the identical twinkies

we had another wonderful OB appointment this morning. I am almost 15 weeks along. the babies looked great and perfectly healthy, which is such answered prayer! it was sweet to watch them interacting together at this appointment. there is a small membrane between them that is not stiff so it moves back and forth as they are moving. they are constantly bumping into each other or curling up with each other. my appointment was early so they were still kind of sleepy and curling up with each other. it is still shocking to see that I have 2 babies in there! they have grown so much from the last time and there is less space for them in each of their sacks. I know it will get even tighter as the months go on. the other great thing that happened was I got to hear the babies’ heartbeats. this sounds ridiculous, but with charlie I just wanted to see him and check out how things were going, but at each appointment I was able to hear his heartbeat on the doppler. however, with all of the ultrasounds I don’t get to hear the heartbeats I just get to see them. so I mentioned to my OB that I missed hearing the heartbeats. he said would you like to hear them? I said yes! so he brought in a portable ultrasound machine that allows you to hear the heartbeats. it was great. hearing the quick little beats was precious. I also started to feel the babies move this week. I felt them a bit here and there from about 13 weeks on, but could never confirm it….but this week I can definitely feel them. so fun!

here are some of the stats and pictures.

baby A – heartbeat 150, 14 wks and 5 days, approximate weight of 4 ounces

in this picture you can see baby a’s profile. she is sucking her thumb, but you are only seeing a cross section of her hand which is why it looks like there is a small ball in front of her mouth.

baby B – heartbeat 145, 14 wks and 6 days, approximate weight of 4 ounces.

baby B is laying on her stomach so her head is cradled into baby A’s stomach which you will see in the picture of them together.

the babies together. you can only see the top of baby B’s head (top left) and baby A’s profile (right). baby A’s belly is the cushion for baby B’s head.

as for me, I am still doing well. I am not really showing yet and will try to post a picture later today or tomorrow. I am definitely feeling much better now that I am out of the first trimester. I got another stomach flu last week and was deathly sick. I had to go into the hospital to get fluids to help me recover. I am so blessed to have wonderful friends who took charlie for the day because I could not have parented that day. I am still working out and running a bit. definitely much less than I did with charlie. I am focusing on going easy on myself because I don’t want to end up on bed rest or have preterm labor later on because I over did it now. we are so thankful that our Lord is continuing to protect these babes. because TTTS can happen at any point I have to continue to have ultrasounds every 2 weeks. I go in 2 weeks from today and we will find out the sex of the babies at that appointment (just for clarification….we are calling these babies “she” just to give them a pronoun. with charlie we called him a he even though we didn’t know the sex).

at almost 15 wks...i am just getting "thick" through the middle :).

1 & 1/2 years old!!!

c little is 18 months old. I say it every time, but time is flying by. he is developing into such a little boy and is definitely interested in doing what he wants to do more and more.

here are random tidbits about him that I want to remember from this stage:

*his language is really developing and he is becoming such a parrot. the last word you say he almost automatically repeats. he has a large vocabulary, but a lot of those words I would have to translate. :)

*charlie and I enjoy singing the “abcs” together. he will repeat each letter after me and it is so sweet to hear his little voice following along. the best is that he won’t repeat “a” first. when you start with “a” he goes right to “b” (just like when counting….he won’t say 1. he only starts with 2). then sometimes he gets a little side tracked so around “d” he starts saying “dadadada” or by “l” he will start trying to do “l, m, n, o, p” quickly.

*charlie loves lily and I think lily is beginning to enjoy charlie’s attention a bit more. charlie calls lily “yiyi”. every morning he wakes up and goes through people he thinks about (dada, pappy, nana, bubba, pops) and then comes yiyi. he starts saying “yiyi yiyi yiyi!”. then I call her and she comes into his room to say good morning. he will pull books up to her to read to her. the other day he was playing peek a boo with a ton of kitchen rags and I look over at lily who is laying on the ground with her head covered by a rag and she is just patiently waiting. he crawls over her, pulls on her and she is so forgiving. I am so glad we have a great trustworthy dog. i also have to add that he sees me be stern with lily and say her name in a lower tone and i usually point my finger down to tell her to lay down or something. so sometimes when he is frustrated with her he will say "yiyi" as harsh as he can while he points his finger down. i probably need to start watching what i say and in what tone!

