Author: Raptor Mama

Kate is doing Vacation Bible School this week, and while I love how much fun she’s having, it’s really screwing with nap time.  The twins usually nap at the same time which allows me to get some housework done scrapbook, but today there was very little overlap.  Not to worry, I still managed to make a page.  I just worked on it in 5 minute increments.  🙂

I decided to play with a line of vertical embellishments again on this layout, just on a smaller scale.  I also busted out the Mister Hueys again.  I had forgotten how much I love them!

I’m wanting to do some major purging of old supplies in my art room, so I’m challenging myself to either finish off packages of old supplies or get rid of them.  Mission accomplished with the popsicle brads!  I also made a serious dent in that cute ribbon that I bought years ago and had never opened.

I almost didn’t scrap this pic because I didn’t have any compelling story to go with it and I’m trying to cut down on the number of layouts I’m doing in an effort to get more caught up, but in the end the pic was just too cute not to scrap.  🙂

 

So we took Xander in for his ultrasound and blood work last week and found out that he, in fact, does have a hernia.  And he will, in fact, be needing surgery.  SAY WHAT?!?  I guess they glossed over the possibility of surgery when they mentioned the possibility of a hernia.  Or I was in denial or something.  Both equally possible.  At any rate, we have an appointment with the pediatric surgery people this week.  ::sob::  I can’t believe that my tiny baby has to have surgery.  We don’t have the results back from the blood work yet, but that was the worst.  It took them three sticks to find a vein.  I think Xander and I were both crying.  But this too shall pass!

I did some scrapping therapy this weekend and came up with this.

I started off with a pretty basic layout and decided to build my embellishments along a vertical line instead of trying for a visual triangle. First I added some twine.

Then I made some epoxy embellishments.  Love these!  I have a little dish full of them on my desk.

And then added everything else I could find.  lol.

 

I actually really love it.  🙂  And it was fun to play with all of my Valentine’s Day stuff.  I even busted out some rub-ons and did some splatters with my Mister Huey’s.

I had so much fun with this page. 🙂

 

 

 

 

They’re still little, but they’re getting bigger!  Xander is positively chunky at 8lbs 2oz and 21.5 inches long.  He’s grown 2.5 inches!  Mia’s still a little peanut, but she’s up to 7lbs 6 oz and 19.5 inches long.  She’s grown 1.75 inches.  🙂  When they first weighed her, she was only 7lbs 4 oz and there was lots of doom and gloom, but I asked them to reweigh her after I nursed her (she was chowing down in the exam room) and she had gained 2 oz which put her at a weight that they were happier with.  🙂  I’m so glad that I asked them to reweigh her!  We saw the nurse practitioner today and she was so awesome.  She also said it was fine to have ECI take over the weight checks.  🙂

Since we like to keep things exciting, Xander decided it was his turn to spice things up.  His iron had been a little low in PICU and they asked us to have his pedi recheck it.  Well, it’s lower.  ::sigh::  We have to take him in for blood work this week.  Since everything else looks great, he’s most likely just going to need iron drops.  Also, we have to take him to get an ultrasound to rule out a hernia.  I feel like I should get a punch card at the Childrens Hospital medical complex.  lol.  I’m just so thankful that we have awesome insurance!  And also thankful that, while we have lots of little annoyances, we don’t have any major medical issues.

And now it’s time for your crafty treat!

We did not want a c-section, but as the song says, you can’t always get what you want.  I clearly had a lot of thoughts about this since I wrote a ton.  I have more to say about the birth, so I’m thinking of adding 2 more pages (one for each baby) so I have more room to write.  We’ll see.

And y’all, the flair badges?  LOVE! I seriously can’t get enough of them.

If you haven’t tried them yet, you need to.  🙂

 

 

Get excited.  I found a new youtube channel and I’m obsessed.  This girl is awesome and she has me all inspired to try new things.  I’m even considering trying some mixed media stuff since it looks so awesome when she does it.  🙂  First up though are DIY flair badges.  Check out her tutorial.

As soon as I saw it, I ordered all of the supplies from Amazon.

They were so easy to make!

I punched circles and scalloped circles out of scraps of paper.  Which, by the way, is awesome since I have a ridiculous amount of scraps just sitting on my desk.

Speaking of stuff just sitting out on my desk, Adele has inspired me to start using my tiny word stickers too.  Usually they just sit and gather dust after I’ve used everything else up on a sticker sheet, but no more!

Here’s an assembled one before adding the epoxy circle.

Raptor got in on the action.  She loved punching stuff!  And hers actually turned out cooler than mine.

 

This bird one is my fav.  She’s such a sweetheart that she offered it to me and I almost took her up on it!  It’s just so cute!  I encouraged her to put it in her scrapbook instead so she did.  🙂

This was a super fun, super easy, kid friendly project!  Here’s some of my finished flairs.  They’re totally addictive!  Check back next week and I’ll post a layout where I used some of them.  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mia had her repeat MRI this week to take a peak at the ventricles in her brain.  They’d gotten a little bit bigger, but the neurosurgeon said that she was still out of shunt territory.  ::Cue big sigh of relief::  Apparently she has less than a 20% chance of needing a shunt at this point.  Awesome!  We go back in 3 months for another MRI.  On that note, I’m super glad that we have good insurance.

