SPRING!

We are so excited about the impending arrival of spring... it was a little tricky last year and has been this year already, but we're hoping for the weather to stay warm and not snow anymore.  We've been walking most days, we go with some of our friends in the neighborhood in the mornings and then again in the afternoon when daddy gets home.  We are outside as much as possible.  All of our friends were busy Friday morning so mommy walked with us.  We followed the garbage truck and watched him pick up the recycling, we can never catch the garbage man they come so early in our neighborhood and we never hear the recycling truck until it's too late, so we were super excited to catch him.  Then we went and watched the tractors, just tore down the middle school and are building a new one, it's our favorite, and then we walked to the park.  We have three parks within walking distance, the Canyon's School District Bus Barn and the fire station are right by our house, there is also a police station not too far away, so we see lots of awesome vehicles in our neighborhood, especially when we go for walks.

 

 (Sometimes mom puts things on her head to get us to look... Mackay thought he was funny to put a fruit snack on his head.)

Please warm weather, don't leave us!

Visiting Papa

We normally visit papa Kent's grave each year on the anniversary of his passing.  This year Lindsay and her family were here a few weeks earlier, so we went while they were here so that we could all go together.  All of the grandkids released a balloon to float up to papa.

 Giving them kisses to bring up to papa and letting them go. 

Nolan let his balloon go, and immediately regretted the decision.

He went back and forth between being sad and reaching for it and being interested in it floating away.

Mackay enjoyed watching the balloons float away.

As sad as Nolan was to watch his balloon float away, he was a pretty good sport.  He kind of figured it out the next day when daddy was holding him.  Out of the blue he looked over and said "Papa!  Bye bye Papa.  Bye bye balloon Papa!"  As if it just finally made sense (sort of) in his little two year old mind, why we let those balloons go.

It's always a sad day.  It's hard for us to think that mama and the boys will not meet him on this earth.  It breaks mom's heart every time she thinks about it.  We miss him dearly.  He was a great man and will always be a man we want our children to strive to be like.  He raised a great man to be the head of our home and taught him the things he needs to know to raise more great men.  We are grateful for his continued influence in our lives and know that he is always near.  He's been there for us and touched our lives in ways we can not fully understand, but we definitely know he's looking out for these little grandbabies.  We look forward to the day when we will see him again.

Nolan's Story

If you don't know the boys' birth story, you can read about it and their reunion here, this is a brief summary of what happened and will help explain why he had some of his issues.

After two and a half years, we've come to learn a lot more about what happened and his injuries than what we knew when we posted that original story.  There are things we learned from speaking with other physicians and reading hospital records that we had not been informed of at the time that first post was written.  Basically, the oxygen and/or blood that was going to Nolan's brain was cut off for a period of time causing some small injuries in several areas of his brain, he had some blood in the ventricles of his brain, he lost half of his blood, he passed through infection, and had to be resuscitated.  His one minute APGAR score was a 3.  (For more information on what APGAR is you can look here and here).

Though he was facing down, the way he was supposed to be, he had his head turned looking to the side with his hand up by his face, which added to the difficulty of his birth.  Due to the position of his head, the vacuum was placed on his head in an unusual position which may or may not have contributed to some of issues but it did cause him to have, basically, a migraine for the first few days of his life and had to lay on a gel pillow.  We could barely even touch him.  We couldn't stroke his hand or his head to let him know we were there because it agitated him.  We weren't even able to hold our baby until he was a week old.

He had so many tests trying to figure out exactly what happened.  Once they finished treating him for meningitis he was able to come home.  He spent two weeks on oxygen (with a monitor that didn't work so well and was constantly beeping at us).  Shortly after he was able to come off the oxygen we started occupational therapy.  We worked out a schedule of once a month until there was a need to increase it to the normal every other week or even every week if necessary.

At two and a half months old he had to have a second echo cardiogram to make sure the valve in his heart closed properly (which the nurses in the NICU explained was likely due to the face that he was technically three weeks early and that Mackay probably had the same slight issue but wasn't being checked as thoroughly so no one heard any issues).  His heart was fine.

We started seeing his neurologist around the same time.  The first few visits were three months apart and the last few were six months apart.  The neurologist ordered another MRI to see how the maturation of his brain effected the injuries.  It was so hard to put him through another test.  Because he is so young, they had to sedate him so that he would stay still while they got all of the images they needed.  He hated every second!  They put an IV into his had and he just kept asking to "take it out".  They started the sedative and it took ten minutes for him to fall asleep. The entire time he screamed and cried "take it out" and "I want to go home".  Poor kid.  He finally fell asleep and daddy laid him down.

They took him into the MRI and we left the room and went across the hall to wait for him. We woke up in the middle of the imaging and was crying for his daddy.  He was given a second sedative, which calmed him down but didn't put him back to sleep so he was given another and finally went back to sleep so they could finish.  When they brought him back he stayed asleep for a few minutes but as he started waking he kept trying to sit up and was crying.  He started asking to take the IV out again.  The nurse didn't want to remove it until he attempted to eat and drink something so that if he threw up she wouldn't have to start a new IV to give him fluids.  He drank half a can of Gatorade and at half of a goldfish cracker so she removed the IV and put a bandaid on to keep pressure on it so it wouldn't bleed.  He instantly wanted that off his hand as well.