*he loves playing with his cars, trucks and trains. the table my dad made for him he loves and plays on it constantly. I have even been able to come upstairs for brief periods of time while charlie plays down stairs and he does great. I frequently go check on him without him knowing and it is sweet to see him driving his trucks all over and making noises.

*we started time outs when he was about 17 months. charlie’s 16th month was definitely a low point for me. I was frustrated by his disobedience and couldn’t really find a solution (“no” with a little punishment was not working). then we started time outs and he transformed into a different child. we park him in time out against a wall (the usual wall is by my desk where there is a small space by the wall) with his hands in front of him on the wall. I bought a timer from target that beeps after 1 minute and I start that when he gets in time out. then we wait while he faces the wall and he has to stay by the wall and if he begins to talk I remind him why he is in time out. then when the beeper goes off I go get him and we discuss why he was in time out and he needs to either apologize to me or lily or show me what he should do instead of what he did. this totally transformed his attitude and I noticed him becoming more affection and caring towards me again. we now barely do a time out a day. it just depends on what is going on. I have noticed that if our routine changes (new people, situation, etc) then he often misbehaves and needs a time out to reset. the other funny thing is sometimes I have to put a toy in time out. this is most often when he is chasing lily with his truck. the truck has to go to time out in our room because for some reason when he is in the mood to chase lily with the truck nothing else will get him to stop. thank goodness for time outs!

*charlie is loving his friend addison. i mentioned this before i think, but i find it so sweet that whenever nicole and i happen to be walking into the same place (RAC, SBS, etc) they will hold each other's hands while we hold their hands and walk slowly in together. if their hands separate addison will often do a little "ah" to alert charlie of their separation. then they grab hold again of each other and off we go. i love seeing their friendship blossom. so glad we have over 2 & 1/2 years left!

*charlie has a toddler Bible that i bought him a few months ago. it is really great and it came with a DVD. he liked reading the Bible before watching the DVD, but while driving to minneapolis or green bay a few times he has watched the DVD a lot and he loved it. the DVD really helped him like the illustrations in the book. i now have to read all 150 pages of the Bible before nap and bedtime. usually before nap i skip many stories to keep it moving, but at night i will read the whole thing. i know this is a good thing, but sometimes i just hope bill is home in time to do bedtime :).

charlie and lily's 18 month picture.

lily play time…

patiently waiting for the rag to cover her eyes. then waiting for it to be removed.

then charlie wanted to cover her with a pool flotation device (we were putting away summer stuff). I love the “head butt” that he gives her…that is his kiss to her.

just a boy and his dog.

fall play date

charlie and i met nicole and addison for a play date at a park. charlie and addison are really becoming sweet friends. if i mention that charlie will be seeing addison at church or at a play date he gets really excited. he will continue to bring addison up until we meet up with them. they will also hold hands while we walk to our cars or down sidewalks. it is so precious. i wish we could get a good picture of them both looking, but it seems like we will need a few more cameras and hands to make that work.  here are some pictures of charlie and addison running through the leaves at the end of the play date.

 

they were running back and forth so i could barely catch them in the same frame.

charlie loves throwing leaves.

bubba or grandma???

this video is so sweet. charlie is looking at his photo album and points out a few of his favorite people. laura (bill's mom) has been called grandma, however, charlie pronounces is as bubba. bill and i love it, but i am trying my hardest to not reinforce it too much. as you can hear in the video, charlie definitely calls laura "bubba". he also names dotes (mary - bill's sister, which is her nickname), pete (bill's brother) and pappy (bill's dad).

