunk.

We sent Raptor over to my parents’ house on Thursday evening and set our alarms for 1:15 to make sure we fed Xander.  Except that we slept through the alarms.  We woke up in a panic at 2:04 and had about 30 seconds to decide that yes, we were going to let him eat, but only for 5 minutes.  I then panicked for the rest of the night that they were going to cancel his surgery, but it was no big deal.  Like seriously no big deal.

We got to the children’s hospital at 5:45 as instructed and then waited to get the show on the road.  Xander was not pleased when I fed his sister and not him.

They do the tiny babies first and Xander was the tiniest so they brought us room pretty quickly.  The surgeon said that they were going to try to do the surgery with a spinal block (like with a c-section) instead of putting him under with a general, but that he would have to be calm.  I laughed hysterically on the inside, but said that we were good with whatever they thought best.

Then came the time to hand him over at the doors that we couldn’t walk through.  Y’all, I totally cried.  And then I looked at Mia and said to myself, “at least it’s not brain surgery.”  They said it would take about an hour so I sat there and tried to read while watching the minutes tick by.  Luckily, their time estimation was spot on and they let me, Mia, and RaptorDad into recovery.

 

My little Xander!  They let us in as he was waking up and I got to hold him and feed him pretty much right away.  Everything went swimmingly and they were able to do it with the spinal!  I was totally shocked that my, um, emotional boy was calm the whole time.  There ended up being a hernia on both sides that they repaired; I guess it’s common with preemie boys.  This makes me feel both glad that we made it to 37 weeks and they weren’t true preemies, and guilty that I didn’t make it to 38 where we might have been able to avoid this all together.

Since he didn’t have to go under general, they had us stay for the day, but discharged us in the afternoon instead of making us stay overnight.  We went to my parents’ to pick up Kate a day earlier than planned and my mom insisted on RaptorDad and I taking an hour to go get some dinner since it was our anniversary.

Cue all kinds of mommy guilt, but sushi.  Sushi y’all.  A whole (literally) boatload of sushi.  Yum.  🙂

Biggest shocker?  Babies don’t get real pain meds, only tylonal.  I thought that was some serious crap, but everyone assured me it would be fine.  And in the end it was.  We gave him his tylonal on a schedule for the first 24 hours and then we were able to stretch it out.  Within a few days, he was totally back to normal.  We went in for the follow up with the surgeon the following Wednesday and everything looked great!

The biggest pain was dealing with disposable diapers for 2 weeks.  I know it seems like it would be less work, but he spits up so much that it’s not like we were doing any less laundry.  Plus, it’s clear that I’m a disposable diaper newbie.  I felt like they were always leaking.

I meant for this to be an update about both of them, but it’s already gotten quite long so I’ll save Mia’s update for Friday.  🙂