He cheered up a little but was still quite groggy.  The nurse told us he'd be sleepy and a little dopey the rest of the day and told us to watch him to make sure he didn't fall or walk into something and get hurt.  He slept the whole way home and took an hour and a half nap when we got home.  We woke him at 11:30 for lunch.  It took some time for him to wake up and when we asked if he had been to the doctor (the nurse said one of the sedatives could cause some amnesia so we wanted to see what he remembered) and he started singing "doctor said... no more monkeys jumping on the bed".  Once he really woke up, he was wide awake.  He didn't take his normal nap and seemed to be extra wired.

We got the results of the MRI and were able to compare them with the original images.  He still has a tiny scar, but it's smaller than the original injury.  He has a few tiny spots where the tissue is still dead, but overall his brain looked like that of a normal two year old.  It was great news.  This officially ends our neurologist visits.  The neurologist printed out a summary from today's appointment...

Seriously... happy day!  His brain looks excellent!  We have been so happy today.  He's been through quite a bit but he's a trooper.  We are so glad he is ours and can't imagine what life would be without him.  He was definitely meant to be here and to be ours... and definitely meant to be a twin.

No matter how normal he has seemed, it's always been in the back of our minds that something could be off or could change.  It's so nice to have seen the pictures and see how normal his brain looks.  It's a huge sigh of relief and we can definitely breathe a little easier knowing for certain that we no longer need to worry about the effects of that traumatic day.

We are so grateful for all of the prayers offered on Nolan's and our behalf.  We know that these prayers have been incredibly helpful in this journey and have helped his healing in more ways than we can imagine.

Changes

Turning 2 and 2014 have already brought so many changes to our family.  We can't believe how these babies are all of a sudden little boys.  It's exciting and sad all at the same time.  Each of these changes are so much fun but at the same time so sad because it means our babies are growing up.

No more high chairs and
 feeding ourselves... with utensils.

Potty Trained.

(Nobody believed that we could get two boys potty trained at two years old... and they only turned two three months ago.)

Big Boy Beds.

Little teeth marks on the rails of the crib... It makes us so sad to take it down..

We just put mattresses on the floor for now, until they get used to it.  They jumped on their beds the whole first day they were in their room.

First night in their own beds (photo from dad's IPhone, mom's camera wasn't wide enough to get them both at one time). 

First night in big boy beds.

The first night in big boy beds, we skipped nap time so we could ensure they would be tired enough to crash in their beds.  It took them about an hour of walking up to the gate (which we put in front of their door) and talking to mom and dad, jumping, and playing before they finally got into bed and fell asleep.  We were shocked that they didn't get into the same bed.  They both climbed into the beds that they chose earlier in the day when we got them out.  Don't worry, we put blankets on and moved Mackay into the middle of his bed so he wouldn't fall, we just had to take the pictures first.

They won't even ride in carts or strollers when we go to the store.  They think they have to walk.  And Mackay won't hold anyone's hand, he thinks he needs to walk himself.  For the most part he's pretty good about staying with us, but sometimes he likes to wander.  When Nolan notices that Mackay is walking, he thinks he has to walk too.  He's worse about staying with us, he likes to run, but he'll at lease hold a hand.

It's sad to think they are getting so big, but every new stage is so much fun.  We always think we don't want them to get bigger, but then they get bigger and we love it and just don't want them to get bigger from here.  They are so much fun.  They always have a lot to say.  They are talking constantly and are so easy to understand.... at least to us.  They come up with new things to say every day.  They have learned the alphabet (of course skipping a few letters and combing a few here and there).  They count every thing.  They sing lots of songs; Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and Monkeys Swinging in a Tree, and songs from nursery; Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree, The Wise Man and The Foolish Man.  Most of their songs are two lines, but it's pretty cute.  They do really well eating at the table with us and eating whatever we are eating, some nights we have to fight them a bit, but they eat it and it's awesome.   They definitely do better with the staple kid foods; chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and peanut butter sandwiches (peanut butter and nutella, jam, or honey).  Mackay doesn't love quesadillas ("taco" at our house), he will eat them but they have to be folded in half and not rolled, but loves grilled cheese.  Nolan loves "tacos", actually most foods, his favorites are "tacos", peas, and fruit... any fruit.  They both love cheese, if they see cheese, they want it.  The love yogurt, oatmeal, and pop tarts, breakfast food is probably their favorite.  

We're sure there are plenty more changes to come and we are sad and excited at the same time.  We are having so much fun with them right now.  They love to laugh at everything and when someone else is laughing, they will tell you they are funny.  Their favorite movie is Toy Story ("Woody Buzz"), they've recently started watching Planes, Cars, and have been watching some of mom and dad's favorite movies.  They loved Feivel today.  Their favorite toys are their cars, trains, and monster trucks.  They love tractors and balls, they really love throwing and catching and have gotten very good at it.  They still love running, a lot and they jump on everything and jumping from one thing to another and off everything.

Here are just a few more pictures, just for fun.

 Mackay

 Nolan

Twins are definitely an adventure and each new stage is a lot of work, but they are so so so much fun.  Listening to them talk to each other, watching them play with each other and wrestle (really like little bear cubs) witnessing them help each other up when one of them falls and kiss each other better when they've hurt the other... it's awesome.  They take such great care of each other.  They are definitely best friends and have a connection we'll never fully understand.  There are no words to describe how blessed we feel to have been given twins.  It's been the greatest journey and we are so looking forward to watching them grow up together.