Remember the puddle jumping pics I took after our flood?  I scrapped them.  🙂

I realize that Crate Paper’s The Pier line is over a year old, but it’s still one of my favorites.  I totally stocked up on it.  🙂

 

Mia had her first ECI visit last week and it went great!  Despite having to wake her up because our nap schedule was all off (what can I say, sometimes you have to blow off the schedule so you can meet friends at the park) she did fantastic.  We worked on her first goal which is to be a more efficient nurser.  Right now she doesn’t get a great seal and gulps a lot of air, which gives her pretty bad gas.  We’ve been doing the exercises all week and they seem to be helping.  🙂  I know we’ve only had one visit, but so far I’m liking it!

And here’s your crafty reward:

A super simple layout using Echo Park’s baby collection.  I bought both the girl and boy collection packs and they’re super cute and easy to work with.  I outlined everything with a marker to help the layers stand out and I like how it turned out.  🙂

 

We spent 2 days in the PICU while Xander got his IV antibiotics.  Y’all, the people there could not have been nicer or more accommodating.  Not only did they bring me a breast pump and store all of Mia’s pumped milk, they even found a bed for her to sleep in.  Fun fact: when you take your breast milk home, they have it in sealed biohazard bags.  lol.

Here’s another layout I did documenting our time there.

Still loving Treasure Map!  Those whales!

 

So, remember how Mia was supposed to be our problem child?  Well, Xander decided to give her a run for her money.  Back in April at the wee age of 2 1/2 weeks, Xander aspirated some of his spit up and stopped breathing.  Literally the scariest 7 minutes of my life were while I was on the phone with 911 watching RaptorDad do CPR while we waited for the ambulance.  Side note: parents- learn to do infant CPR!  Once we got to the ER, the chest x-ray showed what could either be aspirated spit up (duh) or pneumonia (super scary but super unlikely).  His temp was low since he’d been unswaddled in the ambulance so they put him under the warmer.  He loved it.  Since he was just a tiny peanut, they had to do a lumbar puncture.  Sadest thing ever.  It took 3 doctors 6 attempts over 2 days.  🙁  They admitted us to PICU for IV antibiotics while we waited for the results.

Here’s a layout I made with a iPhone pic I snapped in the ER.  Xander is just chilling in the warmer.  I used my new Treasure Map goodies- I freaking love them!  I’m totally going to be ordering more of the papers.

I even got the stamp set which I never do since I’m always too cheap.  But those whales!  I had to have them.  I made the whale embellishments by stamping them, fussy cutting them, and then going over the stamped bit with dimensional adhesive.  I love how they turned out and I can’t wait to make more with the rest of the stamp set!

 

 

…and Mia apparently has the rarest form of Down syndrome: Robertsonian Down syndrome.  From what I can tell, this means that she has an extra copy of the 21st chromosome stuck to one of her 21st chromosomes.  So she still has 3 copies, 2 are just stuck together instead of them being 3 in a row.  My understanding is that this has no impact on anything, but it is interesting.  I kind of want to do that 23 and Me DNA mapping on her just to see what it looks like.  We’ll see.  It’s kind of pricey.

And here’s the first (of many) baby layouts!

Most of it is from the Jillibean Soup Cool as a Cucumber Soup line.  I lurve it.  🙂

I tried my hand at a layered border and I really like how it turned out.  🙂

 

 

Mia had another weight check on Wednesday and she had only gained 6 ounces in the past 12 days which puts her at 6 lbs 12 oz.  🙁  She’s supposed to gain .5-1 ounce a day, but they really want it closer to an ounce a day so her pediatrician isn’t too pleased.  ::sigh::  She can’t help it if she’s just a little peanut!  Her 2 month visit is in 9 days, so they’re letting us wait until then for the next weigh in.  Dance movies have taught me that I should just stuff a roll of quarters in her diaper, but sadly they weigh her naked so that’s not an option, lol.

Current plan is to give her a bottle of pumped breast milk after each feed to see if that helps.  Historically, Mia just lets that dribble out the side of her mouth since she filled up at the breast, but we’ll give it another try.  It’s frustrating since it seems like we were just able to ditch the bottles, but I know that plenty of kids with Down syndrome end up with a feeding tube so I’m just going to count my blessings that we’re able to just nurse most of the time.  It is going to cut into the awesome freezer stash I’ve been building, but what are ya gonna do.

Oh, and the little stinker decided to eat in the exam room right after they weighed her.  I halfheartedly suggested that the nurse weigh her again, but she wasn’t having it.  She did say that Mia had a beautiful latch and that she could see that she was eating great.  When Mia was done, I showed her that I could still squirt milk across the room so she wouldn’t worry about my supply.  She had been skeptical when I told her that Mia didn’t eat from both breasts at each feeding since I assigned each twin a boob of the day.

If you made it through that, here’s a crafty reward.  It’s another older layout; I found it going through pictures for Project Life.

Picture credit goes to Happy Soul Photography.  Super cute pics!

Time for a project update!  I’m currently working on Week 7 in 2014 Project Life.  I use the term working loosely, lol.  Mainly I’m ignoring it because I’m sick of making digital layouts.

I’m on Week 10 in 2015 Project Life.  I actually have some hope of catching up on this one.

I’m currently working on May 2014 in the big scrapbook, but I’m also doing some current layouts just because I want to scrap pics of the babies.  Once I get through August, there actually won’t be that many layouts in each month due to a combo of me being pregnant and working full time, and Kate starting kindergarten.  The picture taking has picked back up now that we’re all at home again!  🙂  I’d really love to get May, and optimistically June, of 2014 done this month but that might be a pipe dream, lol.