90 degrees

today - october 9th - the temperature was 90 degrees! i think it was a record and it was way to hot for me. i prefer the cool 60 degrees in october. hopefully that will be back next week :).

another visit to a pumpkin patch

it was a beautiful, sunny, chilly fall day so we decided to take another visit to sekapp’s.

bill decided to tie charlie’s hat on him. i had to take a picture because he looked tortured on our drive out.

charlie loved attempting to pick up the pumpkins.

mommy and daddy pictures.

thanks to nana (who taught charlie to stand up on things) what he really wanted to do was stand on the pumpkins. definitely a challenge.

then he wanted to start walking on them…

charlie picked this apple and dug in.

hanging in the tree with daddy. i love this picture.

pumpkins and mums scream fall! i love how he is still eating the apple at this point.

trip home

charlie and i took a trip to visit my parents last week because my brother tommy was home from montana. we had a great time and all of my siblings ended up coming home and hanging out for a night, which is always a fun time. we definitely missed bill, but he was in boston for an ENT conference.

while home we visited an apple orchard that has a little petting zoo. can you tell who charlie likes best? nana!

 

one morning while we were home my mom had to work so my dad and i took charlie to the zoo. we had a blast. he walked the entire zoo and was so into all of the animals.

this giraffe exhibit was awesome. you could feed the giraffe a leaf. we didn’t get to feed them because they left right after i took this picture.

charlie thought this giraffe was so funny. he kept giggling and pointing at the him.

i thought it was so precious that charlie would either crouch down or climb up to see the animals.

he also loved the indoor bird exhibit.

after we were done with the zoo we carried charlie up to a tower for a quick look.

thanks mom and dad for picking charlie and me up and dropping us off! you guys are the best. i don’t have any pictures of charlie and tommy together because they are on tommy’s camera. but i will have to add some. they had a blast together. tommy is so great with charlie. thanks to tom charlie had a great train track to play with and they loved playing trains together.

eating for 3...

i had to post about my erratic eating. it is out of control. i am hoping that as i move into the 2nd trimester i can eat more healthfully and more normally, but i thought i would record a bit of what i have consumed.

basically, i can't cook anything that i then want to eat. i am usually the queen of thinking what i want to eat, making it and enjoying it. not so much with these babies ruling my body. i am currently the best thing that ever happened to rochester's economy. now we usually spend around $25 dollars a MONTH on dining out, which means we almost never do it. it is too costly for us and not healthy. however, the last 6 weeks i have eaten out more than i can count.

here are some of the places i have randomly decided i had to eat at NOW:
olive garden (the salad and breadsticks) - i honestly thought about it in the middle of the night (i wake up hungry constantly) and was determined to go there the next day for lunch. thankfully, i have loving friends who joined charlie and me otherwise i would have gone alone :).
papa johns
pizza hut - deep dish (reminds me of my childhood - remember the personal pans you would get after reading a certain amount?)
noodles
jimmy johns
subway (full foot longs)
five guys (i downed 2 burgers, bill only had 1!)
dos amigos

crazy things i do:
i drink chocolate milk by the gallon. (i have now replaced this with carnation instant breakfast to make my mom happy)
i went to the premade counter at our grocery store and asked them to make me a mexican dip/7 dip party platter for me to take home and eat myself!
i bought freshly baked pizza from the grocery store so i could eat it on the way home.

now most of you should know me well enough to know i would NEVER do half of these things. yes i crave mexican once in awhile, but i never buy something to eat when i am 5-10 minutes from home. usually i would just suck it up. definitely not now.

and lately my best find at the target one spot...fluffy stuff! it is just like the cotton candy at a fair. i will now be buying 5 or more every time i go. yum!

thankfully i have a loving husband who has put up with a much different meal schedule than normal. my goal is to make 2 meals a week....now just to decide what those meals should be...ahhh.